2026 Benefit Gala Raffle | 5 Tickets
Support the Asheville Art Museum' mission to provide transformative art experiences in Western North Carolina by purchasing raffle tickets for a chance to win exclusive and unique items and experiences! The benefit raffle will occur at the Gala Kickoff Party on Friday, June 5, concluding at 9pm. Tickets are available in bundles of 5 for $100. Thank you for your support!
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Lot 1 | Stay at Elevation Lofts Hotel in Downtown Asheville and VIP tour at Momentum Gallery.
Elevation Lofts Hotel offers a unique boutique lodging experience unlike any other hotel in Asheville. Designed for guests who appreciate an authentic, but upscale, urban experience, its ideal location, in a fully renovated historic building in the heart of downtown, allows guests to enjoy walking to many of Asheville’s most interesting and vibrant attractions.
At the end of each of your amazing days in Asheville, come back to your individually designed and fully furnished apartment unit, with its contemporary loft vibe, unique art, and “urban luxe” décor and amenities.
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Lot 2 | Liz Willams, Untitled, from Why I Rebel series, 2026, inkjet archival print, limited Edition 2/5, signed lower left corner and verso bottom right, 16 × 20 inches. Courtesy of Joey Gigliotti. Framed by Frugal Framer.
This powerful archival print is part of Liz Williams’ landmark Why I Rebel series, a project that explores individual and communal resilience through the intersection of portraiture and oral history. In this series, participants are invited to record audio interviews sharing their motivations for rebelling against prejudice; their responses are then superimposed over their faces in the final photograph. The result is a striking visual dialogue that offers viewers a window into the models' unwavering commitment to social change and determination.
Liz Williams is an Asheville-based visual artist whose work spans photography, video, and illustration to explore the "real and fantastic" elements of life in the South. In 2019, she became the first artist-in-residence for the Campaign for Southern Equality, where she currently serves as Creative Director for Southern Equality Studios. Her practice is dedicated to using the arts to catalyze progress toward lived and legal LGBTQ equality.
Lot 3 | Hatch Coworking $1,000 credit and a 2022 Avignonesi Grifi Toscana IGT.
Hatch Coworking has created an inspiring workspace in downtown Asheville designed to make your workday the best part of your day. Every office, meeting room, and shared space has its own unique character, while a strong sense of community remains at the heart of the Hatchworks experience. Connecting members with one another and the Asheville community is the Hatchworks hallmark. Filled with natural light, greenery, and comfortable places to work, Hatchworks offers complimentary local coffee, free member parking, 24/7 access, 9 conference rooms, and 10 private soundproof phone booths. Conveniently located in Asheville's South French Broad neighborhood, Hatchworks provides a welcoming environment where remote workers, entrepreneurs, creatives, and professionals can do their best work while building meaningful connections and contributing to a thriving local economy.
2022 Avignonesi Grifi Toscana IGT: this is Avignonesi's signature Supertuscan—a historic icon of our past, revived through the vision of the current ownership. A bold wine with a strong personality. The vibrant freshness of Sangiovese forms it backbone, elegantly supporting the depth and structure of Cabernet Sauvignon. Together, they create a unique aromatic profile, rich in nuance and chromatic intensity. Seductive from day one, it reveals its full nobility to those patient enough to let it rest in the cellar for a few more years.
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Lot 4 | Blue Spiral 1 Director's tour, $500 credit toward the purchase of an artwork, and Robert Stephan, Untitled #2, glass 3 ⅝ inch DIAM sphere, 7 inches (on stand).
Robert Stephan Untitled #2, glass 3 ⅝ inch DIAM sphere, 7 inches (on stand): Robert Stephan is an Asheville, North Carolina-based glass artist and a pioneer in the studio glass movement. He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Glass from Virginia Commonwealth University and opened his first glass studio in 1979, eventually establishing his practice in Asheville, where he continues to work today.
Stephan's work focuses on using internal designs of air inclusions and laminations of unique optical coatings. Working in close design collaboration with his wife, Margaret, he has adapted the process for applying his own uniquely patterned high-tech optical filter coatings–dichroics–to the surfaces and interiors of three-dimensional blown, carved, and laminated glass sculptures. The result is work of extraordinary optical depth: forms that reflect and refract light into cascading prismatic color.
Stephan's innovative technique of creating designs inside glass that reflect and diffract light across the full rainbow spectrum has earned him an international reputation. To this day, he finds it an exciting challenge to combine the varying factors of hot glass, light, color, form, and transparency into each finished piece. His work is represented in Asheville by Momentum Gallery.
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Lot 5 | Kensuke Yamada, Head No. 3, 2026, stoneware, 8 ½ × 5 ½ × 5 inches. Courtesy of Micheal S. Smith II & Jill C. Aiken, MD. Ben Owen III, Egg vase, 1994, glazed earthenware, 12 × 7 × 7 inches. Courtesy Andrew & Hathia Hayes.
Kensuke Yamada was born in Japan and moved to the United States more than 20 years ago to attend Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Since earning his Master of Fine Arts in 2009 at the University of Montana, he has participated in numerous artist residencies at foundations and studios across the country, also serving as a visiting artist at several universities. He is currently an assistant professor at Chico State University in Chico, California.
Kensuke Yamada’s playful ceramic figures are informed by his first experiences in the United States as a foreign exchange student with limited knowledge of English. His work explores the universal language of body gestures and facial expressions, and the ways that these often-subtle forms of communication guide daily social interactions. Yamada’s sculptures seek to capture these fleeting moments and movements, bringing shared experiences to life in figural form. Yamada’s work is in the Collection of the Asheville Art Museum.
Ben Owen III is a potter from Seagrove, North Carolina. His forefathers came to North Carolina from England as early as the late 1700s to make a new living in the USA. Some of these early generations learned skills in craft by making pottery and furnishing storage jars along with other utilitarian wares for early settlers. Ben’s grandfather, master potter Ben Owen, Sr., admired the early Asian pottery he saw displayed in museums and collections while working at Jugtown Pottery (1923-1959). He translated those works into his own style later at Ben Owen Pottery (1959-1972). Ben III studied pottery as a young apprentice first with his grandfather in the late 1970s-1980s and later at East Carolina University (1989-1993). Like his grandfather, Ben creates pottery that reflects a foundation in traditional early american designs, and incorporates influences from Asia, Europe, and Persia. Ben has participated in workshops and conferences throughout the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and recently in China. His work can be found in many museums nationwide, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Smithsonian Museum of Art. Ben’s commissions grace the lobby of the Ritz Carlton Tokyo Hotel in Japan and The Umstead Hotel and Spa in NC. Singer/songwriter James Taylor and golfer Arnold Palmer are among the notables whose collections include works by Ben Owen III.
