RADFest Saturday Runs Well Past Five, and Sunday Belongs to the Gift List

At 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 14, Karen Dubois is scheduled to open the Kazegama at The Village Potters and start unloading it. The wood-fired kiln will have been fired the evening before, and what comes out of it is a new body of pottery nobody has seen yet. It is one of the most specific moments on the RADFest 2026 program, and it lands in the middle of a Saturday that keeps going hours after the festival's official closing time.

The River Arts District Artists list the third annual RADFest for Saturday and Sunday, November 14 and 15, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The organizer adds that "many locations have special events with extra hours." Nearly every timed event, and every one that runs past 5, falls on Saturday. Sunday runs at a slower pace and is a different kind of day.

Ten to Five Is the Outline

The official RADFest page says outright that "individual studio activities and demonstrations have their own schedules." In practice, the festival-wide hours cover the tented markets, the food trucks and the DJ sets. The studios, galleries and receptions run on their own times.

The event also lands on November's Second Saturday. The organizer files RADFest under its Second Saturday Art Strolls category, so the monthly stroll and the festival share the same day.

So it helps to plan Saturday by the clock and Sunday by a map.

Saturday, Hour by Hour

Saturday's outdoor activity is spread over three lots. The Wedge Studios lot on Payne's Way has a tented artist and vendor market, the full live music lineup, pet adoptions with Sarge's Pet Rescue and free pet portraits. The Morning Sky Power and Wyre lots have more tented markets, food trucks and a DJ. Each of the timed events below happens inside a studio or gallery.

Nabil El Jaouhari will demonstrate his mixed-media collage and wood-burning paintings at Mark Bettis Gallery throughout the day. The gallery shows work by 17 artists across wood sculpture, glass, ceramics, metal sculpture, landscape painting and abstract art.

The morning belongs mostly to The Village Potters, which runs a demonstration about every hour and builds up to the kiln. The Kazegama firing on Friday evening, November 13, is billed as an informal preview mainly for the artist community. For everyone else, Saturday's 1:30 unloading is the main event.

Where Saturday Afternoon Overlaps

From 3:30 p.m. on, the program has two events running in parallel, which makes it harder to plan.

Raymond Byram's talk at Kiito's Fine Art starts at 3:30. He paints mountain scenes in what the gallery calls impressionistic realism, and the talk covers his palette-knife oil technique and his serigraphy. His prints often use 16 to 22 layers of color, compared with the six or seven layers commonly used. The talk ends at 5, an hour after the "Gathered in Green" reception at Wedge Studios starts at 4. The exhibition brings together 20 artists from the Artists of 129 at Wedge Studios. Every piece is mostly green, in media ranging from watercolor and pastel to collage and oil.

The timing still works for one route. Stay for the full Byram talk, walk to Wedge for the reception's final hour and John O'Connor's set, then go back to Kiito's when Wedge wraps at 6. The jazz reception will already be going by then, with an hour and a half left, refreshments and finger foods. That puts the end of a Saturday at RADFest two and a half hours after the published closing time. Light + Love Arts also plans special extended hours that weekend, with live music inside the studio.

If you want to catch both receptions, Saturday is the only day to go. Neither one is repeated on Sunday.

Sunday Is the Shopping Day

Sunday's program has almost no timed events. The tented markets, food trucks and DJ return to the Morning Sky Power and Wyre lots. Pet adoptions move to RAD Rendezvous, hosted by Mountain Pet Rescue, with free pet portraits. Without a schedule to follow, Sunday is a good day to work through a gift list:

• Odyssey ClayWorks has a seconds sale on ceramics and live pottery demonstrations, both days.
• Trackside Studios has curated boxes of locally made art ready to give. You can also build your own art-filled gift box, with supplies available while they last. The Stairway Gallery is showing a group exhibition, "Colors of Celebration."
• Cotton Mill Studios has Alison Press Art's "12x12x12" in Studio 22. Twelve local artists each made a piece on a 12-by-12-inch canvas, in styles from surrealism and digital collage to abstraction and landscape.
• Kiito's Fine Art shows the Raymond Byram exhibition for its final day, alongside work by the gallery's 15 represented artists and three working studios.
• Mark Bettis Gallery brings Nabil El Jaouhari back for more demonstrations.
• Light + Love Arts has Coffee on 7th, a coffee business run by kids, serving from a tent in front of the studio on Depot Street.

"Gathered in Green" stays up at Wedge Studios through November 30, so if you miss Saturday's reception you can still see the show.

On both days, the food trucks at the Morning Sky Power and Wyre lots are Top Dogs, Smashville, Dino's Cajun Grub and Grassroots Pizza.

Getting In, and Staying for Dinner

New this year is a free LaZoom shuttle from downtown Asheville into the district, with a live band on board. RADA board member Carol Spagnuola described it to WLOS in September. She also told the station that the district wants "tourists and locals alike coming to our district, having a really great time and supporting our economy because it's really important that we lead into the winter months that way."

For people driving in, the district's FAQ page says parking in the district is free, with street parking and designated lots outside the studios. The W1 and W2 bus routes also serve the district.

A Saturday that ends at Kiito's at 7:30 leaves time for dinner, and two spots have opened since last year's festival. Joyful Noise Listening Lounge and Kitchen opened at 37 Paynes Way on May 6, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported. Guajiro Cuban Comfort Food & Bar is now serving from its new home at Asheville Cotton Mill, where the Citizen-Times photographed customers and staff in late September. Guajiro is in the same building as Studio 22's "12x12x12" show, so you can see the show and eat in one stop.

The district's own planning is moving forward too. The River Arts District Artists Foundation is planning a Creative Campus of more than 33,000 square feet across two buildings, with affordable studio space, classrooms, apprenticeships and a resiliency hub, WLOS reported. The organizer calls RADFest the district's signature festival, and its purpose is to bring visitors through those studios.

Our team at Mills + Coin works downtown at 40 Biltmore Avenue, and we keep close track of how the River Arts District's studios, galleries and restaurants are changing. If an evening at Kiito's has you thinking about living closer to the studios, schedule a private consultation and showroom visit, and we'll talk through which parts of the district fit the way you want to live.