Join Story Parlor for an evening of stories, music, and performance featuring local artists paying tribute to their international homelands.
ARTIST LINE-UP
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Ben Phan is a filmmaker, cinematographer, editor, licensed drone pilot, musician, world traveler, and long-distance hiker.
His work carries a strong message of hope and resilience; his mission is to tell stories that heal and create community.
With a professional understanding of both video and music, the willingness to take creative risks, and an intuitive ability to connect, Ben is uniquely skilled at creating meaningful, story-driven art.
Born Benjamin Binh Phan, the son of a Vietnamese immigrant and great grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Ben has searched for truth within himself and all over the world.
He has hiked over 7,500 miles, completing the “Triple Crown” of long distance hiking - the entire Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail.
As a professional creative for over a decade, he has mastered the technical, interpersonal, and artistic skills needed at the highest level of production. His work has screened all over the world, including at Film Festivals in London, Amsterdam, Florence, Vienna, and Atlanta.
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Cat Siravantha is a Lao-American born in California and grew up in the Tennessean Appalachian Mountains, now finding some roots in Western North Carolina over the last 5 years. Dedicated to her relationship with art as a movement with life, she encompasses many scopes and forms of expression in her artistic practice including ceramic, textiles, sculpture, mask making, music, photography, and video.
Being in relationship to art as a vessel for feelings and thoughts sometimes beyond words, her art often embodies the complex and sometimes simple feelings of grief, joy, relationship, belonging, living.
Often in confusion of growing up with eastern and western cultural influences, she finds herself weaving together the two into something wholly, beautifully, and painfully its own.
Homeland feels like places where her spirit has interwoven its roots — the land of Laos where her blood is from and the Appalachians where her body finds itself now.
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Jessica White grew up in Taiwan and is now a studio artist in Asheville, NC, where she makes prints, artist books, and crankies.
She draws inspiration from music, folk tales, ghost stories, and the ancient beauty of the Appalachian mountains. When she's not getting inky in the studio, you can find her catching a breeze in her sailboat Sweet Pea.
Jessica will share her current work; a series of wood engravings for a graphic novel about growing up as a mixed-race kid in Taiwan, feeling displaced as an immigrant in the US as a child, and embarking on a journey to find out what it means to be "Made in Taiwan."
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Maan Abou Khzam was born and raised in Lebanon and is deeply connected to Lebanese song, poetry, and people.
From making bread to making comedy, Maan draws on the lines of similarities and differences in culture that are both real and funny.
Maan will be sharing some improv and stories with you to shed light on these cultural nuances, and maybe recite an Arabic Welcome Home song together.
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Shunyu Huang 黃順玉 is a martial artist, photographer, culture educator and poet, born and raised in the coastal city Zhuhai in southern China.
Shunyu seeks to connect people through weaving our unique yet common stories and culture into a fabric. She is a frequent lecturer at UNCA, AB-TECH where she shares Chinese culture through literature, tea, and calligraphy.
In the summer of 2023, she became the first Chinese artist-in-resident at Story Parlor, where she gathered the community to share their memories through the five senses.
In January 2024, Shunyu created the first Asian Culture Festival in Asheville. She believes that in the art that we manifest and share, we can see the humanity that we have in common, despite our differences.
