Chris Holt

The subjects depicted in the Haywood Street Beatitudes fresco are based on the portraits featured in this gallery. For a year preceding the painting of the fresco, Christopher Holt set up a studio at the church and invited members of the local community and congregation to sit for a portrait. During this time Holt also heard the stories of many of his portrait sitters. Individual labels also include quotations from portrait subjects or retellings of their individual stories by Holt.

With a focus on members of the community who are often disenfranchised and rendered virtually invisible by the rest of society, Holt’s skillfully rendered portraits portray his subjects with compassion and dignity. He invited us to see each other as individuals with a common humanity.

Damon is a sixth grader and lives near the Haywood Streat congregation. On Sundays, he is a companion at the Downtown Welcome Table, which provides a free weekly meal for the community. Damon was in a second-grade class Holt taught on the artist Jacob Lawrence and his Great Migration series when they met. He was the only model who asked to be in the fresco. During the summer, while the fresco was being painted, Damon stopped by weekly to observe the process and to try to steal Anselme away to play basketball.

Artist Christopher Holt created portraits of people who were a part of the Haywood Street congregation. These people told him interesting stories about their lives. Ask someone in your family or community if you can try to draw their portrait, or ask the person to tell a story about their life. This can be a life event that was important to them, a story about one of their family members, or anything they feel like sharing!

Michael is program manager for the Haywood Street Respite, a place where homeless adults can rest, get three meals a day, and get back on their feet after being discharged from the hospital. Michael’s Zen nature and great love are translated through his pose in the fresco, an expression of the Beatitudes.

From the blessing of the fresco, by the founder and pastor of Haywood Street Congregation, Brian Combs: “Blessed are you who trespass nightly in a squatter building, for your permanent address is eternity; blessed are you who are slandered in public and reviled in private, your reputation is made righteous; blessed are you who unclench the fist of punishment for the open hand of reconciliation, for you will be called merciful; and blessed are you who have been delayed and denied, put off and pushed aside, relegated to waiting without a reservation. Hear the Good News, the Beatitudes begin at the back of the line.”

Jerry Bowman represents what Haywood Street is all about. His participation in the fresco is both an ode to his best friend, Charlie Burns, and an acknowledgment of the way people help each other despite their own difficult struggles. Jerry stopped by the fresco site almost every morning to check on the progress of the painting and make sure the artists were doing a good job.

Dave Holland is Haywood Street’s banquet steward. His calling to the Downtown Welcome Table and subsequent partnership with Brian Combs have taken him from the streets to a central role in providing for a diverse community through a shared, abundant meal. In Dave’s time with the artists, he openly spoke of his life of success and struggle, and ultimately of his devotion to Haywood Street and its devotion to prince and pauper alike.

“Pouncing” is a method of transferring a drawing on paper to another surface; in this case the drawing would be transferred to the fresco. This process involves making holes in the charcoal drawing. Can you see any holes in the charcoal portraits? If you can, how many can you see?

Jeanette shares the beliefs of the Rev. Brian Combs, the founding pastor of the church, regarding the importance of the fresco: “If we put someone in a painting that will be there for the rest of eternity, [we] are saying in every way that your story matters.” In her words, “As long as this building is standing, there’ll be someone telling … the story of that fresco, and the people … in it.”

Formerly unhoused, Charlie was battling cancer when he sat for his portrait. Charlie was deeply affected by the work of the fresco project and has said, “As long as that wall stands, I’m going to be at every service. There’s no other place on earth I would rather have my picture hanging than Haywood Street.” Charlie is painted as an unfinished statue in the fresco as he continued to make plans, travel, and help people until his last day. He passed away just before the painting and the fresco began — a metaphor, perhaps, that we are all unfinished works.

Mary became the center of the fresco as a symbol of her life’s work providing access to food and love. If you lived in her neighborhood and were struggling or hungry, you could count on Ms. Mary to have a meal for you. She is one of the people who make the Downtown Welcome Table what it is to the community, preparing meals and coordinating with participating Asheville restaurants.

In this case are various tools used by Christopher Holt and his team to create the Haywood Street Beatitudes fresco.

1. Sandblasted glass slab for grinding pigment
2. Pocket sketchbook for drawing from life
3. Idea sketchbook for working out the composition
4. Fresco brushes (red string) resistant to lime
5. Large flat brush
6. Watercolor brushes for detail
7. Jars of mixes for specific colors of pigment ground
in water
8. Tray of charcoal with a sandboard; used to draw
cartoons
9. Small palette knife used to cut away the edge of the
fresco at the end of the day to create the “dayline”
10. Jar of yellow ocher pigment
11. Glass muller used to grind pigment in water
12. Large palette knife for color mixing pigment
in water
13. Trowel used for mixing aged lime putty with fine
sand and for wall application of lime plaster
14. Pounce bag filled with red ocher pigment
15. Needle used for punching holes in tracing of
cartoon
16. Natural sponge used for catching drips and for
applying paint for certain effects
17. Labeled tray of paint mixes

Originally from Asheville, Blue lights up a room and will tell you: “I was born black, been Blue since I was 2, I’ll be Blue till I’m through, and that is true — if you want to know some more ask my mother the queen, Mary Jo, peace I love y’all!”

Theirs Is the Kingdom follows the rare creation of a contemporary fresco mural inside the sanctuary of a small church in Asheville, N.C. This is a painting, not of the rich and powerful
but of people battling homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. From first sketch to final unveiling, the viewer witnesses the difficulties of this ancient artistic technique while also
meeting an ensemble of unique characters.

© 2019 Christopher Zaluski

Why do you think Christopher Holt did a color study before painting the actual fresco? Watch the video below to learn more.

Have you ever been to the Haywood Street church in Asheville, North Carolina? After learning about the fresco, would you like to visit the church? What part of the fresco would you most like to see?

Fresco paintings contain many layers; the number of layers varies based on the artist. We
encourage you to look at this piece of a real fresco painting to see the various layers that
Christopher Holt created.

Here are some layers that you might find in a fresco (top to bottom):
Paint ground in water
Plaster
Terracotta clay baked onto wire (in this case in place of a brick backing)
Wood base; metal may be used in place of wood

How many layers do you see?

This exhibition features monumental drawings, intimate portraits, and studies by artist Christopher Holt (b. 1977, Asheville, N.C.; lives Weaverville, N.C.) for the Haywood Street Beatitudes fresco completed in September 2019. The fresco is the result of a two-year community project led by Holt with the Rev. Brian Combs, founder of the Haywood Street congregation in Asheville.

The purpose of the Haywood Street fresco is to honor everyday people and emphasize the church’s ministry, which focuses on helping members of the community who live in poverty and often on the margins of society. The congregation is encouraged to live by the Beatitudes (the blessings recounted by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount), which is also the subject of the fresco. In the Haywood Street Beatitudes, Holt gracefully incorporates powerful portraits of the local community and members of the congregation in his contemporary depiction of the narrative of the Beatitudes. In the Rev. Combs’s words, “What poverty makes invisible, art makes immortal.”

Additional information can be found at haywoodstreetfresco.org

Linda Johnson Dougherty Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art

Angel was the inspiration for Haywood Street Respite. Living on the streets and struggling with multiple health problems, Angel had a series of hospital stays during the summer of 2012. That summer and through the next year, Haywood Street board members worked with community partners to establish the first medical respite program in the Asheville area, where adults experiencing homelessness could have a chance to rest and recover following surgery or hospitalization.

Once Angel obtained permanent housing, her health dramatically improved, and she became a frequent volunteer at Haywood Street. She helps out in the dining room and sometimes leads the prayer time in worship. In the painting Angel is a literal angel, floating above the other figures. The presence of the angel illuminates the notion that something divine is taking place — that there is a holiness in the work being done at Haywood Street that can turn the world around.

Members of the Haywood Street congregation are encouraged to live by the Beatitudes (the blessings recounted by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount). Some of these Beatitudes include comforting those who are suffering, forgiving those who are unkind to us, and doing what is fair. What are some ideals you live your life by? Do you always try to tell the truth, are you kind to others, do you share with those in need?

Keith could often be found around Haywood Street helping fix things and doing anything that needed to be done around the Downtown Welcome Table. While his battle with homelessness continues, his story is a powerful example of the willingness to share all you have when you barely have anything at all.

James greatly influenced the artists with his warm and gracious nature. He shared his story of being unhoused on the streets of Atlanta, Charlotte, and Asheville and found his incorporation in the fresco an inspiring and transformative moment. James moves with love, and he shares his strength and prayers through song at Haywood Street. At the blessing of the fresco, James sang “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” acapella to an audience in tears.

Dave has described how daunting it is to be featured in a work of art that will still be around even after its subjects are gone: “I was trying to get my head wrapped around how I came from these rural peanut farmers in South Alabama, how all of a sudden now I’m going to be immortalized in a painting … I don’t think that one can ever come completely to grips with that.”

In fresco painting, pigments ground in water are painted into wet lime plaster. The painting becomes part of the wall rather than sitting on the surface, as with a typical mural.

Fresco painting is a multi-step process. After applying the first layers of plaster, the artist creates large-scale drawings called “cartoons,” which serve as blueprints for the final fresco. The cartoon is traced onto tracing paper, and the lines of the drawing are punctured with a needle so that the drawing can be transferred onto the wall. This is done by sifting dry pigment through the holes. Once painting begins, the artist must work quickly, because painted areas are permanent, and mistakes require the day’s work to be chiseled out and painted again.

Many frescoes were painted during the Italian Renaissance (14th–17th centuries). The most famous is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo about 1512. The technique is rare in the U.S. Diego Rivera painted frescoes at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932. There are many examples in North Carolina by Ben Long (b. 1945), from whom Christopher Holt learned the technique.