Carolina Record Shop Creative Residency
Founded in 2020, the Carolina Record Shop Creative Residency Program provides an annual opportunity for artists in Buncombe County to create new, research-driven creative work using BCSC’s historic resources, and to present their work in the Carolina Record Shop, a dedicated exhibition space in the BCSC reading room.
The goals of the Carolina Record Shop are to
- offer new, diverse perspectives on our shared history,
- identify and address gaps and/or amplify narratives that are historically underrepresented in our collection, and
- educate and inspire non-traditional users of archives and special collections to engage with the collection in new ways.
Proposals
BCSC provides research assistance, exhibition space, public program support, and promotion for artists to create work that responds to our collections and the history of Asheville, Buncombe County, and Western North Carolina.
Are you an artist or organization interested in working with us in 2026? Get in touch!
Current Exhibition
Black Stories in Census Tract 2
Tuesday, January 20 – Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Black Stories in Census Tract 2 is a curated multimedia archive illuminating the social, cultural, and historical impact of Asheville’s Black neighborhoods — honoring the families and communities whose roots shaped Stumptown, Hill Street, and South Montford, and bringing their stories forward through imagery, memory, and collective history.
The exhibition will be on view at Buncombe County Special Collections at Pack Memorial Library from January 20 through April 21. Public programming will include a film screening and discussion the evening of Tuesday, April 21—learn more here!
The exhibition is created by STM Multimedia and Garnet Prose + Projects in partnership with the Historic Stumptown Neighborhood Association and with support from the Friends of Buncombe County Special Collections, Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County, and Dogwood Health Trust.
Past Carolina Record Shop Artists
Mountain Metropolis: The "Land of the Sky" in the Roaring '20s
November 1 – December 31, 2025
This exhibition organized by BCSC staff and guest curator Brody Hunt spanned the upper and lower levels of Pack Memorial Library. Brody Hunt's installation in the Carolina Record Shop space highlighted the historic Asheville Sessions and George Vanderbilt Hotel, including vintage recordings and information about the musical artists whose sounds were captured in 1925 as part of these momentous recording sessions.
Programs in conjunction with Mountain Metropolis include a roaring '20s inspired kickoff party featuring live music by Russ Wilson’s 10 Kings of Jazz, Andrew Fletcher, and Brody Hunt—and lots of other events taking place as part of Asheville's city-wide celebration of 100 years of music!
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the support of the Friends of Buncombe County Special Collections and held in conjunction with The Asheville Sessions: Celebrating 100 Years of Americana & Appalachia, presented by Explore Asheville.
Swannanoan Silt: Photographs by Isaac King
Isaac King (June – October 2025) presented an exhibition consisting of nine 5”x7” gelatin silver prints selected from a series of 35mm black & white reversal slides. The slides comprise one channel of the larger Swannanoan Silt moving image installation and performance,
The images directly engage with Helene’s ecological impact, as the original rolls of film were developed using water from the contaminated French Broad and Swannanoa Rivers in the immediate months after the storm. Events in conjunction with Swannanoan Silt included an opening reception and a film screening with live musical score and artist Q&A.
Swannatopia Experimental Art Club (March – June 2025) took over the Carolina Record Shop “to collect our thoughts and incubate our visions as we redirect our gaze toward the farms, forests, and legume lagoons of our future.”
Many of the objects on display were created in response to the prompt “How Do We Mark The Flood?” for an event held in November 2024, as well as other projects in the months since. Works on view are paired with library research resources highlighting the histories of agriculture and arboriculture in our region. Public programming included a discussion on tree failure after Helene and a closing reception.
Czart Gallery (January – March 2025) remounted selected works from ReClaim the RAD: Flood Debris Resurrected into Art, an exhibition featuring local artists who have created new work on pieces of debris reclaimed following Tropical Storm Helene.
Featured artists include the All Caps Murals Team, Gus Cutty, Rob Czar & Ashevillish, Sennyo Senn, Rachel Stark, and Amar Stewart.
This exhibition was originally created by and displayed at Czart Gallery, opening November 2024.
January-October 2025 creative residencies were presented as part of the community memory project Come Hell or High Water, documenting the historic impact of Helene on Western North Carolina, made possible thanks to the support of the Friends of Buncombe County Special Collections and the Preservation Society of Asheville & Buncombe County.
Eric William Carroll (2023-2024) performed a deep-dive exploration of scrapbooks held by Buncombe County Special Collections, highlighting the creative & lasting potential of this form and demonstrating contemporary strategies for reviving this lost art in a digital age through the library exhibition and workshops at several branch libraries. Carroll's work on photography, science, and nature explores the differences in how we experience, organize, and represent the world. Through his photographs, books, installations, and performances he explores themes of human obsolescence, ephemerality and memory.
Learn more about scrapbooks in our collection in this blog post by Eric!
The 2024 Creative Residency was made possible in part by the Trust Fund for Buncombe County Public Libraries.
Miles Lamberson (2022-2023) curated the exhibition Belonging & Non-Belonging: The History and Futures of Zines in Western North Carolina, featuring new collections of DIY self-publishing from the region, including the archives of the Asheville Zine Fest. He also led a research talk and hands-on zine workshop.
Visit the digital exhibition or read an interview with Miles about this project!
Honey Simone (2020-2021) was artist-in-residence during our first creative residency launched in partnership with Engaging Collections. The inaugural project included large-scale changes to BCSC's space, the creation of the Carolina Record Shop space, and an exhibition on Black history in Asheville, focusing on the 1970s.
