By Michael Beadle

Luke Allsbrook has a voice as soothing as his paintings.

He explains his craft with the calm of someone who has spent hours in solitary reflection, emerging from nature with gifted insights. Whether it’s a vast stretch of beach, a mountain pasture or glowing houselights in a suburban home, there’s an invisible breeze hushing peripheral noise as you enter his world of oil paintings.

As artist Ann Vasilik was nearing the home stretch in Quick Draw — an annual event in Waynesville where artists race against the clock to complete a piece of artwork in one hour — the blow-dryer aimed at her watercolor rendition of a Frog Level street scene suddenly quit working.

Quick Draw in the Mountains raised a record amount of money this year off a live and silent auction that supports budding artists and art in the schools.

By Michael Beadle

There’s so much art to see in downtown Waynesville, gallery owners are now offering to keep their businesses open extra hours.

For the first Friday of the month starting this May, the Waynesville Gallery Association is kicking off the fourth season of Art After Dark. The latest evening stroll begins this Friday, May 5, with live music, free snacks and drinks, opening exhibits, and meet-the-artist receptions in a dozen art galleries that line Main Street and adjoining Depot Street.

You have already read or heard about the three guys who were arrested for “operating” — yeah, I guess the pun is intended, although I should probably cut it out (stop it, NOW!) — a sadomasochistic castration dungeon here in Waynesville. How could you not? It is literally all over the media. On the Internet, a quick Google search of “Waynesville castration” turns up more than 10,000 hits.

The Waynesville town board will consider a request to loosen sign regulations for the downtown district for the second time in two years.

Two years ago, the board of aldermen increased the size of signs allowed in the downtown district from pedestrian-scale signage to be among the largest allowed anywhere in the town’s limits. Now, the town board is considering a request to allow internally illuminated signs — signs that have light bulbs inside rather than illuminated external spot lighting, which is considered more subtle.

The Waynesville Rotary Club has been caught up in the fallout following the forced resignation of Haywood County Manager Jack Horton.

Horton is president of the Waynesville Rotary Club. Commissioner Kevin Ensley, who voted for Horton’s resignation, is a member of the same Rotary Club.

Two years ago, the future of Waynesville’s electric system — a lucrative cash cow for the town — was turned on its head by a single email that popped up in the inbox of an energy consultant in Raleigh.

Waynesville’s residents have long reaped the benefits of the town’s electricity enterprise — a sideline business that was making $1.2 million a year.

The money paid for the Waynesville Recreation Center — a $6.5 million fitness center with indoor pool, gym and weight and workout rooms. And when talk of a downtown parking deck came up, town leaders pledged $2.5 million toward its construction, thanks to electricity revenue.

A new cycling shop opened in Waynesville just in the nick of time for Bob Gatis.

The notion recently struck him to take the parts of his Trek road bike and put them on a bare Jamis frame — a project that counts as building a bike from scratch.