Hurricane Helene destroyed Asheville's thriving arts scene. Can they rebuild what was lost? | Hurricane Helene

The art community in Asheville, North Carolina is rallying after Hurricane Helene.

In the River Arts District, works of art have been destroyed and buildings that once housed studios and galleries are caked in mud or crumbling. Facing the immediate challenge of survival, the community now wonders whether what it once had can ever be rebuilt from the ground up.

On a Saturday morning, painter Elizabeth Porritt Carrington drove from her home in West Asheville to what she called her “village” – the RAD. It was once a colorful neighborhood with art galleries and restaurants and an important part of Asheville's tourism.

As Helene reached western North Carolina on September 26, the French Broad River flooded; It peaked at 24 feet on September 28, surpassing previous records.

Water, debris and mud transformed the RAD into an apocalyptic Dr. Seuss landscape – trees bent sideways or fallen, plastic bags torn into ribbons in the branches. Metal sheets, like those found in raised beds, are wrapped around the trunks. The mud puddles are thick and only passable via ad hoc plywood bridges. Brown dust covers everything.

Carrington approached Riverview Station that morning to tour her studio and second-floor gallery spaces. The building, built in 1902, housed 60 artists. She came across eight art prints scattered across the dusty grass.

Water had seeped under the plastic covers and warped the cardboard and paper.

Carrington realized six of those prints were her own works and were being sold at the Tyger Tyger Gallery on the first floor of Riverview Station, she said. Someone must have taken the works outside to dry in the sun.

With an N95 mask on his face, Carrington peered through Tyger Tyger's dark, open front door.

“I think one of my paintings is stuck in the rafters there,” she commented.

The Blue Ridge mountain town of Asheville is considered one of the Southeast's premier arts communities. Carrington is one of around 300 working artists at the RAD. Her studio is on the second floor of Riverview Station, and before Helene thought, “I don’t have to worry at all.”

However, the gallery owners at ArtPlace and Tyger Tyger were worried. Carrington was visiting his family in County Clare, Ireland, when Helene struck. She estimated that 80% of her work was saved because one gallery owner moved her work to a higher floor and another collected her paintings and delivered them to her home.

As the floods receded, artists like Carrington returned to the RAD to rescue artwork and belongings. Without power, Riverview Station was eerie: It was pitch black and muddy puddles filled the halls. Carrington was able to retrieve her most expensive oil paints, as well as a laptop and camera, she said.

Sketchbooks that she had owned since childhood were badly damaged by the flood. She was also able to retrieve some paintings. The ones hanging on the wall in her gallery were relatively intact; those that had been leaning on the floor in her studio were caked in mud.

(When the Guardian visited, almost everyone in the RAD heeded warnings about toxins in the mud and wore face masks and other PPE.) Some work ended up in a pile and was thrown away.

“How do you spray paint an oil painting?” Carrington asked. “Who wants to buy a painting that’s two feet deep in contaminated mud?”

The reconstruction begins

Artists say it's too early and they're too traumatized to imagine how the RAD will get back on its feet, but they know the rebuilding will be different. Many of the older industrial buildings with cheap rents that originally attracted artists to the RAD have literally collapsed.

“It’s mind-blowing to imagine what it would take to make the River Arts District what it once was,” said the mixed media artist said Bridget Benton. “The River Arts District was something completely unique.”

The RAD building owners were committed to providing affordable studio space for working artists. Now Benton fears that real estate developers who have the capital to clean up and rebuild will not show the same commitment to affordability.

“The people who have the means are going to expect a return on investment,” said Benton, who added that she believed the RAD would come back with “a few big, shiny, high-end galleries… The small producers do. “I just won’t be able to afford it.”

It was a similar story for Nikki Eldred, whose Chinese tea and elixir bar, Asheville Dispensary, opened in Marquee just a month ago.

“I am very afraid of land developers taking over the land, tearing everything down and building things that are not the heart of Asheville,” she said. “I try not to give in to that fear too much.”

“How can we start generating revenue?”

Western North Carolina's foliage season brings billions in tourism dollars to the region, but Gov. Roy Cooper has urged tourists not to come given the inaccessibility of many roads and widespread water outages.

Artists in the RAD are now wondering how they can make up for losses from a canceled tourist season.

“How can we start generating revenue?” Benton said.

310 Art, an art school where she was a lecturer, was “completely decimated,” she said. She's hoping it can temporarily move somewhere nearby.

To generate income, she envisions hosting collage nights or watercolor painting sessions (“We did that a lot at the start of Covid,” she said).

The ArtPlay gallery put all of the works it exhibited online, with 75% of the funds raised going immediately to the artists. Carrington said she sold a $600 piece as part of the ArtPlay sale. But online sales were never her big interest.

“I was really addicted to the RAD and the galleries I was in,” she said.

There is also pressure to seize the moment when the storm's destruction is in the news.

“Everyone's asking, 'Why haven't you set up a GoFundMe page yet?'” Benton said. “You get the feeling that if we don’t collect the donations now, no one will care in a week.”

Carrington wanted to expand her online presence in the fall. Well, that's a necessity.

“I have to completely change what I do and start over,” she said. “I can imagine that I will do it and I have the confidence to do it. I don’t know what it looks like yet.”