Contemplating Helene: The Art Community Reflects Two Years After the Storm
Emma Taylor McCallum | Sept. 22, 2026
An attendee of the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, stands in the gallery looking at one of the works on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Nearly two years after Hurricane Helene, communities across Western North Carolina remember and reflect on the storm. Contemplating Helene: Art After the Storm is the Black Mountain Center for the Arts’ way of honoring the resilience of the regional artist community. This exhibit opened on Sept. 4 and will remain open to the public until Sept. 25, featuring around 20 two and three dimensional works including paintings, photography, ceramics, woodwork, textiles and experimental mixed media. The exhibition is organized around the question: How does art survive and rise after everything is upended?
Artists and attendees fill the gallery of the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum}
Iris Isadora is a senior Art and Craft major at Warren Wilson College (WWC) and one of the artists featured in the exhibition with her piece “Swannanoa Debris Loom No. 4.”
When explaining her process and inspiration behind its creation, Isadora shared how she has incorporated new materials into her practice.
“I've always loved taking materials that I find and making art with them,” Isadora said. “And then the hurricane happened.”
Iris Isadora, a senior at Warren Wilson College talks with Mary Fallert, the organizer of the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, about her piece titled “Swannanoa Debris Loom No. 4” on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Isadora attended river cleanups in the Swannanoa area after Hurricane Helene and started collecting pieces of the trash to use in her art — creating loom frames from rigid pieces of plastic or metal to hold her weavings, which also contain debris such as strips of plastic and bike tire inner tubes.
Iris Isadora, a senior at Warren Wilson College stands in front of her piece titled “Swannanoa Debris Loom No. 4” at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts opening reception of Contemplating Helene Exhibit Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
“I think the materials that you use as an artist [are] one of the most expressive parts of it [art- making] for me,” Isadora said. ”It's more sustainable, but it also feels more personal...So when there's an abundance of trash from the river, it feels like I'm meant to make stuff with it as a reflection of, ‘This is the environment’...’This is where I'm living’… So the Contemplating Helene [exhibition theme]ties in because it's changed my practice, because these are the materials that I found myself surrounded by.”
Angela Modzelewski is a local artist who started “Turning the Page on Helene.”
“I was really inspired to find a way to help people come back together and define community and to heal using the arts,” Modzelewski said.
“Owen Park Before and After Hurricane Helene”, a zig zag book by Carol Lawrence displayed at the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
This project hosts free workshops for community members to come together and create works of art on pages reflecting on their experiences of the storm, the recovery or their hopes for the future. Modzelewski then takes these pages and turns them into “altered books,” two of which are featured in the “Contemplating Helene” exhibition.
“I think making art in and of itself is so healing and we have so much creativity and so much resilience," Modzelewski said. “But when we can do it together in community and work on projects together, I think it really brings it to the next level. We can build off of each other. We can be inspired by each other, and it can be a way that people come together and support each other and figure out what you need and how you can help each other. I think it really brings us closer together. This project is also rooted in the principles of psychological first aid. It's really important that people feel safe.”
Iris Isadora stands in front of Elizabeth Porritt Carrington’s painting Star Making displayed at the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
Tânya “Pinky” Pineda is one of the artists involved in “Turning the Page on Helene” and created the cover for volume 14 of the project.
“I did a page pretty soon after the storm, it was a very hectic one, and I didn't think much of it,” Pineda said. “And then she included it in another show and I was really moved by it and a lot of people were connecting with it.”
Pineda later created her cover for volume 14, which features orange crackers on a swirling background of green and blue with a UV light reactive element. “The orange crackers, like the snack crackers, sort of became a food group for a lot of us after the storm” Pineda. So they were like this little, kind of luminescent thing in the chaos of it all. So I thought I would feature that.”
At the exhibition opening, “Turning the Page on Helene” had a table set up covered in collage and art supplies for visitors to create their own page contemplating Helene, how far the community has come and how far there still is to go. The atmosphere at the opening of the “Contemplating Helene” exhibit was reminiscent of its name: holding space for the grief, loss and continued hardship faced by many in the community while at the same time a celebration of recovery, transformation and community coming together.
Vera Dorsey and Eliza Whalers, both seniors as Warren Wilson College work on a collage book page as part Angela Modzelewski's community art project Turning the Page on Helene at the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
“It keeps bringing the community together in a similar way,” Pineda said. “Like after the storm, how we all came together. It feels like an extension of that”
“Art of Ruin: A Pendant” by Warren Wilson professor of Social Work Lucy Lawrence displayed at the Contemplating Helene opening reception at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, on Sep. 4, 2026, Black Mountain, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
“Turning the Page on Helene” will be holding a workshop at WWC on Saturday, Sept. 26, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Boon Hall. It will be co-led by students enrolled in the Art of Expressive Arts Therapy class and open to the campus community and beyond. Participants will learn how to make an altered book and have the opportunity to create a page for the “Turning the Page on Helene” project.
The exhibit Contemplating Helene: Art After the Storm will be open until Friday, Sept. 25 at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts.