As concerns about hurricane-stricken Asheville, North Carolina, became overshadowed by the election and subsequent holiday season, a pop-up exhibition in Atlanta, Georgia, puts the spotlight back on the mountain city’s arts community. Open now through December 29 at the bustling Ponce City Market shopping mall, Love Asheville From Afar features artwork for sale by over two dozen Asheville artists affiliated with the River Arts District (RAD), which was particularly devastated by the storm.
Ranging from loss of studio space, materials, inventory, and archives to financial instability due to halted tourism during what would have been Asheville’s busiest visitor season, the city’s beloved creative community is still in the midst of assessing next steps after floodwaters and mud compromised a majority of the RAD complex.
One hundred percent of the proceeds from Love Asheville From Afar will go to the respective artists affected by Hurricane Helene, according to Jeffrey Burroughs, president of the River Arts District Association (RADA) and one of the exhibition organizers alongside the Radical Hotel, the Explore Asheville tourism department, and the real-estate group Jamestown that manages Ponce City Market.
Burroughs detailed the extent of the damages to Hyperallergic late last September, two days after the hurricane hit. In a recent interview, they explained that a handful of River Arts District buildings are now operable and re-opened to the public during the second weekend of November for a community festival to support creative workers experiencing a spectrum of loss and devastation.
“This couldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the hundreds of artists and volunteers that showed up immediately after Helene’s wreckage and stayed with us through months of work,” Burroughs said of the soft re-opening, also noting that Federal Emergency Management Agency workers onsite in Asheville expressed that they had never seen locals mobilize like this after a natural disaster before.
“Now, we’re able to engage with a community that maybe we haven’t engaged with before,” Burroughs said with regard to Love Asheville From Afar. “There are a lot of people from Atlanta who know and love the RAD, and make annual visits to us. This time, we’re able to come down to them — especially during the holiday season — since it’s not so easy to come to Asheville right now.”
Amy Michaelson Kelly, owner of the Radical Hotel the Phil Mechanics Studio in the complex who helped secure the space at the Ponce City Market, told Hyperallergic that the turnaround time for the pop-up exhibition was about a month.
“The hardest part about this process was staying in touch with the involved artists as they were also steeped in on-the-ground clean up efforts,” Kelly said. “They’d be signing contracts for the gallery show with one hand and pressure-washing mud from their studios with the other.”
About half of the artists included in Love Asheville From Afar were able to attend the opening reception on Thursday, December 5. Having lived in Asheville for almost 30 years, Meseret (Meszi) Aitken, a freelance event and effects coordinator and featured artist alongside her partner Zati, told Hyperallergic that the Hurricane Helene resulted in a 90% loss of business overnight. On top of handling the technical aspects and entertainment during the opening reception, the pair have three pieces in the show.
“We had planned on showing them in the gallery at the arts district, but it was a kind of a perfect opportunity to bring the works down here and show them,” Aitken said. “We use a lot of salvaged materials from businesses that closed down during COVID — and now, since the hurricane, we’re trying to take the scraps of a shift in a disaster and try to make art in these new beginnings.”
Aitken reiterated that while downtown Asheville bounced back relatively quickly after the hurricane and is readily open for business and tourism, nearby mountain towns like Marshall and Swannanoa are still staggering from limited to no resources such as running water and power, slow aid and assistance, and being cut off due to washed away roads.
“People are living in tent cities now that have lost everything, like families with children living in tent cities and they don’t have running water and now it’s getting cold — but that’s not really what’s being seen,” Aitken recounted. “They’ve been forgotten about since others have stopped circulating as much footage of the loss and devastation.”
Aitken said that external events like Love Asheville From Afar help keep those impacted at the forefront of people’s minds in an ever-changing news cycle, garnering much needed support as things continue to move slowly in terms of recovery and recalibration.
Those outside of Atlanta looking to support Asheville’s artists during and beyond the holidays can make a donation directly through the RADA website. Burroughs mentioned that the association has raised over $500,000 to date since Helene, and has distributed its first round of emergency relief funds to over 700 artists who are members of the RAD.
As Burroughs put it succinctly: “We have to do it, or no one else will.”
