Blue Spiral Gallery, Asheville
Michael Manes
Gallery Director
Michael Manes is the director and part owner of Blue Spiral 1 Gallery(Asheville, NC) -one of Southeast’s most established galleries of contemporary fine art and craft. Michael earned his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design, with a concentration in painting and art history. Manes started his career in Ohio at the Columbus Museum of Art, moving on to the exhibitions departments at the Akron Art Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Before turning back to curating, he was an artist-in-residence at a private school in Cleveland, teaching grades K-5.
After moving to Asheville, Manes became involved with the Asheville Area Arts Council (former Vice Chair and currently on the Advisory Board), the Center for Craft, and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center where he currently sits on the board and steers its collection’s committee. Manes is a graduate of Leadership Asheville and is a co-founder of the Downtown Asheville Arts District (DAAD). Manes brings experience from the sectors of education, art museums and art consultation, having worked with numerous artists, non-profit organizations, and art and craft collectors. Manes currently lives in Weaverville, NC with his wife Hanna, son Harvey, and two pups Ella and Mabel.
Artists: Amy Putansu
Medium: Textiles
Amy Putansu has been producing handmade textiles for over 20 years. Thread is her mark-making tool and dyes are her colorant in the fine and wearable textile art she makes by hand. Her current area of focus is the rare weaving technique of ondulé, with which she creates wall pieces using dyed fibers with textile paints and other methods for achieving abstract imagery on cloth. Amy has contributed to the Schiffer publication “Ondulé Textiles: Weaving with a Fan Reed” (by Norma Smayda and Gretchen White). Amy’s textiles are in permanent museum collections in the US and China, and notable private collections across the United States. She is presently a full-time faculty at a college in western North Carolina in the department of professional craft.
Artists: Eric Knoche
Medium: Pottery
“I make sculptural pottery and abstract sculpture using a variety of hand-building techniques including coiling, pinching and working with slabs. I use local materials as much as possible. I fire my work with wood and gas.
Over the last twenty years, I have focused on firing my work in Japanese-style wood kilns.