An emerging fresco artist caps years of study and preparation as he completes his first major commission, at a downtown Asheville mission serving the homeless.
John Warner, Warner Photography
Main Image: Christopher Holt holds a sketch that will contribute to the fresco. Inset: Christopher Holt’s deft hand at work.
Christopher Holt has been traveling a long and winding road right back to his starting place: hometown Asheville, North Carolina.
Today, 41 years old and just reaching his prime as a fresco artist, he has begun the final stage of his first major commission: a nine-foot by 23-foot fresco in a United Methodist Church mission called the Haywood Street Congregation, which serves hundreds of homeless or otherwise uprooted people every day.
As of May 2019, Holt had begun the most thrilling part of the fresco process: painting with specially mixed colors onto a wet plaster surface a quarter inch thick or less. Getting to that point took months—years—and involved building a thick, rough plaster wall mounted within a metal frame as a foundation and also drawing dozens of portraits from life for the larger composition.
Now, painting up to 12 hours a day as each new section of finish plaster dries, he has a team of assistants to mix and apply the plaster, outline each drawing onto the wall, mix pigments, and manage tools. It’s mentally and physically grueling work—like performing a 12-hour surgery—with the artist trying to control a range of variables.
By late August, after 60 painting days, this new fresco should be complete: a painted-from-life depiction of Jesus’s sermon of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor….”
Fresco—painting with water-soluble pigment on moist plaster—freezes a scene in time. The chemical bond formed between the pigments and the drying plaster makes the color part of the wall…for countless generations to come. Around the world, frescoes dating back thousands of years still have their vibrant colors and human stories intact.
Reaching the painting stage has taken Holt eight years, since he first became involved with Haywood Street Congregation and its founding pastor, Brian Combs. Together the two men formed a creative and spiritual partnership that gave birth to the fresco. In the time Holt has been active at Haywood Street Congregation, he has gotten to know hundreds of the daily visitors by name and life story...
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The excerpt above is from our May/June 2019 issue. For the rest of the story, and more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you!