visual narratives

This is a piece about hurricane Helene. I’d like to share with you a glimpse of my interior experience of the hurricane through a series of images.

I believe that everyone was as prepared as they could have been, it wasn’t a surprise. But it WAS a perfect storm, with a magnitude, reach, impact that nobody could have accurately predicted. A convergence of circumstances.

While Helene swept through the North Carolina mountains back home, I was far away in California with colleagues and friends, and while I loved seeing them it had been a challenging trip, overcoming intense anxiety to fly there and be present. The rains and winds ripped through Asheville overnight. I heard from my husband in the early morning that the power was out, many shingles were ripped off our roof and water was pouring into the attic. He’d caught 20 buckets of water so far but couldn’t keep up and the ceiling would collapse if it kept raining. And then, the cell service went out across the mountains.

All the hardship AND the joys of the trip fell away as my focus turned completely to Asheville, and my husband, neighbors, friends, and family. I messaged everyone there and heard back from no-one. They were cut off. I was cut off.

I spoke to everyone else I know around the country by phone and messages, managing multiple frantic and speculative conversations at once until I was exhausted. I was tuned into the news but there was none. The only thing I could do was wait, and hope.

And so I distracted myself with Midjourney, absently pursuing idea after idea …

Until finally, initial reports and drone images began to come in, revealing the epic destruction from flooding and mudslides. Thankfully, search & rescue and relief teams mobilized quickly and began assessing the situation across the mountains, and bringing hope to many on the ground.

And like so many surrounding towns, it became clear that our beautiful city suffered tremendous damage as the French Broad and Swanannoa Rivers crested at record-breaking water levels, a 1000 year storm they called it … sweeping away people, homes, livelihoods, and communities.

The bits of news and images were coming together slowly to show just how cut off everyone was physically, not just communications.

Once a shaky emergency cell service was established after an intense and isolated 48 hours, I was able to contact people sporadically - but signals were not strong enough for them to get any real information via internet.

So I became a source for information and began to feel like a Gamemaster in some surreal game of life. I received texts like, is there any rain on the radar? or - i have 1/4 tank of gas, what direction can i drive and how far can i get? to which the answer was “there’s nowhere to go, please stay put”. They had little concept of the scale of destruction yet, beyond their own eyes.

What was a globally-connected society a couple days ago became a tribal society, pockets of people bound together by immediate proximity, absence of utilities, and shared resources like food, water, gasoline, and supplies.

The experiences of each pocket tribe were traumatizing and bleak … and yet an amazing community spirit emerged, with strangers coming together to help each other and churches drilling wells to provide water. So many heartwarming stories, such a great hope for humanity.

But my tribe was different - the ones who were NOT there, unintentional outcasts who did not share the direct experience of the hurricane. and in an odd way, even unwelcome in a certain sense - after several days I could technically have found a long route home but despite bringing in food and supplies I would still be taking up precious resources.

So it was a weird feeling. I doubted the validity of my own experience - the shock, uncertainty, and grief FELT traumatic, but by comparison was it?

A funny thing happens in events like this, which I think of a Disaster Trading Cards. Everyone you talk to needs to relate to the situation in some way by sharing stories of other hurricanes, winter storms, earthquakes, or forest fires. The neighborhood tribe retold their new stories over and over. And despite my own past experiences of all of those, I held a different card for this one.

Once I was finally home and dealing with our own damage, I was able to begin exploring the depths of my grief. I initially grappled with water itself - being an important theme in my own recent work. its incomprehensible power of destruction … and its life-giving preciousness. the first thing to be brought in when the whole city’s water system was destroyed. and it’s taken over 2 months to rebuild, to deliver drinking water to over 100,000 people.

While so many areas were damaged or destroyed, so much lost everywhere, I personally felt most deeply the loss of the River Arts District. Asheville, along with many mountain towns, has a long rich history of crafts, arts, music, breweries. In rough numbers - the District had 25 buildings, 180 galleries and studios, and around 300 working artists working and represented there.

The French Broad crested at roughly 25’ and the Swannanoa at 26’, filling the entire District up to rooflines.

I thought about the pieces I’d bought, and how many physical artifacts were lost - artwork, equipment, buildings. Again, I doubted the validity of my grief since I didn’t lose my own artwork or studio. It didn’t explain why the thought of River Arts made me cry uncontrollably.

And my spiritual guide said to me, “because you are part of a psychic event, you have a connection to something significant beyond the physical event”. I was at a loss for how to capture this in my own art - i had already made a sculpture before my trip that actually captured the essence perfectly.

I tried drawing diagrams, which has been my passion for two decades, but anything I drew seemed sterile and factual. I started feeling into whatever it was that i really needed to express and leaned into midjourney even more to help me express it.

Through a process of guiding the images and discovery, letting the unexpected also guide me, I began to tap into the deeper stuff.

I felt the suddenness of the loss, interrupting the present and future experiences of those galleries and studios. i hadn’t even seen them all yet, and i dreamed of having my own studio there.

I wondered about the future of the District, if it would be rebuilt and if it could even be the same, and felt cynical about the shadow sides of both real estate and the art scene with its money-focused investors. I worried that the soul of Asheville would disappear, with artists unable to stay.

And i also felt the hopeful separation of the artist’s spirit from the physical realm, knowing how the capacity for creation is what endures.

I remembered how i’ve been going to museums and galleries since i was born, with a sketchbook in hand soaking in inspiration, beauty, and delight in visiting new and favorite works. So it is a very very old connection.

And so i continued to dive, letting the currents of emotion move me down … down … down … until i realized that i needed to make a pilgrimage to River Arts. i was grieving from afar because it felt too painful to confront.

Cleanup had begun, this was a few weeks after the hurricane, but it was still shocking. although, also grounding to see it in person. two intrinsic attributes were also restored - my capacity for humor and to see beauty in everything.

What tickled me was all these shoes that have been tossed over the power lines next to the skate park - at the exact height of the floodwaters - how if you didn’t know the area you might think all those floated away from some shoe factory and got tangled up there.

On the opposite side of the Marquee building i became fascinated by these bottles and i thought, how amazing they washed up to shore intact! My instinct was to clean them off and put them back in their native environment so they could fulfill their purpose, releasing all the untold stories they held. Perhaps a couple reminiscing over a romantic trip to Europe, or a writer revealing the plot of a futuristic novel they’re writing.

And i realized that there was so much beauty in this exact moment, this exact state of being.

The telling of stories is important. Expressing grief is important.

When i researched grief rituals i found out about the Wind Phone, a phonebox with a disconnected telephone built by a man in Japan to communicate with a lost relative. after Japan’s tragic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, he opened it up to the community so others could mourn the loss of their loved ones.

I appreciate this beautiful idea because Grief and Love are really two sides of the same coin … and they can be so hard for me to express.

So this is my love letter to the artists of the River Arts District, and to the creative soul of Asheville, in the language that I speak.

Whatever medium you choose for expression - painting, words, song, dance, sculpture, light - the power of art is to reveal the depths of inner experience beyond the facts, the numbers, the artifacts.

May your own creative spirit rise.