40 Ways in 40 Days: Remembering the Survivors of Katrina (Day 23)

Plaid Adder

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Tue Mar-28-06 07:45 PM
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40 Ways in 40 Days: Remembering the Survivors of Katrina (Day 23)

Edited on Tue Mar-28-06 07:50 PM by Plaid Adder

Day 23, Ways 22 & 23

Monday somehow I never managed to find the time for it. Today, I am suffering from a generalized sense of loss of purpose. For whatever reason, I've just felt bad all day today. Tomorrow will be better, I hope. Anyway, today's entry is going to be sort of uninspired, but here it is: since we just did the musicians, I thought I would find out what the status is re the visual and plastic arts. Specifically, I thought to myself, what happened to all the museums? Did they make it through the storm?

Well, yes and no. The New Orleans Museum of Art has reopened, including its sculpture garden, and are now offering free admission to Louisiana residents. As you can see from their slide show, however, this does not mean they didn't sustain some flooding, wind, and tree damage. The physical damage appears to have been repaired, but the financial damage will take a while to recover from, so if you want to donate, they've still got their Katrina donation page up.

The Southern Arts Emergency Relief Fund--their graphic designers can spell, but apparently their web coders can't--has a list of all the state arts organizations who were pummeled by Katrina, and is raising money to support them.

Also, the Louisiana Children's Musem is not doing so well. They expected to reopen in late April, but their budget appears to have taken a major hit. The Association of Children's Museums noted in the fall of 2005 that "The museum's staff of 40 is now at eight and its budget of $1,700,000 will likely decrease by 80 percent;" at some point, the staff of eight was cut down to four. You can donate directly to the Louisiana Children's Museum or to the Association of Children's Museums Katrina Relief Fund, which will take donations until June and which will also go to help the Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport, Mississippi. So that's way 22.

The artists themselves, of course, could use some more direct support, and that's way 23. Part of what makes being an artist financially risky, apart from the uncertainty of the income, is the overhead. Materials are expensive, even if you make as much as you can from scratch; studio space can also be a major expense. Any artist whose studio was in the path of Katrina basically lost the capital they need to continue their venture. More than that, of course, they lost whatever pieces they were storing in there, which has to be tremendously painful. Artists banded together to help each other out almost immediately, in ways large and small. On the small end, I discovered Atelier Yoyita, a website providing 'gallery' space for affected Mississippi artists. I have to say I'm not too excited about Yoyita's art (although WTF do I know), but I was touched by the story of one Alissa DeAmonti, who, poor woman, was working mainly in glass before Katrina hit--and is now, thanks to the destruction of her studio and its contents, working in plastic, because that's what there's a shitload of on the Gulf Coast these days.

Actually, New Orleans was once the home to a thriving community of glass artists, and at the Craft Emergency Relief Fund website--yes, that's right, there is an emergency relief fund for craft artists, because those kilns don't grow on trees--you can read all about how some of these artists have banded together to salvage what they could from the wreckage and organize the New Orleans Creative Glass Institute, a nonprofit which will provide work space and access to expensive, fancy, indispensible technology for local glass artists. They filed for nonprofit status a couple weeks ago and are hoping to open in April; I couldn't find a way to donate to them directly but CERF is supporting the project financially and donations to them are tax-deductible.

KatrinaArtists is doing kind of the same thing in cyberspace, only without all the kilns and silicon: it's a free space which allows artists to keep their work 'out there' while they try to relocate or rebuild. Some of the artists listed have already brought out work that reflects their experience of Katrina, and I found some of it very interesting--Terrance Osborne's surreal stacked houses, for instance, and Lori K. Gordon's assemblages, including a heavily angel-themed Katrina collection which is featured on her own blog and which by the looks of things has been snapped up pretty quick. If you'd like to continue raising awareness by writing all your thank-you notes on Katrina-themed cards, Kat Fitzpatrick has a set based on ink drawings she's done of Katrina devastation and you can order a set of 15 for $25.

As you get higher up the institutional food chain, of course, the relief efforts become much larger and more impressive. The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston has established a Katrina Artists Trust Fund which had as of January raised $120,000; you can still add to their coffers online. (They ask that if you plan to donate more than $5000, you phone it in instead. DU and LJ millionaires, please take note.)

C ya,

The Plaid Adder