Tony Bayles turns heartbreak into beauty with memorial structures

The trees talk, and Tony Bayles listens.

Through this strong connection to nature, the Asheville-based multidisciplinary artist and longtime interior designer is turning heartbreak into beauty with memorial structures made from trees damaged by Tropical Storm Helene. And in certain cases, he’s being summoned by the fallen flora themselves.

Such was the case in late October when, while having difficulty sleeping, Bayles had a vision of a tree that told him to come find it at the downtown YMCA. By then, he’d already made multiple installations in Pack Square Park, including a giant altarpiece for the community candlelight vigil on Oct. 22. When he found the evergreen in question on Orchard Street, he realized he’d seen it before.

“Seven years prior when I came to visit [Asheville], the town was really busy that day,” he says. “I just wanted a quiet place, and I went down Charlotte [Street], and I turned down [Orchard] because the traffic was heavy — and there it was. I had my lunch with me, so I sat under that tree.”

But the tree wasn’t finished communicating. Back home an hour later, Bayles sat down to write a tribute to Black Mountain and the damage that town sustained. Instead, he unconsciously wrote “Beaver Lake.” He interpreted it as a message from the fallen tree pointing to where it wanted to go as part of his next memorial structure. A few days later, with help from his team of volunteers, the tree had been cut, transported and transformed into a 50-foot round piece resembling three birds with wings.

Sacred spruce

Fated occurrences in that vein make Bayles feel as if he’s meant to craft these outdoor pieces, which he does free of charge and using his own resources, tapping into his interior design experience and dreaming up site-specific installations in an impressively short amount of time. The origin of that sense of destiny is the spruce he says he “had a friendship with” in Pack Square Park.

In 2021, Bayles was an organizer for Blue Ridge Pride, which is held at Pack Square Park. He and his team covered that particular tree with pieces of clothing from members of the LGBTQ+ community who’d passed away. They also hung teacups from the limbs. 

“The message of that was: This is the cup of my life. Drink it in. May you understand and see me, and may you feel confident and comfortable enough to do the same with me so that we can understand each other, walk together, talk and help others to do the same,” he says.

In the aftermath of Helene, Bayles went to Pack Square Park to collect potable water and realized that the spruce had fallen during the storm.

“When I first saw it, I was just heartbroken,” he says. “I just sat there in the park and just cried in my car for like 15 minutes. The magnitude of the storm hit me.”

Over the next week, he decided that he should do something with the tree and returned to the park only to find that repair crews had cut the spruce into chunks and thrown the pieces into a pile.

“It looked like they cleaned around where the base of the root system was, like they were going to grind it up,” Bayles says. “And I was like, ‘Not on today’s watch. That tree is too sacred. We need to honor it.’”

Creating the altarpiece

He quickly covered the roots with the tree’s limbs, then noticed that the cut segments resembled seats. He arranged the only six — which he notes is the Hebraic number of humanity — nonragged logs in a semicircle.

“That’s us having a conversation and looking to the tree for guidance,” he recalls.

Bayles then returned the following day with a handsaw to lop off the remaining limbs and built what he calls “the funeral pyre” on the stairs leading to the park’s restrooms. But more work awaited.

The next day, Bayles saw a social media post from Asheville City Council member Maggie Ullman announcing that the city was having a candlelight vigil. He contacted her, offering to build a large altarpiece with the rest of the spruce’s limbs. Wanting to honor surrounding cities and towns impacted by Helene, he drove to Swannanoa, Black Mountain, Beaver Lake and Hendersonville, collected fallen branches and used them in the giant altarpiece.

These and other memorial structures have elicited strong emotional responses from community members, who’ve texted and emailed him appreciative messages. Some of these folks are local business owners, requesting an installation (e.g., Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co.’s Merrimon Avenue location). And others ask to assist Bayles with future works — help he’s happy to receive.

“I just feel inspired to bring us together around a smile for the holidays,” he says.

To learn more, visit avl.mx/ecm.