Part 1, more to come in the next blog posts.

"Wish the safe had floated away…"

Mary

"I love that safe Mary! Symbol of strength and perseverance and history! No it is immovable and unshakable!

Elizabeth 

Below: The vault at Local Cloth.  

My short story: No cellular, no electricity, no internet when we got home Saturday after leaving Tybee Island.  Helene hit Tybee Island Thursday evening. We drove north noting the aftermath of downed trees. At home, we were very lucky because we had a house generator hooked directly to propane. All our food was saved and we did have power and thus water from our well. Our neighborhood all came together sharing resources and information and showers and water. Our main contributions were keeping our neighbors and friends clean and creating art with the neighborhood kids!.  Susette Shiver

Local Cloth was not so lucky in the aftermath.

Local Cloth at 408 Depot Street, Asheville, NC after Helene came through.

Every artist vendor lost most or all of their pieces, including me. We are a non-profit and the value lost directly to the artist vendors was estimated at $110,000: merchandise and little pieces of our hearts. The resident artists lost their studios. The dye studio lost its equipment and containers full of donated reactive and acid dyes for cotton and wool/silk that washed away. The tables and chairs are gone. The magnetic induction hot plates and big pots are gone too. They might be someplace downriver by now.  The water burst in knocking the windows and the door in and formed a turbulent rotating pool of water, mud, artwork, and furniture.

It was heartbreaking to miss the initial chance to grab and wash (at your own health risk, no immunocompromised folks allowed); at 1/8 tank of gas, we stayed put, others did wade in (!!!****!). Then the mold set it. Opportunity gone. Grieving artists.

Below: About a week after Helene. Items at a distance look salvagable, but mold had set in.

My lost favorites included my linen, hand dyed and silkscreened napkins. I think of Melanie Wildman’s navy and ivory finely woven cloths that I appreciate more fully now that I am learning to weave (luckily I bought several before the storm).  I loved the beautiful handwoven jackets by Joan Berner.  I took a felting workshop from her and made a piece that I treasure and that now carries even more memories, the before-the-storm time. Volunteering in the shop, I often appreciated the gorgeously hand sewn and naturally dyed linen tops by Melli Lonneman. I lusted after one top that was displayed with a silk scarf from another vendor; the top was not my size. We all love the  gorgeous silk and cotton hand dyed scarves, and so much more.

Other loses were the Handwork Circle’s collaborative pieces which were especially meaningful. These pieces had been made over the course of several years. The Handwork Circle began just before covid and went almost immediately to a virtual, zoom meeting, the "V-Handwork Circle". In recent years, we alternate virtual with in-person meetings at the Local Cloth studio. Many more interest groups were subsequently founded. The Handwork Circle will be virtual every week in October (join us), and then perhaps in November and December we will meet every other week in alternative places until a new Local Cloth Studio rises in the ashes of the Phoenix.

Below: Collaborative project #1 created by members of the Handwork Circle in 2023.

Below: Collaborative project #2 created by members of the Handwork Circle. in 2024.

The whole studio and shop, buried in toxic, bacterial-ridden silt and mud: so many beautiful things.