Marshall’s art community rallies around a beloved artist who has lost her home and studio to Helene

MARSHALL – The music started just as the models finished blinding their Tyvek suits and painting their faces in mirrors leaning against a shipping container before encountering a white tent where they would wait backstage.

“We’re all here for one reason… and it rhymes with passion,” host DJ Chad Wilderness shouted from the stage to a standing audience as his words echoed over techno beats.

Volunteers have been meeting at Nanostead, the small-scale sustainable design and construction contractor about a mile from downtown Marshall, almost every day since the catastrophic flooding of the French Broad River caused by Tropical Storm Helene, affecting much of the small town in Western North Carolina and devastated surrounding Madison. County communities September 27.

In the weeks following the storm, hundreds of people flocked to the site to don personal protective equipment before heading to Marshall’s Main Street to remove debris and shovel thick sludge from buildings damaged and destroyed by the storm.

On Sunday, November 17, work paused for a volunteer holiday and the Dirty Broads Fashion Show – a puppet show performed by artists and friends in tribute to Lois Simbach, 74, an artist credited with cultivating Marshall’s arts community over the past thirty years. years.

Helene’s recovery work in Marshall was interrupted due to a party

Twenty models appeared one at a time and paraded down the runway in outfits made largely from personal protective equipment, or PPE. One wore a hard hat and an orange mesh construction vest with the word “RESILIENT” written on the back. Another wore two KN95 masks as a bra. Another made a floral brooch from purple latex gloves.

The final model appeared, her blue lips spread in a huge grin across her gold-painted face, and the crowd roared.

Simbach herself walked the runway in her white heeled boots. She tied her brown paper poncho-like outfit together with caution tape and decorated the back with a hand-drawn woman’s face. The front read ‘Dirty Beautiful Stoic Broads’.

All the models joined her on stage, dancing and laughing as the music continued to play.

An outsider might not have seen the joy of the nearby wall of papers with 36 fundraising links to help residents and businesses recover from Tropical Storm Helene.

An outsider might not have realized which models were on show for the woman of the hour, because Simbach lost everything in the storm.

An artist sees beauty in the destruction of her home and studio

The first time Lois Simbach returned to her riverside home and studio in Marshall, North Carolina after Tropical Storm Helene hit, she climbed over the rubble and found in its place a pile of concrete slabs and steel beams.

“I come home and all I could think was ‘this is beautiful,’” said the local artist.

The catastrophic flooding of the French Broad, caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Helene, destroyed at least ten buildings in downtown Marshall. A 75-year-old man from Rollins, a small community about a mile south of downtown, died when he was swept into the river on September 27.

Simbach’s home was a 100-year-old building on Main Street that was condemned when she bought it about 30 years ago. Once a farming cooperative, Simbach transformed the building into her art studio and later into a loft that looked “like a New York apartment” on the top floor and had a perfect view of the river, she said.

The wind and water from the storm “sucked away” the artist’s home, belongings and work, Simbach said.

Huge paintings of women’s faces. Outfits from her days as a customer in New Orleans. Painted potholders with farm animals and coloring books that she designed and sold; her last picture was the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. A diary she kept since the 1990s. Her birth certificate and passport. Wedding photos of her parents, whom she cared for for more than five years before they died.

“Everything is down river,” Simbach said.

Simbach cultivated her creativity in Wisconsin before bringing it to New Orleans and Marshall

Such a great loss may be easier for artists to process, according to Simbach.

“Because everything looks like art and everything looks beautiful” to an artist, she said.

Simbach has been making things her entire life, starting in South Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she was born. She remembers making floats for a local Fourth of July parade and exploring the woods near her home as a child.

Simbach earned a degree in textiles and design from UW-Madison and later attended UW-Milwaukee to earn her master’s degree in sculpture.

After a period of travel to Central America and work in the Milwaukee garment industry, New Orleans became Simbach’s home base. There she worked as a customer, sold handmade voodoo dolls to tourists and was once crowned queen for a Mardi Gras krewe and parade.

New Orleans is also where Simbach hosted fashion shows, an event that brought them back to Marshall.

“I first started doing fashion shows to show all the young girls in town how beautiful they are,” Simbach said.

The high-energy gathering is something that has locals crediting Simbach with not only growing but sustaining Marshall’s arts community for three decades.

Simbach has been critical to initiatives such as the Mermaid Parade and Festival, art exhibitions at local businesses such as Zuma coffee shop and the annual fashion shows, all of which have helped put Marshall on the map as an arts center in Western North Carolina.

The artist says Marshall’s creative magic is all a group effort.

“Everyone is doing their part, it’s not just me,” she said.

Simbach is “the spark that holds everything together,” according to fashion show model and friend Susie Mosher.

A friend found Simbach’s art among the rubble near the French Broad

In a conversation with Mosher after the storm, Simbach wondered aloud where all her stuff had gone. Was it all under the river or downriver in Tennessee?

Mosher, a Marshall artist who creates installations from items some might consider junk, spent three days north of the city walking along the destroyed river to help her cope with the destruction. She also scoured the ground for items in the rubble that she could take home for a project.

Next to a pile of rubble, a plush doll with a painted face stuck out. She immediately recognized it as Simbach’s creation and stared at her half a mile from his house.

“Think about everything you see,” was written on the chest of the first doll.

Then she found another one. Mosher climbed to the top of the pile and found more Simbach dolls, whose painted skin gave her messages.

“Life just keeps getting better.” “Composed and uncomplicated.”

The dolls were part of a project Simbach created in the early 2000s called “More Advice from the Pholks.”

“It was like the dolls were talking,” Mosher said on Nov. 18 as she retraced her steps along the river with Simbach.

“When I saw, ‘Think about everything you see,’ I thought, that’s what I’m doing… I wanted to witness this firsthand and get into the dirt.”

Crews must have moved the pilings since she walked in October, Mosher said as she surveyed the area, but the riverbank was still filthy with warped car parts, metal and other debris.

“I wonder…” Mosher’s sigh interrupted her thoughts. She saw another Pholk from Simbach, almost a month after finding the first pair.

“Take that first step,” the doll said.

The women laughed and continued walking as Simbach put the doll in her leather bag.

Marshall’s arts community is rallying around Simbach after the loss

The community has rallied around Simbach since she lost her home and studio.

Simbach has a safe home with a friend. Another friend started a GoFundMe that organizers promoted during the fashion show. To date, it has raised more than $28,600 of its $100,000 goal.

Still, Simbach spent a lot of time filling out paperwork and seeing what recovery programs she might qualify for. She had home insurance, but no flood insurance, and she won’t get any money for that, she said.

Simbach said some people backstage after the fashion show think she should be “boo-hooing.” She has had moments to cry, but mostly she has tried to move forward.

“It seems like a stoic thing,” she said. ‘Go on. You can’t turn back the clock.’

She also kept her humor through the situation.

Simbach laughs at the irony that just before the storm she listened to the audiobook “No One Wants Your Shit” and read about Japanese minimalism. Maybe her late mother Helen was trying to teach her a lesson via Tropical Storm Helene, she joked.

The loss has given Simbach the freedom to also think big about what the future holds, she said. Maybe she’ll get an apartment in Paris, one of the fashion capitals of the world.

But first she wants to find a small piece of land nearby to keep Marshall her home base.

Bridget Fogarty is a journalist with the USA TODAY Network reporting for the Asheville Citizen Times in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Helene.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Marshall rallies around a beloved artist who lost his home and studio to Helene