Theirs Is The Kingdom

(gentle music) (gentle piano music) (all chattering) Let's go this way. In these next two galleries, so you guys just walk, check it out. Wander and you can take pictures if you want. (all chattering) Proud of you, brother.

Thank you for sitting with me. Thank you for talking me into it. Very well shown. It fills it.

This space is great for it. You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago I'd be standing here right now. 'You'd lost your mind.' I'm honored, blessed. Unbelievable.

(nature sounds) All right, so this one might work. I've been working on frescoes for around 20 years. What most people think of when they hear the word 'fresco' are the Sistine Chapel, "The Last Supper" by da Vinci, they think of the cracks in the stone, they think of the hand reaching to touch Adam they think of, you know, the fall of man kind of deal. This project at Haywood Street is my first fresco as principal artist.

I feel a pressure and a responsibility to the folks that are in this fresco. The characters that I am depicting and putting into the composition because that's really what this whole thing is about. Their trauma, their recovery, and their hope. It's the arc of their story.

My notion of Jesus was honey-brown hair, blue-eyed, European Jesus with this very contemplative gaze on his face. But the Jesus I met on the street is dirty, is suspect, is antagonistic. And so Haywood Street is a manifestation of that. From the beginning we said we want to be a place that welcomes those who are not welcome anywhere else.

Anybody that's been banned from the shelters that has a long incarceration record, who simply has nowhere else to go, we want to say, "This is your church. We want you here first." There is something about looking at another human being that requires acknowledging their dignity. That's what I hear overwhelmingly from folks in poverty again, and again, and again. That's the most painful part.

That's the most dehumanizing part, that if I don't look at you it means that I really don't think you're a human being. And so here we are at a fresco, that's gonna be here potentially for tens of thousands of years saying, "These are the people we need to look at to most." What we have here is the beginning of the metal frame that will hold the fresco. Painting contemporary frescoes is extremely rare. How many frescoes are painted a year in the world?

I have not... one, maybe two? In the kind of the old process, in the kind of the old Renaissance-style process that we're going to follow, then, I don't know, none that I know of. I mean you saw the original one, but I've got one now that's really more accurately what we're going for.

These people are all going to be kind of like coming out of like a cloud or mist. This project is different. Not having a Christ figure. Having it be here, now, in present.

Some of them are people that have become companions and volunteers that now have a home. They've had their own struggles. Some of them are folks that are on the street right now. So y'all set it like this, get the other view?

- Yep, yep. The first person that I started drawing for this project is Charlie Burns and Charlie was an integral part of getting Haywood Street off the ground. He is also dying of cancer. This has already grown beyond just a fresco.

I mean, for me, I've already met new friends. I'm growing through this whole experience. I had a roofing company. You'd be amazed how many roofers are alcoholics, drug addicts, and a lot of them are homeless.

I've lived in a car many times. I've lived under a bridge. I lived in a dumpster one time. Of course people are leery of homeless people.

Some of them aren't the best people, but, you know, give them a chance and if they fail, they fail, but, you know, give them a chance. They may change your mind about homeless people. We are in Max Patch, North Carolina. It's part of Pisgah National Forest and we're going to go scout out a little location for our distant vista for the fresco.

Brian Combs and I have been talking about the possibility of doing a fresco at Haywood Street for a number of years. He has a background in art and design and I found myself naturally inspired by the mission of Haywood Street and who they were serving and how. The fresco kind of grew from there. When we started talking about the fresco formally, there were a handful of naysayers that were very quick to say, "A quarter of a million dollars?

There are about 100 other things we should be doing with that." And there's an assumption in most urban ministry and non-profit work that the most important thing to offer someone in poverty is whatever is assumed the basics of survival are and art and music and love never show up on that list, yet, it's an essential part of how we're created. The Haywood Street Congregation received a grant worth more than $72,000 from Buncombe County's Tourism Developmental Authority. Tonight, a Wisconsin based non-profit is trying to stop a mural from going up at an Asheville church. I can understand why some people would just immediately say if it involves a church I have to be against it This was always a public art project.

They say they'll continue to find alternate ways to fund the project. We'll probably look to having some events and connecting with folks who are art lovers and help us to bring it to life. We're at just kind of a home fundraiser. What we've done is asked different people to host us in their home, let us talk about the project.

(all chattering) In all of my experience on the street, that's what's taken away by poverty, over and over again. That's what mental illness takes away. That's what addiction takes away is somehow your story is no longer worth listening to. Friends, if we put someone in a painting that will be there for the rest of eternity, you are saying in every way your story matters.

And so what Christopher is doing beginning with Charlie is saying, "Your story matters. Your life matters enough to be put in a painting 20 feet wide, 10 feet tall." I don't know of any other art project like this in the world. This is why it matters to me. We put a lot of emphasis in this country about if you don't work, you don't eat.

That is the biggest bunch of rubbish I've ever heard in my life. I don't live by that creed, I don't encourage others to live by that creed. I simply say, "If you're a human being, the most basic thing you deserve is food," And, yes, we're going to put on a six-star meal with cloth table cloths and we're going to prepare it just like if you were walking into a restaurant downtown and guess what? You don't have to do anything to deserve that.

I didn't feel like I was ever accepted by the world or loved in a way that a person should be and then I found this love here and this home here and then how all of a sudden now I'm going to be immortalized in a painting. I don't think one can ever come completely to grips with that. Oh, the first time I met Dave actually Dave was he was homeless, he was staying in the woods. He wanted to come in and volunteer and I just reached my arms out.

I've been making food for the Welcome Table for 11 years. Well actually I came down here to eat one day and I started coming and got in the kitchen and I've been here ever since. And my mother passed at the age of 28 and I was the oldest. So it was eight of us in the house.

It was little hard and we was in a three-bedroom house with eight kids. And we feed over 500 and something. But in week we feed over 1,000 people between Wednesdays and Sundays. I cooked at home so I would just get all the neighborhood kids over there that was hungry.

If I didn't have room at my dining room table, I would make them something on the floor to eat. So, feeding people was always food to my soul. You got a spot? You got a spot?

Hey CJ. Welcome. (all chattering) I mean, I remember when this fresco thing started and the price tag came out, everybody's like "What are you doing? You can feed all these people." But the problem is, it's not really about the food, it's about the people.

Hey, Angel. (all chattering) Well the appeal of Asheville of Asheville continues to grow around the nation. If you need some help getting into the holiday spirit, head on up to Asheville. People all across the country flock to Asheville for many reasons.

Well, tonight Asheville is making a new national ranking. Travel + Leisure Magazine recently put out their list of top 50 places to visit in 2020 and one of them is right here in the Carolinas, Asheville making this list alongside places like Costa Rica, Barbados, and Dubai. The magazine points out the area's natural beauty, great food, and- (gentle music) One mile from here you can pay $300 to stay at the Grove Park Inn and yet there are dozens and dozens of people who sleep on the street every night. That chasm of wealth inequality, that's something we ought to tal Any municipality has to be judged on how they treat the most vulnerable.

I'm originally from a little small town called Hamlet, North Carolina near the east coast. I hadn't been back home in almost 22 years. Mm-mm. Ain't nothing down there for me.

I worked one, I was a cashier at Harris Teeter and the second one I was a cashier at Triangle Stop. One night I had work and I'd com and I had indigestion, you know, heart burn. Woke up that afternoon so I can catch the bus to go to work, I had a massive heart attack. After I had my massive heart attack, I wasn't allowed to lift nothing heavier than 10 pounds.

I couldn't do no work. I was homeless for a year. Hadn't even crossed my mind. Hadn't even thought about it.

Only one paycheck away. When I was homeless, I weighed 280 pounds and when I got housed, I started doing what I was supposed to do all along. I think God was more wanting me to see what homeless was like. To treat my neighbor like myself.

Ya know, not snubbin' my nose at them. So I've turned my life around. And I think that this is the best I've done in my life. (upbeat blues guitar music) -

Christopher

The majority of the work for fresco is in the preparation. But you can start with rainbow We decided we lost a little of the sky so we moved the line up to here. Okay. Should I draw it up a little bit?

About seven months drawing people from life, four months mixing colors and testing colors, a year on the composition alone. But the painting of the fresco will only take us around three months. (light orchestral music) To describe what fresco is, it literally is painting into wet lime plasters. The alchemy is that you have this pigment from the earth.

You're just grinding that pigment in water as best you can The brush stroke, actually, the lime being the binder literally pulls that pigment and water into it. So it's not sitting on the surface. It actually is bound, captured, and held by the wall. It becomes the wall.

So wherever you want to drop it right in here is fine, Right there. and then I'll show y'all what we're going to mulch. Wow! All this muscle.

So let me go ahead and give you this little spiel. Y'all know who we are and what we do, but as long as digging in weeds and in the flower beds and stuff I would kind of rather you wear gloves. Go ahead and expect it, I hope you don't, but go ahead and expect to find a syringe or a cap or something. Well, that just comes with the territory, we have some cut proof gloves and stuff like that.

I have tongs and a sharps container, I just want y'all to be prepared for that. I first come down here in March of 2010, so they've been running about four months, and I come down here for a meal. I was in addiction for 30 plus years, so I'm not proud. I'm not proud of it but I'm not ashamed of it neither.

I've been to prison twice for drug charges. So the first day I got out of jail I come back down here. And I'm the lead gardener now. I get a little garden stipend.

And stuff like that. I'm on the board of directors. Besides chess, I guess this is my sobriety tool because look at this, man, I mean this is... Chris is an artist, I'm just trying to compare to him.

I would like for a painter to say, "Wow, I want to put this on canvas." That's high standards to shoot for. Friends,

this is something we have to deal with

death. And I mean, it's sad but at least we have a place for our friends to be honored. So Brian always used this as a memorial garden and some of this has ashes all over. But I was trying to find a way to honor our friends from the opiod and homeless and stuff So they cremate them and they got nowhere to go.

So we have a deal with the hospital where we go up there and get their ashes. We spread them, too. Even though they're Jon Does, God knows who they are and they are honored here. It's not instant.

Our culture is instant gratifica This is something that requires and more time. Well most of the colors are naturally occurring minerals. We will hand-grind every single color that we use for this painting. So it's a little laborious.

But it gets you very familiar with your materials. What do you think we need? Pallet knife-wise? Like that size?

There's that size and there's, like, the gargantuan size. I like this size. Yeah. That's like a double XL.

John and I met at UNC Chapel Hil We reconnected in Asheville when he saw me on the street and he was like, "Hey, this guy, Ben Long, is going to start an art school." Ben is the reason that we're doing a fresco. I mean, without that model and experience, there's just no way to pull something like this off. Think of the great religious art in the West and you may think of the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, or of Paris and Notre Dame's stained glass windows, or Istanbul and St. Sophia's Mosaics.

But tonight, we want to introduce another place, another setting, Glendale Springs, North Carolina. It's an unlikely place for it to be. They are believed to be the only authentic frescoes in the South and among the few in the United States. And when it dries it creates this inner glow.

It's been said that it's both as beautiful as it is difficult. When I finished the last of the four frescoes in Ashe County in North Carolina, I honestly didn't think anything was going to ever come of it anymore. I didn't get another commission for 10 years in America. But then, it picked up again and there was an interest to it, there's more again I think in terms of novelty rather than the beauty of the technique.

You do have to rig it to get it So, I've studied under one of the world's foremost living fresco artists, Ben Long. As this project started taking place, I really felt a pride in that we were carrying on this tradition. (chatting) the less like it the better. You can appreciate all the kind of thrilling, physical, and the elements of beauty to that kind of medium and it's a beautiful, beautiful medium, and it's a rare kind of thing to see.

(soft music) In my art history studies, God was always rendered as a white man and when you look at the history of that, it makes sense. The person that's paying for the painting is going to ask that their own image be refashioned in the image of God and so, therefore, you have this precedent that has been set that God is European and God is totally male. That's regrettable for a billion reasons. For one, it's not scriptural.

But it's also regrettable in that faith was transmuted through art. So if you were a peasant or an uneducated person of color in the world and you looked at this great work of art And that is what you thought God looked like, well then you were immediately excluded. Why not consider a radical re-imagining of who God is with people who could never afford to have an image painted in their own likeness and call that God? At four, yeah.

- Okay, I got it. Ginger's revenge. - Yeah, we'll all be here early. -

Woman

this is something we have to deal with

Yeah, so I was at the aquarium the other day- My name is Robert Johnson. I was named after the famous jazz and blues player Robert Johnson. and my nickname turned out to be Blue, since I was two, Going to be Blue until I'm throu and that is true. And you want to know some more, ask my momma, Miss Mary Joe, the queen.

Asheville is rich town. You know, we got the biggest house in the United States. And the more people move in here they're building hotels, parking decks. And affordable living?

My affordable living is in Hillcrest with the queen. Been there for 60 years. For a man that had three aneurisms 14 years ago, 14 years later, I turned 60 years old. And a lot of people say, "Blue, where you get your colors from?" I say, "Out of my head into these pencils." Let's get to the good part.

Well, it's relaxing really. Very relaxing. Sometimes I sit up beside of my bed and do art work, guess what I say to Blue? I say, "Blue, you're so amazing just the way you are." (laughing) God said come as you are.

You know what I'm saying? He said come as you are. And I go as I am. (laughing) (birds chirping) (chatting) So this is from the parental collection, Karen and Richie Holt.

This was I really think fourth or fifth grade. We grew up, lived in Waynesville, North Carolina. Very close to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park and we lived on the side of a mountain that really, my brother and I, Travis, our earliest days were spent being completely cut loose on the side of this mountain. Most days that we could after school we were outside complete surrounding of nature in the mountains of western North Carolina.

This is where the artistic support continues where my nieces, maybe this one, I think this one looks like a Harper and this one looks like a Jojo. Is that right? That's a Harper? - Mm-hmm.

So like our house, where I grew up, that was like my first gallery. (light acoustic guitar music) People that exist in this world with more ease, generally have more support. So, I'm a shining example of that. And I think that's why doing the Haywood Street project became so important to me is because in a community of struggle, to be able to put yourself out there to spread joy and happiness and inspiration is really I feel like an important part- Like, the most important part of my job as an artist.

I used to walk past homeless people when I was in San Diego and they would be asking me for money because it's not illegal there and I would be, "Look, you're homeless, you need to stop doing drugs." I never in a million years would have thought I'd become homeless. I grew up with a mom who hated my guts and I could never do anything right. I was terrible in school. I would act up in school and I just gave up.

I ended up being the girl with all the people smoking weed in the bathroom. I went to A.A. for 21 years. I got introduced to meth at 39.

I found it at an A.A. member's house. I'd been homeless for eight years before I moved in this house. And my living room, which I love very much.

This is a photo of the day that I got my key. They blessed my key at the church. I'm actually going through a whole bunch of stuff right now just to donate. And then that's Pugster, the big one up there.

He's my pug. I always hug him. That's Isaiah. Oh, this is Freaked Out.

He's freaked out. I'm always checking on him. He's always freaked out. And then in the living room they all have names.

This is Grumpy Bear. I didn't get a lot of stuffed animals when I was a kid so I really like them now. I feel like I should probably let some of them go, though. The thing is, when you're homeless, you're in crisis.

Until someone actually has food, shelter, and clothing in place, you cannot expect them to get sober. You cannot expect to figure out what mental illness they might actually have. All you can do is get them inside and get them safe, fed, and then that's it. And then when someone gets a house, that's when you can figure that stuff out.

This degree was one of the beacons of my life. I got a really good education. I got a job right in the film business, right after I graduated from Emerson. This is what I was going to do.

I watched the Oscars with my mom all the time and I'd say, "Mom, those are my peers." And so, I'll be sitting at AHOPE

homeless shelter

this is something we have to deal with

looking at all the homeless people and those are peers now. So I'm hoping it's going to work out. I'll get out there. Maybe start going to some social things, meetups and stuff.

(laughter) All new tonight, affordable housing continues to be an issue in western North Carolina. Yeah, and the primary reason is that wages are too low for how much it costs to live here. Just last week, Asheville was ranked the second fastest gentrifying city in the entire country by the real estate database, Realtor.com. Why should the rest of the country be interested in something like this?

I mean yeah, this is an area that's got James Beard award-winning restaurants but then if you drive 30 minutes outside of town, you're in counties with real poverty, real Appalachian poverty. And so I think all that juxtaposition leads to this really, really interesting place. (dramatic music) The story that is rarely told is that of all the ways God could incarnate among us, God shows up as this homeless child, born into a world that had no room for him. And when he grows up, he chooses to associate with women of the night and unclean tax collectors.

This is where God goes over and over again and, yet, that message has been obscured by mainline Christianity, certainly in America. And so, yes, there's this holy irony that it is somehow revolutionary that we're painting a picture that has been articulated throughout the history of faith for thousands of years and that somehow people are going to look at this and say, "Huh, that's novel." This is our first day out of the studio. It's, like, almost anticlimactic because I feel so worn out to get started. I'm a little weary because we've really made a push These last three weeks have been nonstop.

I'd say the main internal conflict I've had about the folks that we're drawing is in the leaving out of people. I can't include everybody. I did try to make it apparent that they are representing people in the story. Each person that is in the fresco, it's not just them.

That person is representing the crowd, representing the community, representing that figure. This being my first large project, all that's rolled into the fact of just painting a fresco as well. I can't worry as much about each character as much as I have to worry about just being able to paint a fresco. (light orchestral music) Pounce it with a red earth pigment wrapped in cheesecloth and you just go over the pounce marks that are made into the tracing to just to set up so that you can start painting the composition onto the wall for the first time.

(light orchestral music) Breathtaking, man. Three years. (all chattering) -

Woman

this is something we have to deal with

My God. (upbeat blues guitar) She's got what she needs right here. So for Jeanette, we did a full-size test of her and along the way we just took down every step of the process, just so we could reference it when we're doing it right now. How many steps was it?

- 32. It was a full day. (laughing) -

Interviewer

this is something we have to deal with

And that's what that notebook is? And this is what the notebook is, yeah. Yeah, a few to go. (laughter) I was walking down the street with a friend and there was a line at Haywood Street and I was like, "What's going on over there?" She was like, "Come on, let's go eat some lunch." From the moment I walked in the door, I mean, it was kind of like an epiphany.

It seems like a world all in one room because you've got every race, every gender, every nationality, you've got every walk of life. I came for lunch but I found the love. And when I had a conversation with Brian, I said, "There's so many more important people in this building that should be in that fresco," and I said, "Why me?" He says, "Why not, you were one of the firsts and you've had such an impact on so many and Haywood would not be Haywood without all of you that were here in the first, in the beginning." As I stayed, and had conversations with people and I began relationships with people and I realized that their walks of life either used to be my walk of life or we're walking the same walk. So I began to see a little bit of myself in each person in that room.

(light acoustic guitar music) One day a lady said to me, with her child, "How would you know, you've never been homeless." I said, "Oh, yes I have." She said, "You don't look like someone who's been homeless." Well, you know you can't say what is a homeless look because some people that are homeless don't look like they're homeless. Especially when the young ladies come here with their children and they're living in shelters, some of them in tents, I can relate. I, too, had a child on one knee and a bag of our clothes on the other, sitting on the curb not knowing where we were going or what to do next. My homelessness didn't last long but the impact it had on me changed my life.

The director of Asheville's largest shelter for men says city and county officials aren't doing enough. Sleeping on makeshift beds on side alleys, have the potential to freeze to death. We know the drug deals are going on there but my concern is how the city is handling this property. Why is it that we make the assumption that just because you're in poverty somehow you shouldn't have access to things that are beautiful?

Because if we believe that, then we should take away all film, all music, beautiful scenery and anything else that doesn't have a utilitarian value. And so in that way, yeah the fresco is entirely useless and that's on purpose. Got to add the fresco grays in his beard. There's more every day.

Was that "flesh four?" Yeah. I don't know, it's just been hard today. I don't know why. It's pulling on the "flesh one" basically everywhere.

We'll try lighting the spot in the fleshes, just, don't even try? Don't. I mean you can use very light colors like a lighter ocher, or even some of that kind of deceptive, televera that gets really light. Right.

See you. (light guitar music) I mean, having Ben stop by and not say, "Hey, that needs to be cut out." That's a win. That's an endorsement. Honestly, like, you just arrive each day and face the music, really.

It doesn't stop coming. Okay. Not feeling good about this one. I'm actually from Salisbury, North Carolina.

I was in Salisbury and was in a children's home that DSS put me in and they found bruises, marks, blood spots on me where I was actually thrown around my house at my dad's. There was quite a few things that I was beat with that was just totally uncalled for. Then they moved me to a foster home and foster homes to different places. They bounced me around like a beach ball for quite a while.

Shoot, I came here to Asheville when I was homeless, well, when I was in care homes. Been into jail. Came back out. Been back in jail, I can't count how many times.

I was homeless for 10 years. I was still drawing my Social Security but rent's going up so high, it's getting to where I can't hardly deal with what is going on here now. Maybe the first or second time that I came here, I was scared. I admit, I was a little nervous.

About sitting down with somebody I didn't know, but after I'm sitting down with them, then I finally get to where I'm like, "Yeah, that has something to do with what I've been through." Why should I shy away from going to something that's welcoming to me? There no need in people being scared of sitting down with anyone here at this church. Have a seat with us. Carry on a conversation, you'll see what we're about.

That way, the one's that are putting up with what they're doing right now, just know that it's going to get better. Looking at the painting as an artist, you can't stop that whole process of saying, "I wish I had done this a little bit differently. I wish I had done that there." The overall picture I feel it's strong. I feel good about it, but there are definitely, like when I start to look at it with a microscope, I could go back to that day.

Today is Thursday, September 26th, my 42nd birthday and without any sort of planning, just the natural timing of the fresco happen to fall on my birthday, to finish today. I've really been moved by people's reactions coming in today. Strangers and friends and family alike. It really took a lot.

It took everything we all had. (light acoustic guitar music) There it is. -

Woman

this is something we have to deal with

Woo-hoo! (all clapping) The fact that there is a last day, though, when you seal up the last piece with plaster and that's all there is to paint, it feels pretty good. Wow. The judge for myself was, are the people in the fresco and who call Haywood Street home, do they like it?

Do they feel represented? I think, for the most part, I think people feel honored and to me that's the biggest compliment. As an artist, you do have a power to affect people in a positive way and I think that I will never put that mantle down. (upbeat guitar music) I hope people that come and see this fresco will allow themselves to feel the terror in our own hearts that if we're really honest, none of us are that far away from being on the corner ourselves.

(soft music) If we're willing to consider that truth, that's true for all of us, then our response to the issues of society that ail us will hopefully be different. (soft guitar music) (all chattering) A little overwhelmed, I'd say that's the feeling. Brings back a lot of memories. Hard to believe.

It's amazing. (laughing) Amazing. Wow. Let me take a picture of you.

(soft music) It's weird. It's kind of hard to be immortalized like this on a wall, on a painting. I'm still speechless, but honored. I feel important.

-

Woman

this is something we have to deal with

Okay, one, two, three. (all chattering) (light acoustic guitar music) So gather around people And a story I'll tell About a grand old church you should all know well The Haywood Street Congregation Is soon to be known in the entire nation For doing the job of saving souls With wine and song and buttered rolls You got big ol' Dave on the stovetop And if Mary's in the kitchen The jaws do drop 'Cause everybody loves that mac and cheese Brings the faithful straight down To their knees Spicy meatloaf and crusty bread Precious salad from the garden bed Good fried chicken and salted ham And it's proof that the creator has a master plan See down at Haywood Street They don't discriminate And it don't matter if you don't clean your plate They got a plate-clearin' man Like a machine Clearing all the plates As you've never seen Doing the job with a smile on his face The living embodiment of love and grace