After the July 2016 tragedy, women of Main Street share their stories
Gallery owner Robin Holliday threw her weight against the water
Text by Halima Aziza and Amanda Loudin Photography by Mary C. Gardella
December 2016/January 2017
Art runs in Robin Holliday’s family. “My grandmother was an artist,” says Holliday, who lived with her grandmother when she was a small child. Holliday began collecting at age 20, and when she met her husband, 
Max Crownover, she told him on their first date that she wanted to open an art gallery. That was 10 years ago, and Holliday, who had a degree in nuclear engineering, was working at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She opened Horse Spirit Arts, LLC, at 8090 Main Street, three years later, in 2015, and showed the work of more than 40 artists. (Horse Spirit Arts also supports LeCheval Stable, a nonprofit organization in Glenwood that provides therapeutic riding to those in need.) While Holliday’s leap from scientist to gallery owner may seem extreme, it is in keeping with her own spirit.
And it was her spirit – with a little help from her friends – that got her through the months following the disaster.
Like other Ellicott City merchants, Holliday has experienced an outpouring of support. Her GoFundMe page (gofundme.com/2hsvw3g) had raised close to $20,000 by early September.
And Holliday’s friends in the dance fitness world (She is also a fitness instructor.) held a dance fundraiser and collected $2,500 in just two hours. “All the people who hugged me and said, ‘We’re with you,’ moved me,” she says. “I’ve never felt so loved in all my life.”
On Saturdays, Holliday typically kept the gallery open until 9 p.m. The night of the July 30 flood, four friends
had stopped by, and when the rain picked up, they decided the downpour was too heavy to go home. Holliday suggested a bottle of wine to pass the time.
She began to worry when the flag in front of the shop dislodged from the 
brick. When she went outside to get it,
Holliday noticed the river flowing down the street and came back inside to find water seeping under the door.
“We tried to block it with paper and bubble wrap,” she says. For the next 20 minutes, Holliday’s friends helped her to ferry artwork upstairs. But the water soon rose too high.
Holliday says her fight-or-flight instinct gave her the strength to keep the front door closed by leaning against it. As she struggled with the door, she says, she saw something she’ll never forget. She watched as the water pushed a car onto its side. She could see a woman in the driver’s seat. “I can’t imagine how she made it out.”
When the water level reached her chest and shattered the glass in the 
gallery door, Holliday realized that the flood had won. She finally gave in to her friends’ pleas to join them upstairs, where she watched the water rise to just below the second story.
After the flood had taken its course, Holliday calculated that she had lost nearly $60,000 in art. Her insurance company would only cover $2,500 of missing or damaged art. The artists Holliday represents trekked through mud and sewage to help clean and catalog any remaining, salvageable pieces.
Holliday’s landlord, Don Reuwer, has made substantial repairs and upgrades to the gallery space, including renovating floors, HVAC and drywall.
The Horse Spirit website has added online sales, so the shop has continued to sell art while the building was renovated. After getting the gallery keys in September, Holliday began to gear up for the November reopening, in time for the holidays. “I think it will be a rocky start, but I’m gonna bend my knees and ride the wave on the board.” Now that’s spirit. *
– H.A.
