First hand view of Katrina comes to UWGB

UW-Green Bay welcomes the art of Stan Strembicki and audio works of Helena White to Lawton Gallery in Theatre Hall, from Sept. 11 to Oct. 2, to engage students, faculty and staff about Hurricane Katrina. Stephen Perkins, academic curator of art at UWGB, has the responsibility of planning the art gallery. He saw the resume of Strembicki and was impressed. "For me it was a real hit because Strembicki didn't just go down to New Orleans after the disaster but continued to be involved with that city for multiple years," Perkins said. There are different elements to the show, with two main series of works at the showing. There is a 22 photograph documentary of urban landscapes and the damage that was done by Katrina and the flood thereafter. "There are not people in any of the photos, which makes it a very desolate image, and powerful," Perkins said. Nine other works from a different section of Strembicki's New Orleans pictures were photographed. "These are very intimate photographs of the African American community and their families," Perkins said. "Marriage, portraits, children and friends which make it interconnect to work with the desolate, urban photos." Audio works by Helena White will also be available at the art show. A program of interviews about victims of the hurricane and its aftermath will be set up to listen to. There is also a one-hour prerecorded radio show of a female doctor. The doctor was a medical director of a juvenile jail in New Orleans. She talks about how she evacuated the jail, what happened when she helped out at Louisiana State University, and her work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "She's recently been working in Baton Rouge in FEMA trailer parks where people have been living for the past two to two and a half years," White said. There will be New Orleans jazz music and a response board available for students to see. "This is a tender time with hurricane season, with the anniversary of Katrina right around the corner and the threats, recently, of three other hurricanes, this show is just a reminder of the lack of help throughout natural disaster history that communities and nations face," Perkins said. Strembicki is a photography professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He has a long and continuing relationship with New Orleans, which began in 1984. He did a sabbatical there in 1993, where he lived in the French Quarter and photographed it day in and day out. His favorite works are Mardi Gras, nude figurative work and shots of Memphis and the idea of Graceland as a cultural icon. Yet, as an artist, when Katrina hit, he needed to respond to it. Arriving only 30 days after the storm demolished New Orleans, he decided to photograph a little of everything. "If you drive a white pickup truck with an orange hat and a magnetic sign Disaster Assessment Relief Team, the police will let you get into anywhere you would like," Strembicki said. "Therefore, I used this as a means of getting into the part of towns that were shut down." He then traveled down to New Orleans as much as possible for the next year. "I chose not to show anyone any of the work for a little over a year," Strembicki said. He then settled into three or four different themes. One of his main themes from New Orleans is snapshots of pictures from family photo albums, which, "acted as stand-ins for the people who weren't there," Strembicki said. Schools were yet another theme for Strembicki. He found two high schools, two elementary schools and one middle school. All ruined, he wanted to eventually go back to these same schools to photograph them as they were being renovated or with students back in them. The majority of these schools were completely torn down. "It was so overwhelming, as an artist, going into a natural disaster area, and finding a mode of art to depict the tragedy," Strembicki said. Guidelines and rules are needed when going into a natural disaster as an artist. Strembicki used many rules when taking on the Katrina disaster. For example, only places where the public were allowed was where Strembicki engaged. "I didn't feel comfortable, or that it was my place to go into private homes, and peruse items that weren't mine, yet if two of the four walls were down, I felt that I could take pictures from the outside of the home," Strembicki said. White, a speech therapist, involves herself in the show by introducing her audio works into the art show. Some of the other interviews include a neighborhood lady, homeless man, jazz musician from Musician Village in the upper Ninth Ward, and a man who worked in Mississippi. "I interviewed a man who worked with recovery efforts in Mississippi, which also was hit by Katrina, which most people forget," White said. "People are still struggling. The audio works series gives an insight on what is happening now. I don't feel that people realize that even though two and half years later, what people have to deal with daily."