Art brings healing to Asheville creatives and community

A photo of a clown inside a gutted building holding a cluster of candy-colored balloons. A black-and-white sketch of a house with water pouring from its windows. An artist’s portrait of her own anguished face juxtaposed with written memories of an all-too-fresh disaster.

These works are among the deluge of art generated by Western North Carolina creatives in the months since Tropical Storm Helene tore its brutal path through the mountains last September. In almost every conceivable medium, imaginative expressions of sadness, confusion, horror and grief related to the storm have emerged in recent months — the natural result of a vibrant arts community processing a devastating natural disaster.

In turn, those individual works offer poignant messages to the outside world about WNC’s experiences, while providing a conduit for connection and healing within the local community. 

Giving form to emotions

Humans have always instinctively used art as a tool for processing feelings and healing from trauma, says Asheville art therapist Ellen Dufrene. “Essentially, art gives us this form for emotions that can be too complex or too big to express in words.

“When we engage in the creative process, we’re inviting our subconscious to surface through color, shape, textures, symbols, things that we may not yet be able to articulate,” she continues. “So the act of making art can be really grounding and provide a sense of control when things feel completely out of control.”

A trained artist, Dufrene started a women’s art therapy group that met at Riverview Station in the River Arts District (RAD) before Helene. She also leads willow basket-weaving retreats and is launching an art therapy nonprofit called ArtWell. Like everyone in WNC, she has her own Helene story — her studio/office space is above Zuma Coffee in downtown Marshall. 

“My studio was spared, but everything below me was completely gutted,” she says. “There’s definitely a lot of survivor’s guilt.”

Even with that, she says, art helps. “It’s about alchemizing our experiences into something tangible that we can find meaning out of. It’s not necessarily about making beautiful artwork; it’s about allowing what’s inside to find a way out.”

Releasing the trauma into art, she explains, can lessen anxiety, help people feel less disconnected from themselves and even make room for hope and a sense of renewal. 

Creative catharsis

Hope and renewal were two things clothing designer, photographer and RAD resident Leanna Echeverri sorely needed in the days after Helene. An employee of Marquee artists market, where she kept a gallery for selling her framed work, Echeverri also led tours through the RAD highlighting the neighborhood’s graffiti art. With Helene’s floods, Echeverri’s community and livelihood vanished in an instant.

While sheltering temporarily in Florida, inspiration struck. The previous winter, Echeverri had photographed many RAD buildings, just for fun. Musing on how those locations had changed with the flood, she contacted her friend, local massage therapist and model Erin Trixi Fitzgerald, with the idea to sew a clown costume and shoot photos amid the RAD’s wreckage.

“I loved the contrast of these buildings and this kind of destruction and bringing in this iconic image of innocence and playfulness,” Echeverri says. “When we did it, I don’t think we really understood how cathartic it would be pulling up feelings and expressing ourselves, processing and healing.”

When Echeverri returned to Asheville, she stitched a clown suit for Fitzgerald, and the pair wandered around the RAD with no particular agenda, setting up shots of the clown holding balloons in and around the ruins and debris of iconic neighborhood sites, including Marquee, Foundation Skatepark and Summit Coffee.

She posted the resulting series of photos on Facebook and continues to periodically do additional shoots, exploring possibilities for the evolving project. “Just being able to focus on an idea and create a concept is huge, because we’re all in shock, we’re all dissociating,” says Echeverri. “Doing something generative — that’s empowering.”

The photographer says she’s aware the images offer a means of collective healing. As the project develops, she’s staying open to opportunities to exhibit them publicly. 

“It’s a bittersweet concept, because the clown represents, maybe, what we had before,” she says. “The bittersweet part is still trying to interact in these places that used to be, the places where we were happy and carefree and just showing that juxtaposition.”

Invitation to connection

Art created in response to trauma, says Dufrene, carries a “raw honesty” that invites people to connect with their emotions. “Artists are creating a kind of bridge, a reminder that none of us are alone in our feelings,” she explains. 

“It brings a sense of validation, a sense of closure and even purpose and meaning. It turns pain into something tangible, something that others can hold and witness and really connect with.”

Artist and filmmaker Kira Bursky experienced art’s connective power when she shared a series of digital black-and-white sketches she created as part of the Inktober art challenge. The annual global project invites artists to do a drawing each day throughout October in response to prompts. 

An Asheville native living in Greenville, S.C., Bursky had already planned to participate in the 2024 challenge when Helene hit. “I decided to use [the project] as a way to express my feelings about the storm,” she says. “Emotionally, I couldn’t bring myself to create anything else.” 

Guided by prompts like “backpack,” “passport” and one notably tricky one — “rhinoceros” — Bursky created 31 images inspired by her own Helene experiences and those of friends, family and community members. When she posted some of the sketches on Reddit near the end of October, the response was overwhelming and unexpected.

Many people immediately bought prints and other items from Bursky’s online store, and she was invited to exhibit the series at the Transylvania Community Arts Council, the West Asheville Public Library and a gallery in Lansing, N.C. Through Sunday, April 27, the collection is on display as part of the opening exhibition at Resurrection Studios Collective in Asheville.

“People have approached me, and they’ll point out a particular piece and tell me that was what happened to them, that was their story,” Bursky says. “I have had a lot of people tell me that this has helped them to process. I’ve had some parents share the art with their children as a way to talk through things.”

Bursky, who says she’s always used art as a way to explore mental health issues, says numerous people from outside WNC — including survivors of Hurricane Katrina — have reached out to her about the series. She hopes to take the collection to larger cities around the U.S. “A new source of inspiration and passion for me is the idea of bringing awareness beyond Asheville, so that we can continue to get help and resources,” she says.

Sharing the story

Asheville artist, writer, inventor and educator Cleaster Cotton had already accepted an invitation to present her art and writing at Princeton University on Oct. 24, when she spent a horrific night watching Helene’s floodwaters swallow the RAD, creeping just to the edge of her apartment building on the neighborhood’s outskirts.

In the chaotic weeks after the flood, she recalls being in post-traumatic shock, feeling “raw, as if I was on an operating table.” Yet she ultimately decided that the show — a collection of large-format, black-and-white portraits the artist made in 2006 of her own face in states of deep emotion — must go on. 

“I was guided [by my ancestors] that I needed to do the presentation at Princeton University anyway and honor my word,” says Cotton. “In doing so, I would help myself navigate life after the storm and help others learn what we went through here in Asheville. The presentation would also assist people who were facing a variety of challenges in general.”

Her intention when she shot the photos nearly two decades ago, she says, was to help others to access deep pain, feel it and release it. Instead of the simple literary reading she had originally planned for the Princeton event, she organized a photographic presentation, Q&A and reflection on her Helene experience. The show became Cleaster Cotton: Soul Singin’ After the Storm.

Though the Princeton show was extremely painful for her to navigate, Cotton recalls that her reading and the images had a profound impact on the audience. “There were tissues being passed around, literally, people were crying,” she says. 

With a slideshow of the photos playing in the background during the Q&A session, students thanked her and shared personal stories, noting that through the show, they had connected with emotions around their own struggles. “I felt like I was helping humanity,” says Cotton.

Since the Princeton event, Cotton has exhibited Soul Singin’ After the Storm at Red Dog Gallery and Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston-Salem. The collection has yet to make a WNC appearance, though she feels it would be a powerful step for Asheville’s healing. 

More than six months after Helene, Cotton, Bursky and Echeverri continue to process the disaster through their art. “Healing is not linear. It’s something you do all your life as things occur,” says Cotton, who is currently turning her trauma into small watercolor paintings and pyrographic images on wood.

“When I use art-making to process trauma, it’s no longer inside of me — I use it. It becomes a tool. My healing happens in the process of creating.”