2007 Decatur Fine Arts Exhibition!

The Decatur Fine Arts Exhibition is almost over, but there is still time to go check out all of the good work. The closing reception is Sunday, June 3, from 4 - 6p.m.

This exhibition was juried by Erin Dixon (artist who currently teaches at Georgia State), Mark Karelson (artist and founder of Mason Murer Fine Art in Atlanta), and Stephanie Smith (artist who teaches at West Georgia). The exhibit is in the Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College.

I have two pieces in the exhibition, "Daflak" (above) and "Shotgun Moon" (below).

Growing up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, hurricane Katrina was devastating in so many ways. Even though I no longer live there now, my parents do, many of my friends do and it is still where I think of as "home." People who have not been to the coast since Katrina, have a harder time understanding the true devastation. It is hard to even do it justice with photographs. A photograph can only show one frame at a time. This was a disaster that stretched from New Orleans to Mobile. It is hard to conceive of the magnitude of that or how long it will take for the people in the area to recover from something like that. People ask me if things are "back to normal on the coast now." No. People are still recovering. Still rebuilding. Still living in trailers. They are living in what is now the "new" normal, but it is still a recovering process. And the hurricane was two years ago in August.

"Daflak" is my artistic response to Katrina. The base image was taken in St. Louis Cemetary #2 in New Orleans about 6 months after Katrina. The tomb was open and that is a coffin that you can see. (The coffin was also open, but you cannot see into the coffin in this photograph.) To me, this image tells such a story of the Gulf Coast versus Katrina. The skies are threatening. The waters have risen. The tombs have begun to disintegrate, but there is hope. It is no longer raining. The waters have stopped rising. There is a calm, cheerful duck swimming around. Things are going to get better. There is hope! (and we all need insurance!)

"Shotgun Moon" was taken in Cleveland, Mississippi. This is the last shotgun shack, (or tenant house, as my grandmother calls them) on my grandmother's property, and it actually is right next door to her house. Every time I go to visit her, another board is missing, or another tree is gone. One day soon it will be gone altogether, but I am so glad that I have the pictures of it that I do.

I have a daytime image I took of this shotgun shack two years before this one. At that time it had a front porch and an extra tree. I go back and forth about which image I like best! This image is the same image that I won best of show with at the 2006 Marble Festival in Jasper, Georgia!