A Conversation with Asheville Creative Advocates
Meet some of the artists and organizations that have shaped Asheville Creative Arts for the past 10 years.
Spotlight: Gina Stewart and Brenda Gambill, contributing artists
“Asheville Creative Arts’ mission…includes everybody. It includes all different kinds of people, and it’s bigger than the scope of just Asheville. It’s supporting the arts from the region. It recognizes that more than anything, artists need encouragement in order to do what they do. It’s amazing to see how people develop with the right kind of support.”
– Gina Stewart
Over the past 10 years, Asheville Creative Arts has been a home to artists developing new works in different mediums, who have in turn made Asheville Creative Arts the organization it is today.
The process in which we support artists is the same process in which we support community based organizations, because at the end of the day, everyone thrives when they have access to the resources they need that allows them to do their best work.
Asheville Creative Arts’ Carolina Corona sat down with Gina Stewart and Brenda Gambill, artists who have been making work with the organization since its founding, to talk about their work with the company, and what ACA brings to our region.
BG: The first thing we did for Asheville Creative Arts was we created music for CHARLOTTE’S WEB. The story happens in a barn, you know? And so the kind of acoustic music that we like to play a lot fits really well with that.
GS: ACA is a home for new work. Abby helped us to bring to fruition this thing that we had been writing on for a long time called BUGS!, and it was a little play where all the characters were bugs, but they acted like humans, you know, there were different aspects of human behavior. I believe part of ACA’s mission is to connect the dots and create a community around different places, which I really love. And Visart is part of that, and they’ve been reaching out to other communities and other cities to do that as well.
BG: And thinking about the big picture of how to get everyone’s art to be sustainable. Like, if we create this performance or we create this programming, why can’t we do this programming in Asheville and why can’t we take it up the mountain a little bit further? Why don’t we take it to Hickory or take it to the hinterlands and take it to a place that we go in Charlotte and that makes it so much easier for artists, especially performing artists.
GS: Creating a network where we’re all connected has been so great for Visart and for our theater in Charlotte. I can call up ACA and say, ‘I need puppeteers. I need people doing puppet workshops. I need a lot of them quickly.’ This actually happened, by the way, right after the hurricane and it was like, here’s Charlotte with a need, and Abby said, ‘our artists need to work, spiritually and economically.’ And that was so great. We were able to take care of each other.
BG: ACA’s mission includes everybody. It includes all different kinds of people, and it’s bigger than the scope of just Asheville.
It’s supporting the art from this region. A lot of people have the attitude that you got to bring things in from New York. You got to bring things in from the urban areas, instead of amplifying the voices of a region, or the voices of a certain group of people.
GS: And ACA never goes there. It’s always about what’s here. And it’s the integrity, because never have I heard Abby say anything other than, ‘we’re going to make sure everyone gets paid.’ She supports the arts and the artists.
She does bring in people from New York and they work with people here and then she’ll take us up there too. It gives us a chance to learn, and learn from each other, learn from people that we maybe might not otherwise get to work with. And go places that we wouldn’t get to go to.
ACA has so much respect for artists. And for what we do. And ACA gives plenty of space for that and financial support for it. You don’t find a lot of people like that. A lot of producers, you know, they really approach you with, ‘oh, could you do me a favor? Could you do?’
BG: You know, like when you have a postmortem with her or there’s a feedback session, she takes mindful steps so that there’s never any damage done. Her approach is delicate, it’s intelligent, it’s positive.
GS: And she never has an ill word. Some artists are, I won’t say all of us are fragile, but you’ve just laid out your stuff, you know, you’ve just done your work and you’re raw, maybe open, you know. And then, you know, to have somebody do otherwise can be hurtful. It’s always very, very constructive and very positive.
She doesn’t try to tell you what to create. She gives you the outline, gives you the feeling, and says, do what you do best. And that’s the mark of a great producer, director, creator, in my opinion, she surrounds herself with the people she trusts to do their work. It’s amazing to see how people develop with the right kind of support.
“Valuing, not talking down to younger people or underestimating youth. Do not underestimate the children. They get it. That’s always been the mission at ACA. And the organization values lifelong learning and entertaining everyone’s ideas/perspectives, and centers a concern for the community and for the environment and the future of the world. The art always asks, ‘how is this going to push us forward? How is this going to connect us? How’s this gonna make a difference for us?’”
-Brenda Gambill
One of the things that we haven’t talked about is valuing young people’s art. Valuing, not talking down to younger people or underestimating youth. Do not underestimate the children. They get it. That’s always been the mission at ACA. And the organization values lifelong learning and entertaining everyone’s ideas/perspectives, and centers a concern for the community and for the environment and the future of the world. The art always asks, ‘how is this going to push us forward? How is this going to connect us? How’s this gonna make a difference for us?’
This is so important right now, because there’s so much division. It’s an important thing to connect young people in particular.
BG: I hope that ACA will find a way to make their presence known in other places, particularly in hinterlands, in places that don’t have a lot of infrastructure supporting culture. Tour more, go out from here, create things that go to New York, to other cities, to other places all over the country, but particularly that go out in the state of North Carolina.
GS: ACA has done work that shines a light on dark little corners of history, too. There was THE WARP & THE WEFT, which began as LINTHEAD, where Abby was the generating artist that brought all kinds of creatives together and made a piece which sort of exposed child labor in the mills here. That’s another thing that we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about what we did to these little children that were 10 years old and how they went brain dead because all they ever did was just the mill.
She has a cultural competence in bringing that to light, and I loved that project because of that, because that’s North Carolina history. So there is a preserving and learning from history aspect of what Asheville Creative Arts does a lot of times. I hope that’ll continue.
BG: Right after Helene, ACA took puppets down to the places where children were being fed and entertained them. That’s the heart of ACA. Abby said, ‘Someone’s got to do something for these children because here they are in total chaos. And we can help, not only does it help them, it helps the adults to regroup.’ There’s been so much division and trauma to everyone that we’re all healing and the arts are the thing that can help us preserve our own mental health. And there’s nothing else that’s going to do it, really.