ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — No matter how many times the Flood Gallery Fine Art Center gets washed away, the nonprofit arts organization keeps coming back.
The Flood Gallery was named for the flood of 1994, which occurred just before the nonprofit was established. The gallery has framed photos of each of Asheville’s major floods on a back wall and a good sense of humor about the latest.
“Flooding is something that we do,” laughed Flood Gallery manager Ivana Rosenblatt. “So when it really flooded, people were like, is it okay to laugh? I’m like, yeah, it’s kind of in the name. We’re okay with that.”
The organization’s Black Mountain space was swallowed up by the Swannanoa River in early October 2024. Much of its art, an entire sound system and other Flood Gallery treasures went down with it.
However, the Flood Gallery rose back to the top. The scrappy art gallery is used to change.
In the 20-odd years that the Flood Gallery has existed in Asheville, it has moved locations numerous times: from the River Arts District to downtown Asheville to Black Mountain to just off I-240 in east Asheville, where it rests now in the River Ridge Business Center strip on 802 Fairview Road.
In some ways, the flood was a mixed blessing for the gallery. For instance, Flood Gallery director Carlos Steward is happy to be back in Asheville again.
“When we went to Black Mountain, we kinda lost the Asheville connection, so we want to reestablish that,” Steward said. “Because we started in Asheville, in downtown Asheville on Walnut Street. So, it’s nice to see some people that we haven’t seen in years and reconnect with the Asheville community.”
Steward joined the Flood Gallery as a grant writer in 2010 and became the director of the nonprofit between 2012 and 2013. He runs the organization with his wife, Cynthia Potter-Steward. Under their leadership, the Stewards sought to continue the art center’s original mission and steward in a few expanding programs.
“We had added in a little more humanities and fine arts and also brought in the Black Mountain Press,” Steward said. “Black Mountain Press is part of Flood. We publish poetry, short stories, novels, literary magazines and memoirs, sometimes. We’ve done our first children’s book last year.”
Today, the Flood Gallery prints the Black Mountain Press, hangs art on its walls, hosts weekly open-mic nights and poetry readings, screens movies from all around the world, welcomes community events and participates in “Mail Art,” an arts initiative which began at Black Mountain College and spread across the world. Steward even has a niece who wants to try hanging silks from the ceiling and adding dance to the Flood Gallery repertoire.
Virtually every kind of art is welcome at the gallery.
Like any long-running establishment, the Flood Gallery has its regulars, especially when it comes to music.
“We see some of the same faces that we’ve seen since 2004 when we started open-mic in downtown Asheville at the Courtyard Gallery,” Steward said. “It’s the longest-running open-mic in Asheville.”
However, Steward is always looking for new faces at the Flood Gallery.
“They pretty much know us if they’ve been here awhile, but then we’re getting a lot of new people that moved in since we left Asheville, so that’s great,” Steward said. “New connections are really good to have and to promote for the future.”
Rosenblatt, who writes under the “poet name” Ivy Rosen, has a background in event planning. She has used those skills to foster a welcoming, consistent environment at the Flood Gallery, especially for the vulnerable position open-mics create for poets and musicians.
“We’re going to start doing poetry-specific open-mics on Mondays, mostly because there’s so many musicians on Thursdays and I’ve come to notice that poets don’t really like to overlap with music,” Rosenblatt said. “As a poet, I get it.”
Musicians get Thursdays, poets have Mondays and films are shown on Fridays at the Flood Gallery. The rest of the week, the space is open for the curious to come and admire the space’s artwork, which occasionally leads to a natural invite to another Flood Gallery event.
“We get a lot of artists that come in looking at our work, and then I talk to them about our poetry nights and they’re like, oh, I also write,” Rosenblatt smiled. “Everybody, like, also writes poetry!”
There’s something for everybody at the Flood Gallery.
The Flood Gallery Fine Art Center is open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday to Friday, with special evening time set aside for its weekly events. Updates can be found on the Flood Gallery Facebook page.
For questions, event inquiries or artist proposals, call (828) 273-3332 or email carlos@floodgallery.org.
