Asheville artists unmoored by September storm are anchoring in shopping malls, old warehouses and vacant industrial buildings across Buncombe County

Resurrection Studios Collective in the works at the former Moog Music building

About 30 artists and entrepreneurs toured the building at 160 Broadway St. just north of downtown Asheville on Nov. 20 to hear about plans to renovate the space to accommodate a range of spaces for artists, including galleries and working studios for painters, potters and woodworkers./ photo by Jason Sandford

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Ani Kinyon is searching for a new place to call her creative home.

A couple of weeks ago, the painter joined a group of about 30 artists and entrepreneurs gathered in the former home of Moog Music on Broadway Street to hear about the possibility of renovating 22,000-square-feet of space into a variety of classrooms, small galleries and working studios to accommodate an array of artistic disciplines. The effort has been dubbed the Resurrection Studios Collective.

Kinyon moved to Asheville from New Orleans two years ago and found a studio she loved at Riverview Station. The two-story brick giant of a building in Asheville’s River Arts district was home to more than 60 artists, craftspeople and entrepreneurs. Massive flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Helene destroyed 80 percent of the RAD’s nearly 30 buildings that housed about 300 artists, according to a mid-October briefing by Katie Cornell, executive director of ArtsAVL (formerly the Asheville Area Arts Council). Across Asheville, more than 250 artist studios, galleries and venues have been lost in and around Asheville, according to an ArtsAVL report sizing up the storm’s impact on Asheville’s arts community.

“It was a destination. People came to see all that it was, all the creative variety,” Kinyon told the assembled group of her former studio. “I worked in a gallery with seven working spaces, and we could all bounce ideas off each other, show our work in progress.”

Artists tour the former Moog Music building on Broadway Street./ photo by Jason Sandford

“I want a place to create with other people, because I think creativity fosters creativity,” Kinyon said.

With the future of the River Arts District and other damaged spaces in flux, artists are investigating new possibilities like Resurrection Studios, while others have already found new homes in malls. Other warehouses and vacant industrial buildings are being looked at for their potential to host artists. Here’s a quick look at a few examples of what’s happening: