ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The Asheville Art Museum unveiled its “Asheville Strong: Celebrating Art and Community After Hurricane Helene” gallery yesterday. The exhibit is chock-full of paintings, sculpture, photography and more.
Asheville Strong will be in exhibition from Feb. 14 to May 5 in the Appleby Foundation Gallery.
The opening was celebrated with a reception from 3:30 to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 13, at the Asheville Art Museum in downtown Asheville. The event was attended by artists, journalists and art museum leadership.
“In the aftermath of the storm, the museum was working to support community and bring people together and we felt that that should continue. The work that artists in this community do on an ongoing basis is, in fact, an act of resilience,” said Pamela Myers, executive director of the Asheville Art Museum. “We wanted to be able to share it with them and with other members of the community who might not have been as aware of what was going on in studios and private practice.”
The art museum posted an open call for submissions to the 3,800-square-foot gallery in January.
“We filled up almost immediately,” Myers said.
Artwork poured in from all over the region.
“It was for artists that were in the affected counties. So, that would be not only in North Carolina, but bordering Tennessee, and we really wanted to celebrate this community which is regional in nature,” Myers said. “This museum collects work from about 1865 to the present that represents all of America, but almost half of our permanent collection is works of art that has some relationship to the region. So, this seemed a natural outgrowth of our mission, vision and values to bring community together and to take a snapshot of what’s happening today.”
The artwork was a mix of the old and new. Some pieces were older works that artists felt represented something about Hurricane Helene. Others were new pieces that were created in the storm’s aftermath.
One of the latter artists was Black Mountain painter and musician Sandy Herrault. Her acrylic painting “Standing Tall” was painted in the days immediately following the storm.
“I stood outside on my porch because there was no electricity, so I needed enough light. I moved everything outside and would go get buckets of water from next door and that’s how I painted,” Herrault explained.
Working on the piece was an act of perseverance for Herrault during the chaos of the storm.
“I wanted to paint right away, because, of course, painting is a way of calming your own soul and finding a way to get through things,” Herrault said. “I need to paint and I wanted to paint, so I moved everything outside so I could paint.”
The open call for Asheville Strong allowed some artists an opportunity to show their work in a space they would not have had normally.
“It was an open call. Anyone of any age or skill level could submit to it. So, you see highly established artists in the area right next to artists that have never shown their work before,” said Luek Collins, a photographer and Membership & Development Assistant for the Asheville Art Museum. “That’s something that if it only exists in this one space and at this one time, that’s harrowing to me. I hope that’s not the case. But I think it will serve as, like, a departure point for other galleries or institutions to think, oh, yeah, these works of varying levels can speak together.”
The piece Collins is showing in Asheville Strong is from a series of 24 self-portraits, “Pretexts for My Iridescence.” Collins had submerged and washed a series of black-and-white Polaroid pictures in chemicals to see what would happen.
“When I washed the chemicals away, that’s what was left behind. It completely changed the actual image. In the original image, which I have scans of, you just see my back and a wall. You don’t have all these gradations and colors,” Collins said. “It kind of takes on, like, a bruised appearance and feels like it’s been aged in some way or been pulled through time. And so, I felt like it kind of spoke to the general ethos of this exhibition, of like these kind of elemental aspects of life and time being affected in some way that’s either controlled or outside your control.”
Two other artists with pieces in the gallery are sisters. Edwina and Cynthia Bringle are longtime residents of the community around the Penland School of Craft in Mitchell County.
Edwina Bringle learned to weave at Penland and went on to teach design, weaving and other arts for 25 years at UNC Charlotte. The work she contributed to Asheville Strong is called “Balloon Dance.” The piece depicts several balloons on a painted, stitched blanket.
“What I do with this piece is I have a piece of cloth and I do a painting on the piece of cloth. Then, I go to the sewing machine and it’s a lot of stitches. I’m doing it free motion, I’m moving the cloth back and forth. Then, I learn to move it in such a way that I can create the hills and valleys that are in that piece,” Edwina Bringle said. “It’s not like putting oil on canvas. I don’t want it to be flat. I want it to retain the cloth movement value.”
Her sister, Cynthia Bringle, has been in the Penland area for 50 years. She is a potter and a painter.
“Mostly, I make functional pots meant to be used. I make everything from coffee mugs, casseroles, bathroom sinks, big vessels and everything in-between,” Cynthia Bringle said.
Her reasoning behind her Asheville Strong submission, a series of porcelain clay goblets, was as practical as the pieces themselves.
“I don’t name anything. I don’t need to. The work should speak for itself,” Cynthia Bringle said. “This was just an opportunity to show some of what I’m about.”
Dozens of artists came together for the Asheville Strong gallery. That is the ultimate power of the exhibit.
“I hope that everybody takes away the strength and vitality of the creatives working in our community and that everyone walks away with a notion that they want to support that community and its resilience and rebuilding,” Myers concluded.
Check out photos of the gallery and the reception here:
