Emerging from the wreckage Hurricane Katrina left on the Gulf Coast is a new genre of artistic activism and expression. Artists from the Gulf Coast region are taking the trash Katrina has left and putting it on display at the Debris Gulf Coast Regional Juried Art Exhibition at the Shaw Center for the Arts downtown.
“Most of the art is actual debris and pieces left by Katrina,” said Jennifer Jellison, gallery assistant at the Shaw Center. “This show is about emotion and these artists’ feelings about Katrina.”
The exhibit consists of 22 art works, including sculptures, paintings and photographs.
University graduate and LSU Design Shop manager, Hunter Roth, is among the artists featured in the exhibit.
“At the time when Katrina happened, I was in the middle of putting together a body of work for my solo show,” Roth said. “All of the subject matter that I was working on before kind of transpired into Katrina-related stuff.”
Roth was born in New Orleans but has lived in Baton Rouge for most of his life.
“I was extremely fortunate,” he said. “None of my direct family was affected. I have aunts and uncles and cousins in Covington, and they had trees everywhere, so I was down there chain-sawing them out whenever I could get off of work.”
Roth said he drew from his personal ties to New Orleans, as well as political events, to create a painting in a three-dimensional frame, which is a part of the exhibit.
“I used a little bit of everything,” Roth said. “It was just the mass casualties and the mass destruction, thinking why would you stay versus why would you leave your home – the whole dualism of those two worlds.”
Roth said his work is “very political and deals with the unpleasant aspects of our nation’s history.” Roth said he uses skeletons in his work because they, like history, are in the past and cannot be changed.
Sculpture graduate student Jonathan Pellitteri’s work is also featured in the exhibit. Pellitteri is originally from Canton, Mass., and said his experience in the hurricane differs from those who have lived here their whole lives.
“I have only been here a year, so I do not have any ties to New Orleans, but the city itself was part of what brought me down here,” Pellitteri said. “This is an experience that was new to me, so I was able to see it in a different context than people who are from here.”
Pellitteri said he collected branches that had fallen in this area and in Mississippi for his sculpture. Pellitteri said he used a combination of debris from the river, steel and clay brick to reference to different periods in time and how the earth has changed over time.
“I took a different perspective and looked at different cities back through time which have been destroyed by events like this,” Pellitteri said.
The Debris Gulf Coast Juried Art Exhibition will last until March 24. The reception on March 11 will feature a prize ceremony for the artists and is open to the public.
Roth said it is important to see how the artists of the Gulf Coast region have been affected on a creative level by the events of Hurricane Katrina.
“It is important just to see the whole creative outlet and how is it reflected in the artists and sculptors work,” Roth said. “This has changed people’s lives.”
 
 
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