RAD members embrace the highs and lows of a long recovery

“The reindeer stand for wealth and prosperity,” Andrea Kulish says. “The tree symbolizes a healthy and prosperous life.”

Kulish is explaining her favorite design for the colorful pysanky eggs she crafts in her studio at Pink Dog Creative. The eggs aren’t here today, but Kulish is selling life-size, two-dimensional depictions of the Ukrainian art form on the first day of RADFest 1.0, a two-day gathering. Billed as a weekend of art, resilience and community, the festival celebrates the soft reopening of Asheville’s storm-ravaged River Arts District (RAD).

The bustling event is packed with artists, locals and, yes, some trusty tourists. Especially on the opening day, an unseasonably warm Saturday, it’s clear that any reports of the death of the RAD are premature.

Outside, visitors stream down Depot Street, with a growing cluster gathered to enter Kulish’s space. The scene is duplicated throughout the district. Despite a fine patina of dirt, which seems to coat every surface, and a no man’s land of gutted buildings farther south along Lyman Street, the sidewalks on Depot and Roberts streets are filled with people dropping in at art studios and lining up for food and beer trucks.

“Today has been the busiest day I’ve ever seen in the RAD,” Kulish says.

The river rages

Despite the success of RADFest 1.0, the district’s loss of creative capital from Helene remains staggering. An estimated 80% of the RAD was effectively destroyed by the flooding, according to ArtsAVL. Many local artists saw it happen in real time.

On Sept. 26, with Tropical Storm Helene on the way, painter Mark Harmon moved artwork and equipment off the floor of his studio in the Riverview Station building. The next day, he joined a crowd of people on a steep hill in West Asheville off Riverview Drive and watched the rising floodwaters of the French Broad River.

“There was a lot more water than I even thought existed on this planet,” Harmon says.

Jeffrey Burroughs is an artist, jewelry maker and president of the River Arts District Artists (RADA), an all-volunteer nonprofit that provides and advocates for shared spaces, scholarships and technical assistance programs for RAD artists.

After Helene struck, Burroughs too viewed the devastation unfold from a hillside.

“I watched paintings, beer and wine just flowing down the river,” Burroughs says. He even saw shipping containers filled with art carried by the current. “It was so unbelievable. I think I’m still in shock.”

Photographer René Treece has long rented a space in The Asheville Cotton Mill, a building filled with art studios and small businesses on Riverside Drive. She had time to grab a couple of armloads of stuff from her studio, including her computer and hard drives, before firefighters shut down the roads leading into and out of the RAD.

Like Burroughs and Harmon, Treece witnessed the French Broad carry much of the RAD away. “We watched semitrucks crumple underneath the bridge and entire roofs of industrial buildings float by,” she says.

As she watched the nearby outdoor shop Second Gear collapse, she wondered if her space would be next.

Jenga tower 

When the waters abated, Harmon surveyed the damage to his studio. His first reaction was denial.

“I thought, ‘This is not so bad,’” he says. Although 3 inches of water covered the floor of Harmon’s second-floor studio, he lost only 20% of his work.

But once Harmon finished his initial cleanup, he surveyed the devastation along Riverview Station and the French Broad River. Where once his neighbors’ studios and businesses stood were mounds of waterlogged rubble.

“Even in the best of times an arts community is a fragile thing,” Harmon says. “The RAD is like building a Jenga tower. You take out a couple of pieces and the rest might not stand.”

Harmon now worries about lost time — months or years without access to art buyers while the RAD recovers.

“I cannot foresee being able to earn my living largely from in-person visitors as before,” says Harmon, who hasn’t had to rely on online sales until now. Despite his unease, he holds hope for the future. “Everybody has lost a lot, but they’re upbeat and supportive,” he says. “It’s really beautiful.”

Completely gutted

The ability to see beauty amid disaster, and to envision a future RAD, is a common theme among the district’s artists — even those who have lost the most.

Mark Goldthwaite, who co-owns the Asheville Guitar Bar on the first floor of The Cotton Mill with his wife, Julia, has not been as lucky as Harmon. “The bar is completely gutted out,” Goldthwaite says. “It’s gone.”

Water engulfed the ground floor of The Cotton Mill, where 10 businesses and artists rent spaces, says the building’s owner, Jannette Montenegro. The Goldthwaites occupy two spaces, the Guitar Bar and an art gallery.

The bones of The Cotton Mill, built in 1887, are still sound after the storm, Goldthwaite says. But the drywall, flooring and everything else on the first floor was totaled and has been removed. And the couple’s woes were compounded by looting, Goldthwaite says.

“In broad daylight, when I was trying to get stuff out of there, people were looting in the space next to me,” says Goldthewaite, who is missing eight or nine guitars. The larceny slackened only when the city imposed a nightly curfew.

“This [disaster] has devastated the whole art community, and it’s just a shame that people took advantage of that,” he says.

Treece’s studio was on the second floor of The Cotton Mill, and when she got back into the building, she found that everything remaining in her space was fine. “But I had to move everything out because looters were trying to break the doorknobs off with cinder blocks,” she says. She dragged her work equipment through sludge before putting it in storage.

“It’s like a hellscape,” Treece says of the ravaged parts of the RAD.

Glimmers of hope

Despite that stark description, Treece praises the arts community for pulling together. She says that during recovery efforts she’s gotten to know artists she never had time to meet before, and she’s collaborating with videographer and RADA board member Julieta Fumberg to document artists’ work for use on their websites and GoFundMe pages.

One bright spot Treece highlights is Philip DeAngelo’s studio in the Wedge Building. “It’s been a hub for anybody to stop by for food or drinks,” she says.

DeAngelo was glad he could provide a haven. “My other passion, other than painting, is cooking,” he says. “I just came in and we just started feeding artists.”

At his studio, which was spared serious damage, impromptu meetings sprang up while he prepared meals six days a week. For the first three weeks after Helene struck, on Mondays and Fridays at 11:30 a.m., RAD neighbors came for food and updates on recovery efforts. The meetings recently switched to just Fridays.

“We’re a tight-knit group here and we take care of each other,” DeAngelo says. While he expects that some artists will pack up and leave the RAD, he says the vast majority of those he’s talked to want to rebuild and reimagine the district.

“The silver lining in all this has been the community response, outpouring of generosity and mutual support,” says Harmon, who has donated supplies to other artists. “These gestures help me gather strength to face the much larger challenges coming our way.”

Contemplating a future

With so much artistic infrastructure in ruins and the ongoing Helene recovery challenges throughout the region, it can be hard to talk about continuing the RAD vision, but local artists are sparking that discussion in earnest.

“The arts district is not only a beating heart for this city, it’s a place where people have come to live their dreams,” Burroughs says. “While it’s hard and almost feels tone-deaf to even have a conversation about the future, it’s something that has to happen now. I would love to have a meeting with developers and city officials who could help us realize this.”

In the meantime, RADA has launched a slate of initiatives to help RAD artists get back on their feet. It includes fundraising to assist with repairs and lost materials, sourcing permanent or temporary space for displaced artists, donating art supplies and fostering community projects where artists can collaborate.

Back at RADFest 1.0, as visitors move through Kulish’s studio into adjoining spaces, she takes advantage of a lull in business to tell her story.

“The water went right up to our door and completely flooded Depot Street,” she says. Her studio sustained minimal damage, and her salvage efforts have been mostly limited to cleaning mud off her artwork and out of her space.

For the festival, Kulish is selling RAD T-shirts and donating all proceeds to help other artists. She has also given shelf and display space to two artist friends, potter Lori Theriault and glass jewelry maker Emily Yagielo.

Both were based at Riverview Station, which is currently being gutted. Yagielo remembers watching the RAD from the steep hill off Riverview Drive in West Asheville and crying.

“I didn’t think the river would get that high,” she says. Yagielo was turned away on her first attempt to return to her studio because the smell of gasoline lingered in the air. The jewelry she’s selling at Pink Dog Creative is art she pulled from her space, but the salvage effort cost her.

“[Because of] conditions in the building, I had lung and chest pain [and] inflammation for 3 1/2 to four weeks,” Yagielo says. When asked if she plans to return to her former studio, she takes a long pause.

“I’m just taking it one day at a time,” Yagielo says. “At the same time, people from all different facets of my life have shown up [today]. It feels like a community and that’s exciting.”

Kulish points out another one of her folkloric pysanky egg designs. This one depicts a playful reindeer surrounded by birds and yellow discs.

“Chicks are the fulfillment of wishes,” Kulish says. “Suns mean good fortune, and the lines going all the way around the egg are for a long life.” It’s a forward-looking message for the damaged district and its embattled artists.

“I hope that we can all keep going, doing our art,” Kulish says.

To help RAD artists go to avl.mx/e78.