Tryon Fine Arts Center will hold an opening reception in Gallery I on Friday, Aug. 29 from 5-7 p.m. to celebrate the opening of the Mills Mosseller Rug and Tapestry Exhibit. Julia Calhoun, Exhibits Chair at Tryon Fine Arts Center says of the exhibit, “This once in lifetime gathering of rugs and tapestries from the Mills-Mosseller Studio promises a stunning array of designs and colors.” The exhibit will run through Oct. 11.
Mills-Mosseller Studio was founded by Lillian Mills-Mosseller in 1926. Lillian taught the art to her son Ron Mosseller. Both Ron and Lillian were masters of the art of rug making. Mosseller said that his mother “learned to make a rug from a little old lady up in the mountains above Asheville, N.C. She chewed tobacco and she asked Mother if she thought it was a sin for women to smoke. And then she spit tobacco seven feet away into a tin can on her front porch. She hit it every time.” Ron continued to use the wool-weaving techniques and dye-making recipes that his mother employed at the time of the studio’s founding until he closed the studio doors in 2007.
The story has been told that when Franklin Roosevelt suffered a fatal at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Ga., in 1945, he was seated in his wheelchair upon a rug made by Lillian Mosseller. Her son’s work can be seen at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and in the Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh, N.C.
The Mills-Mosseller Rugs and Tapestries exhibit is the first exhibit in Gallery I in the 2014-15 season. TFAC exhibits are designed to celebrate the history of the arts in the foothills area. For more information, call 828-859-8322 or visit www.tryonarts.org .

-article submitted
by Marianne Carruth