Lake Eden Arts Festival

Just recently went to Lake Eden Arts Festival or LEAF. So fantastic! Here's the Lake seen through Tibetan prayer flags.

The festival is held in at Lake Eden above Black Mountain, NC on the site of the original Black Mountain College which was founded in 1933 and ran until the late 50's I think. It was where Buckminster Fuller built his first geodesic dome. Noted faculty were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Max Dehn, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Walter Gropius, Lou Harrison, Franz Kline, Jacob Lawrence, Richard Lippold, Charles Olson, M. C. Richards, Ben Shahn, Jack Tworkov, and Robert Motherwell. Guest lecturers included Albert Einstein, Clement Greenberg, Bernard Rudofsky, Richard Lippold and William Carlos Williams. Ceramic artists Peter Voulkos and Robert C. Turner taught there as well. Among the notable alumni of Black Mountain College are Ruth Asawa, Fielding Dawson, Michael Rumaker, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, Susan Weil, John Chamberlain, Ray Johnson, Kenneth Noland, Oli Sivhonen, Joel Oppenheimer, Jonathan Williams, Ruth Asawa, Robert De Niro, Sr., Cy Twombly, Basil King, Ray Johnson and Kenneth Snelson.

The festival is predominantly music with a delightful sprinkling of artwork, healing arts and ancient earth arts. Robert went to a fire making workshop using just sticks. And we went on an edible plant walk and did couples yoga. There is such a fantastic mix of people, families, artists and musicians that generate the most wonderful spirit of peace. We contra danced to Laura and the Lava Lamps, saw the Wilders, Michael Franti solo, The Boulder Acoustic Society, (awesome BTW) and Mizero Children's Troupe of Rowanda, Les Nubians and a Morroccan Sufi musician Hassan Hakmoun, and an Indian gypsy guitarist Oliver Rajamani. It was GREAT! We camped on site and my daughter and her friend did the giant zipline over and over.