Last October, a fire tore through artist Sarah Helser’s South Charlotte home. Her husband and four boys were safe, but the interior, which housed her art studio, was devastated by smoke and water damage. Her tools, materials and works in progress were gone in an instant.
As smoke poured out of the house (likely due to a candle left burning in the bathroom), Helser’s 16-year-old son was able to run into the studio’s outdoor entrance to grab a few of her unfinished pieces. A small win, but it certainly mattered.
Then, as Helser surveyed the damage a few days later, she came across her art journal, still intact, with a sticky note on the cover she’d written just days before. It quoted A Wrinkle in Time author Madeleine L’Engle: “In the creative act, I can experience the same freedom I have in dreams…but this freedom comes only when, as in a dream, I do not feel that I must dictate or control what happens.”
It was another small win, but perhaps even more symbolic. Helser wrote it to set an intention ahead of her week in the studio. As she sifted through the wreckage, it read like a guide for the days ahead.
“I thought, ‘I cannot control what happens, but I’m going on an adventure now,’” she says. “It released me in a strange way.”
By then, Helser had already built a 20-year career as a successful fine artist. She left UNC Greensboro during her junior year in 2005 to move to Charlotte and pursue art full-time. She avoided the starving artist trope and landed her first solo show at The Art Preserve. After that, she says, “I bounced around from different galleries, and I’ve done a solo exhibition about every 14 months since 2006.”
Helser spent 13 years at the Hidell Brooks Gallery in South End until last March, when she decided to venture out on her own.
“I had a year of commissions booked out, but I felt like I needed to take a risk and step out on my own,” she says. “It felt like a transition in my work was coming.”
Her work combines a mix of materials and techniques. Each piece begins with a wood panel coated in hot beeswax, a process known as encaustic. Next, she layers it with mixed media.
“That can be anything and everything,” she says. “Oil sticks, coffee grounds, gold leaf, spray paint. I create a lot of stencils. I take branches or leaves to print down into the image.”
Her paintings are anchored by a realistic image, like an animal, a portrait or still life. The background is where she experiments with the abstract.
“I love the mix between realistic and dreamy—I’ve described (my work) as waking from a dream,” Helser says. “There are realistic pieces, but they're not grounded, and anything can happen.”
After last fall’s fire, both Helser and her husband had to find new workspaces. He is an art installer and framer who worked from a studio on their property. She turned to Instagram for leads on a new space, and photographer Amanda Anderson quickly messaged her back. Anderson was leaving her studio inside Dilworth Artisan Station and looking for a new tenant.
“It was the most beautiful space I’d ever seen,” Helser says. “It felt like a huge jump with everything going on, but I knew I’d regret not trying this. So I said yes, got two bags of art supplies, and moved in on January 1.”
Her focus now is filling the expansive walls with new work. “I came in here with one painting, so there’s a lot of empty space,” she says.
Most days, Helser heads to the studio at 4 a.m. for an hour of journaling and sketching before she gets to work on her new series.
“These are medium-sized but would have been large for me at my old studio,” she says. “I needed the scale to make sense here. I’m about to embark on some really big statement pieces that I’ll spend a few months on each. My husband might have to put in a bigger door for me.”
Their family is living in a long-term rental while their house gets rebuilt, but Helser isn’t dwelling on what they lost. The only items that could be saved, she says, were a metal stool and a box of plates.
“I’m letting go, and letting life and art lead the way,” Helser says. “This experience of loss freed me to allow my creative mind to lead me a little more. Now I’m at the beginning of something I never would have imagined for myself...”
“It was like the shedding of everything, and it felt representative to me,” she continues. “When you’re making a big move, you feel the weight of everything you’re maintaining. On a deeper level, it gave me the courage to step out. I typically don’t take risks, but this gave me that courage.”
“I cannot control what happens, but I’m going on an adventure now."
“I’m letting go and letting life and art lead the way. Now I’m at the beginning of something I never would have imagined for myself.”