Art Lies, Volume 58, Summer 2008 Page: 67
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How do artists respond to calamity? In New Orleans, in the almost three
years since Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee breaks of August
and September 2005, many resident artists-and a number of artists
observing from the outside-have been moved by the still-urgent need for
individual and community relief and recuperation. Redirecting their work
from whatever investigation had meaning before to address these now
long-term and persistent social and spiritual concerns, artists who had
never engaged in community arts activities joined others who are masters
at group organization and collaboration in a citywide, overlapping web of
caring creative production. Whether through the commissioning of new
cultural experiences that provide public forums for discussion and reflec-
tion, the inauguration of creativity workshops to provide encouragement
for young people, the foundation of long-range planning vehicles to pre-
pare for and respond to change, or simply the creation of works of art that
attempt to chronicle and interpret the experience of catastrophe, artists in
New Orleans have proven to be valiant forces in the recovery of commu-
nity-wide health and the forging of a future metropolitan vision.In Katrina's Wake, on view at the Blanton Museum of Art at the
University of Texas at Austin from February 16 to May 25, 2008, featured
film and video, drawings, photographs and mixed-media works, as well
as presentations of artist-initiated community projects by artists and cre-
ative entrepreneurs Luis Cruz Azaceta, Carol Bebelle and Douglas Redd,
Ron Bechet, Willie Birch, Jacqueline Bishop, Paul Chan, Dawn Dedeaux,
Jan Gilbert, Jana Napoli and Rondell Crier, Kalamu ya Salaam, Cauleen
Smith and the Transforma/New Orleans Resource Team (Rick Lowe,
Jessica Cusick, Sam Durant, Robert Ruello and MK Wegmann). In addi-
tion to works of art, documentary videos, audio recordings and descrip-
tive texts, a resource table was central to the framework of the exhibition,
offering archival materials, a computer with links to relevant websites and
binders of related readings.
The concept for the show developed over several years as I struggled
with my own feelings of frustration and helplessness during the disas-
ter, and what I've since come to view as a kind of survivor's guilt. I lived
in New Orleans from 1989 to 1993, working as Executive Director of the
Contemporary Arts Center, a Warehouse District-based alternative space
that had been founded in the mid-1970s and that produced vital, artist-
curated programs in visual arts, theater, music, performance art and edu-
cation.' But when Katrina hit, I hadn't been to New Orleans for a couple of
years. I watched the news reports as we all did, horror-struck and dumb-
founded at the incompetence and avoidance that attended the city's plight.
Despite serving in a number of small, hopefully helpful capacities over the
next weeks and months, my engagement felt negligible. And I couldn't
believe the tales of displacement I was hearing from friends: while many
suffered only minor losses, quite a few lost entire homes, studios, librar-
ies, most of their creative output, the records of their lifetimes.
I finally tapped into my inner lapsed Catholic and realized I wouldn't
feel satisfied with my efforts until I got my body into it-I needed to go to
New Orleans and labor in the city's painfully slow reconstruction efforts. I
asked my teenage son to work alongside me, and as it turned out, we ended
up guiding a whole busload of high-school art students and their teachers
on a service trip to New Orleans in April 2007. We tore down a house in
Chalmette (a white, working-class town just east of New Orleans that was
completely destroyed by floodwaters) and, back in the city, toured recon-
stituted art venues as well as neighborhoods that had once held important
family landmarks-now vanished. And we visited with a few of my artist
friends to show the kids how artists were faring after the storm.67
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Staley, Tim & Gupta, Anjali. Art Lies, Volume 58, Summer 2008, periodical, 2008; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth228023/m1/69/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .