SPARTANBURG, S.C. – An artist is turning trees felled by Helene into bowls that both commemorate the tragedy and honor the resilience of people affected by the historic storm.
For Aaron Harris, a retired teacher and a third-generation woodturner at Turning for Home, the impacts of Helene were personal when it wreaked havoc in September 2024.
The storm downed trees, destroyed homes and knocked out the power for over a week in his town of Spartanburg, South Carolina.
FILE: A tree crushed a vehicle as Hurricane Helene passed through South Carolina.
(Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
More tragically, a dear friend of Harris was among the 250 people who died in the terrible storm.
“One of my teachers that I taught with was like a daughter to me,” Harris said. “Anna Maria Fletcher was killed by a tree that fell on her bedroom.”
HELENE DAMAGES OVER 800,000 ACRES OF NORTH CAROLINA FORESTS
This immense loss helped inspire Harris to turn his art of woodturning – the craft of using a lathe to carve an object out of a piece of wood – into something that could help heal his heart.
“Sometimes beauty comes from pain,” he said. “One of the ways I process stuff like that is working at my lathe and trying to create beauty out of destruction and pain.”
That beauty came in the form of “storm bowls” – handcrafted wooden bowls carved out of trees brought down by Helene.
Most of the storm bowls are carved from pieces of black walnut. Wood from this tree is one of the rarest and most coveted of native hardwood trees, according to the USDA.
The storm bowls Harris carves showcase the unique lines and colors of every piece of wood from which they come.
Harris at the lathe.
(Aaron Harris / Turning for Home Woodturning / FOX Weather)
Aside from the organic beauty of the wooden bowls, Harris said what also speaks to people who see the pieces is the story behind them – strength in the face of tragedy.
“Mountain people are resilient. We survive because we have to,” Harris said. “(Helene) taught us that, in tragedy, we can find something in ourselves that maybe we didn’t know was there and make something beautiful out of it.”
To learn more about storm bowls and to see more pieces carved by Harris, check out his online gallery on Instagram.
