John Warner Photography
In downtown Asheville, a true Buon fresco is going up across the back wall of the sanctuary at 297 Haywood Street. It is an unlikely gallery for one of the most expensive and time-consuming art forms known to man.
Fresco is a physically and mentally demanding art form. The technique uses natural pigments mixed with water and applied to a layer of wet plaster. The colors are absorbed, becoming part of the wall as it dries. The mixture of pigment and lime create a unique luminescence not seen in other mediums.
Multiple layers of plaster ensure the stability and durability of the project. While the initial layers – a thick scratch-coat and finer coat called Arriccio – cured on the wall for 7 months, the artists did extensive sketching and composition.
After the initial sketches, a huge fresco-sized cartoon is created, and then traced to transfer onto the Arriccio. Although this is completely plastered over in the final stages, it allows the artists to see the entirety of the design to ensure the composition works.
The pounced tracing paper is then cut up so it can again be transferred onto the wall in smaller pieces. These pieces are what the artists deemed themselves able to paint in each 8-10 hour work day, as the drying plaster allows. The final layer of plaster, the Intonaco, is spread the morning of each painting day, then coated with a toner before the tracing is pounced and the artist connects the dots and begins to paint on the wet wall.
If anything goes wrong during this process – color mistakes, composition errors, plaster irritability – the day’s work has to be chipped entirely from the wall and redone, extending the working date late into the night or adding another entire work-day to the project.
The Fresco team is made up of a band of fine artists who have dedicated their lives to learning the ancient tradition, apprenticing themselves, and doing work that can only be done painstakingly and with the help of others.
Led by principal artist Christopher Holt, a native of Western North Carolina, the fresco is a team-effort, with John Dempsey III, Caleb Clark, and Jill Hooper assisting in key components, as well as an apprentice, Anselme Long, learning first-hand the complexity of the craft.
John Dempsey III and Caleb Clark are local fine artists who along with Holt were part of The Fine Arts League of the Carolinas, a school started by Benjamin Long IV, a master fresco artist and the team’s mentor. Jill Hooper, an artist who lives and works from studios in Charleston and London, has also assisted on multiple Long frescoes. Anselme Long is a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill, and the youngest son of Benjamin Long IV.
The Haywood Street Fresco includes thirty-two portraits of individuals generally overseen by society. The uniqueness of this representation is significant, the goal being to sabotage the shame of poverty by announcing in plaster and pigment the sacred worth of every human.
The Fresco also includes other architectural elements that residents and visitors of Asheville will recognize – the Jackson Building, the Basilica of St. Laurence, the former Stephens Lee High School, and the loggia of the Central United Methodist Church who owns the building that Haywood Street Congregation calls home.
Nearly ten years in the making, the Haywood Street Fresco is slated to be completed in early October, 2019.
An open house event will be held Thursday October 17, 2019 from 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm. All are invited to attend.
Learn more at haywoodstreetfresco.org and follow via Instagram and Facebook: @haywoodstreetfresco