North Carolina frescoes aren’t a pigment of your imagination
The last thing I expected to find at the Haywood Street mission in Asheville, N.C., when my husband, David, and I visited last year was a Renaissance-style fresco glowing on the wall behind the chapel altar — with modern-day models. Painted by Christopher Holt, the masterpiece portrays the life-giving stories of some of the community’s most vulnerable people assisted by the service organization.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
“There’s a fresco trail in the Blue Ridge right outside of Asheville,” Brook van der Linde, Haywood Street’s chief storyteller, told me, gauging my interest.
The medium made famous by Michelangelo, da Vinci and Fra Angelico, frescoing is a delicate process that entails crushing pigments and painting them into wet plaster before it dries. While I had seen frescoes throughout Italy and France, I had never heard of any in the United States.
Yes, I was interested. And that’s how, just before the world shut down in March 2020, David and I found ourselves on a treasure hunt of sorts, driving on twisty mountain byways in the rugged, village-dotted
Blue Ridge countryside north of Asheville, about 425 miles from our northern Virginia home, seeking some of the world’s most masterful frescoes along the Benjamin F.
Long IV Fresco Trail. The good news is the sites are open again, observing state public health mandates including social distancing and wearing masks indoors.
Our first stop: Morganton, dubbed a mini-Asheville with its wineries, brewpubs and restaurants. Here, the City of Morganton Municipal Auditorium (CoMMA) showcases the “Sacred Dance and the Muses,” portraying the nine Greek muses, in the building’s lobby. I looked expectantly at the walls before realizing it was up on the ceiling, a la Sistine Chapel.
Viewing chairs on a slowly rotating platform allow a comfortable, neckrelaxed perusal. Sitting back, I studied how a gold-leaf ribbon weaves together the composition,
There are faster ways for me to get to Portland, Ore., or Seattle from my home in Montana’s Flathead Valley, not far from Glacier National Park. Alaska Airlines offers multiple flights a day to either city that can get me there in less time than it would take to watch the in-flight movie. But if I have the time to spare, I will take Amtrak.
The trip aboard Amtrak’s Empire Builder from Whitefish, Mont., to Portland or Seattle (the train splits into two drawing the eye from one muse to the next, to clouds, to drama masks, to a classical temple cradling several different people (and a cat). On one side, an older man crouches, paintbrushes in hand.
“That’s Ben Long,” said Mike Musick, CoMMA’s director. He explained how the artist uses local models — including himself — in all his works.
I was blown away by the immensity of this work, and wondered, how does anyone become an Italianesque fresco painter these days?
“I always wanted to be an artist,” Long told me by phone the next week. “After studying at the Art Students League of New York and two Vietnam tours as combat artist, I sections in Spokane, Wash.) takes about 14 hours, meaning it would actually take less time to just jump in the car and drive. But for me, and many others, the train offers more than just a way to get from Point A to Point B; it offers the opportunity to simply slow down and take in the scenery. The Empire Builder and other “long-distance” trains also provide a glimpse at what rail travel looked like before Amtrak’s creation in May 1971.
In recent years, Amtrak has touted the idea that its most successful routes con