05/23/2026
Special Features of the New Toe River Crafts Gallery
One of our first projects together when we regrouped after Hurricane Helene was reclaiming large wooden planks from an old saw mill storage area near by. It took nine truckloads to manually transfer the wood to our build site! The beautiful wood planks have been used on our buildings siding exterior, the interior ceiling beams, the interior trim, tables in the gallery, and the bench on the porch.
Paul Eisenhauer built our front door. We thought i would be nice to have something special built by him since he and his wife, Marian Post let us purchase the land the building is on. It enabled us to start our rebuilding project. The door sunburst pattern mimics the barn door on Pauls shop just outside our window.
The purple "squiggly pickets" on our front porch have been reclaimed from other locations and were made originally by the incomparable post working member Linda Sharpless for the first craft shop. We sanded them, gave them a new paint job, and incorporated them into the new porch design.
The large white shelving fixture in the gallery came from the Bald Creek Relief Center. After Hurricane Helene it was used in their building as a free pantry for people in need of food and sundry supplies before recovery began. They offered it to us to have in the new gallery once it was not needed anymore, and we are honored to have it.
The wooden shelf fixtures in the corners of the gallery were donated by Linda Powell of High Country Ceramic Arts. They had been used for pottery displays during many Mount Mitchell craft shows, and now these beautiful fixtures have a permanent home in our gallery.
We have a bathroom!
The gallery has a water catchment system that draws rain water from our roof, through various filters, and into the building for all our gallery water usage. We are excited about this feature of the building, and thank Michael Minor for helpihg us plan and execute this part of our plan.
The beautiful stained glass in our upper window was created by Mary Allyn. It is called "February 1981". It shows the phases of the moon that month in which both the full moon and the new moon are on Wednesdays. The window well was custom made to support the piece and is an amazing addition to the gallery.
Wood was retrieved from where the shop landed and crashed by Lori Denley who made a beautiful wooden quilt square for us.
We think the new gallery space is very special, and we are so excited to be able to move in. We would like to thank our working member/architect/project manager John Duncan. Without his expertise and donation of many hours of time to this project we would not be in such a beautiful space.
