At New Morning Gallery (NMG), the title of a painting by resident artist Amy Noack, Fountain of Hope, Pillars of Strength, speaks to where the gallery and its artists are nearly a year after Hurricane Helene. When the gallery reopened in June after months of repairs, Noack’s fellow artist Sarah Garrard posed with a work of hers that was washed away from Marquee by storm waters and found several miles away covered in mud but otherwise undamaged.
“I haven’t washed it off because I want to remember that through adversity we can survive,” Garrard says. “There’s something very beautiful and symbolic that a large handblown glass sculptural piece didn’t withstand even a chip during a hurricane. I don’t know if I’ll ever clean it off to be honest. I keep it in my house to remind me that we can always get through hard things.”
Her experience on the day of the storm was typical of most of us, right down to the naiveté about what might happen as the storm approached. “The day Helene landed, I was actually blowing glass in the River Arts District,” she says. Afterwards, navigating shutdowns and caretaking responsibilities, “I did not start blowing glass until months later,” she says. “A lot of my work right now has been focusing more on sculptural vases with a free form and really exploring the use of color. I continue to make functional ware, but have put more thought into my larger pieces.”
Haw Creek Forge is a small group of artists founded by Catherine Murphy in 1991. “Our business sells to galleries, much like NMG, across the country,” says Margy Murphy. “Before the storm, we were rolling along, but into a slow season before the holidays. After the storm, our main intent was to get the studio cleaned out, and up and running.”…