Rebuild Art Garden AVL - Hurricane Helene Flood Relief Fund

As many are now aware, Art Garden Gallery and Canopy Studios have both been obliterated by 25 feet of flood waters in the French Broad River from Hurricane Helene, along with all of our neighbors.

We are still trying to stabilize resources within our community and cleaning what little we’ve gotten from our recovery effort in the wreckage of our beloved Art Garden in the Arts District. While we have lost our business, community center, and livelihoods, there are many who have lost their lives and homes in this storm as well and our greater community also needs all the support it can get.

For those particularly interested in donating to help in the effort to rebuild Art Garden and help stabilize our devastated artist community, this is the place to do it.

For the past 5 years we have dedicated our lives to creating and growing Art Garden to be a community resource for so many wonderful artists, creators, and neighbors to enjoy. A lot of sacrifice, blood, sweat, and tears were woven into the fabric of this place which was our dream. We built it from scratch without investors, family money, or access to loans. We just had shoestrings and we made magic. Our Home was Art Garden and that was where all of our energy went, along with our neighboring River Arts District community. It's where all of our living was; our house was just for sleeping… Art Garden was our life. Now the whole neighborhood is gone.

Art Garden and Canopy Studios housed many dreams and many businesses, which have all been shattered by the violent force of the river which grew far beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings. Art Garden was our entire livelihood as well as a critical component to dozens of other artist’s livelihoods as well.

Art Garden was home to Studio Artists:

-Annie Kyla Bennett

-Dillon Endico

-Jack Henry

-Ashton Hill

-Emily Jernigan

-Harper Leich

-Cynthia Llanes

-Trish Salmon

-Alex Stilber

as well as over 50 displaying artists.

These funds will go toward securing a new location and rebuilding Art Garden so that we can continue to provide economic and creative opportunities for our Asheville artists and community. We spent the last 5 years re-investing everything back into Art Garden in the hopes that it would be able to pay us back down the road. In order to keep everything as affordable for our artists as possible, we never had any extra funds in the budget to put toward savings or often to even compensate ourselves for our work, sweat equity is what we had. Art Garden was our compensation and our constant investment in it was our savings…and now it’s gone.

With your help we can rebuild.

“Art Garden is a queer-artist-owned, mutualist arts collaborative, dedicated to making space and economic opportunity for artists from historically excluded communities. We are an art and plant gallery, showcasing over 50 local artists and over 100 species of plants, located on the North end of Riverview Station in the River Arts District of Asheville, NC. We have expanded to over 6000 sq ft on two floors, encompassing a retail art shop, 10 working artist studios, The Pot Stirred mushroom cafe, our two Canopy exhibition spaces that accommodate workshop/ classroom/ event space in a plant-filled art gallery space, plus a garden outside for growing and gathering.“

We will have more info and updates as we are able. Thanks for your support & concern, we love you all so much! Stay safe

-Annie, Jack, and Dillon