the end

ha!
psych!


got an email from my friend in LA, wants to put up a Katrina show in March.
ha! not the end at all.
whole new beginning.
I was just beginning to feel like I have only begun to tap into the images this might inspire.
guess I'll be painting when I get to LA too...

last trip to new orleans.

walked around the french quarter with all the tourists.
it felt like tourism. which is good, surely. their first real xmas season since the storm. i imagine it will be a much needed jump. but saying good bye to the city, there is also a part of me that realizes my chance to have it "to myself" is just about over. i know people who live here still feel a certain zombie-ness in the city. everyone still talks about almost nothing but the storm and i still hear locals talk about leaving cause they're too depressed living here. but especially with xmas bringing more business-as-usual, i can feel the city approaching its normal self. and very soon indeed you will have to look very close to see any differences (except, of course in chalmette, the 9th ward, and lakeview. still i imagine in well under 5 years even there will be relatively normal feeling. )

but the 'normal' new orleans is what i've fallen in love with. the storm stuff feels significant and historical and is the reason i finally did come back, but the city as it has always been is what i will soon miss.
i'm sitting in a cafe, on what has become my favorite street--oak street, and reflecting on traffic. the tattooed and peirced youth often loud and obnoxious, next to a dude who could be a homeless drunk, next to some academic looking older woman. today in the french quarter there was an old guy with his white ponytail died purple. not even in venice do you see a white haired person take advantage of the opportunity for vibrancy nature has afforded him.
the gothicness, if that's what you can call it. everything feels old. and has a darkness to it. fresh paint, but there are still bricks and iron and shutters--i mean, the kind that function. and skeletons and cemeteries are as acceptable here as oak trees and trumpets. they are proud of the way they dance with and around death.

and EVERYONE in the quarter rides bikes. all the locals know better than to try to drive there. it was made for horses.
you see more bikes locked up than in austin.
and black people. i'm gonna miss the black people. LA feels so segregated compared to here.

i spent the day walking around trying to take pictures to remember the city by. no image seemed to do it justice.
there were dudes with trumpets on every corner, but without the feeling of the vibration of their sounds...whats it worth?

so i'm sitting here, trying to just absorb as much as possible. maybe i'll actually come back for mardi gras. it's been 8 years.
and there are weddings and whatnot that will draw me back soon enough,
but i am sad tonight.
sentimental. contemplating the cost of rent here. or a purchase. for the future. hopefully the attention the city has gotten this year will attract the right kind of people. creative, energized, open-minded people. not that that's what makes the city rich. and not that i believe very much will change here, but it deserves to be guarded. physically and culturally.
period. end of story. it does.
so says i.

see ya later alligator.

the long road home (second attempt)

So everything is winding down on this project. At least for the time being.
The past few weeks have been about internalizing and then cramming for a couple deadlines that have come and gone.
That's the best explanation I can give for not writing.

Internalizing.
well. it's been a weird but fun process. trying to take everything i've inputted and figure out why exactly it strikes me and then figure out how to communicate that. can't say i've succeeded, neccessarily, but i suppose i found a start.

on Dec. 1 I put all the work I'd finished--a meager total of 4 peices--and some older stuff, photographs and other paintings, up in a tent in the middle of Heymann Boulevard in Lafayette.





All the streets where closed off for the Christmas Sleigh Lighting Festivities, so there were shops open and live music and food and all that festive stuff.
A bunch of our friends who knew I'd be out there stopped by and a bunch of poeple who were just passing by passed by.
And it was..well, it was valuable, even if it only pointed out how much more I needed to do.
Most people from lafayette went straight to my photographs--suppose their exoticism is intriguing, and some people had recently been to that part of the world.
And a few people paused briefly at the paintings, a couple commented on the use of color or questioned the subject matter (even that wasn't clear to some).
Only two people really seemed to get it.
They were two women from Chalmette, who had relocated to Lafayette. and they went straight up to the painting of Mrs. Virgin's lot. I sat back and listened to their conversation a minute before I approached them. And the woman was clearly touched.
She thought she recognized the lot. Turns out it was only a couple blocks from her home.
I think she said, at one point "this is what people need to see."
It felt good. that the people effected directly got it.
so that made the whole night worth it.

but it also pointed out that i was nowhere near communicating to people who were detached.
and that's definiltey one of my goals.


that left me with less than a month left here, and a lot of work to do to get back to LA and get through the holidays and whatnot.
i spent the next weekend resigning myself to move on and finish up the ones I'd started but then start gearing up to go home.

But Thursday night I had one more big opportunity.
I was donating a portrait commission to the Acadiana Outreach Charity Fundraiser on Thursday.
They would display a sample for people to bid on in a silent auction.
I have to admit I saw it as an opportunity to put a painting out there, a way for all of Lafayette's artists and art apreciators to see it.
So come Monday morning I found myself with inspiration. And I spent the next 48 hours painting.
Thursday was the big night, and thursday morning found me still in the midst of it...
but on top of that, puking. yeah. puking. every time i'd take a bite it'd last 15 minutes then i'd puke, then i'd have to lie down, staring at the paitning, then i'd finally convince myself to get up and do something, but i could only last a couple minutes before i started the whole cycle over again.
finally the hour was upon me and i had no choice. i had to deliver.
i knew it was a risk, and a selfish risk at that, and i had a destinct feeling of guilt,
but i had made the decision not to put up a traditional portrait sample, and was thriving on the fantasy of the stir this paitning could cause.
so--i swallowed down some vomit and brought it over to the lafayette convention center.
the whole place was already decorated, it was all this futuristic psychedelic lava lamp stuff.
all the other art was hung up all over the walls and in the silent auction area.
it looked pretty extravagant.
i was nervous handing off the painting, and honestly I gave them the option of it or two smaller portrait samples (tee hee)
but they wanted the big one.

i went home to rest up for the nights gala.
unfortunately, 8 hours later i still wasn't keeping anything down and was too weak to even get in the shower.
watching it all unfold in my head i was SO bummed not to be there. but alas, my body betrayed me.
my dad would call to tell me how it was going and who was curious and whatnot, and i had wnother internal spy who told me how much it bid for--and it actually did pretty well for the charity, so that was a relief on the conscience.
i still don't really know what kind of an impact it had on people,
but...it must have had some kin dof an impact, eh?

anyway, that's what i'll let msyelf believe anyway.
cause now it really is time to buckle down and tie loose ends and get my stuff in gear to go home.
the other home.

and my conclusion is--
to really express the impact of this event, i think i will need to curate a group exhibition.
hand pick peicces that fill in the story.
of, you now, this very historical and personal event.

so. i guess that will be how i continue this once i return to LA.
hopefully with a show here in Louisiana as well,
so-artists, hear this,
if you have something you feel needs to be heard about your experience with the storm.
let me know.
maybe we can pool ourselves together.

tkim@melodicpictrues.com

the long road home

where have i been all your life?
finally ready to tell y'all.
but first i have to go make my nephew pancakes...

i swear this isn't all i've been up to...

i'll post some of my real work by the end of the week.
promise.

i suppose

i have reached a level of momentum where 2 days off is too much.
after 4 days off i worked straight through 4 more at a pretty solid pace, then took a day off, then a second day was forced off by circumstance and boy was i itching to get back to it.
that feels good.
the finishing part is much slower than the starting.
roughing in is so instantly gratifying. i usually never have time to actually finish anything.

and since the progress is not particularly noticable, especially with the small icons, i probably won't be posting as often.

but i will be going to new orleans again next week with my dear friend alice who is coming in to visit for a couple days.
so i may have some new photos and insights from her.

bound to happen eventually

it was hot chocolate.

death in the family

fiona, our puppy died this morning.
i still don't know exactly what happened.
but it's a shock.

on a boat

4 kind of arduous days of relaxation.
arduous cause i would have prefferred to be working.
but it was very nice to spend the time with my mom, and she pampered the hell out of me.

and for the most part any work or active thught i did was...not active. subconscious.
i'm sure my brain was doing something on the matter but, hell if i was aware of it.

the only very relevent thing that happened was that-
my mom was on the boat for a nursing meeting. on forensic nursing.
and the last speaker they had was the coroner during the aftermath of the hurricane.
so-i got to sit in on that discussion.

first off, the lecturer was not the official coroner.
both the orleans and st. bernard parish coroners were missing in action. they turned up days later having had to swim from their homes and offices and no phones or power and all that,
he was organizing emergency medical examiner or something, ambulances.
and people knew he had previously been a coroner so they asked him to step up.
i forgot to write down his name,..

but. 'he' got thrown right into the mix. the dead bodies floating and stuck in attics and homes and the murders and deaths in the super dome and convention center, all of that.
he was responsible for organizing and identifying the bodies.

and since he was speaking to a bunch of nurses who are quite accustomed to gore, he did not refrain from graphic imagery.
he talked about how hard it was to ID a waterlogged body where the skin may have fallen off and scavenging animals had eaten off their fingers and the medical and dental records were all flooded...not an easy task.

well, first they had to find the bodies. the coast guard and wildlife and fisheries and private boat-owners were performing their own search and rescues--this is what we all heard about. governm,ent was way too slow and the only reason most people were saved was cause local people took action--but they would drop these bodies off on the elevated portion of freeway the morgue and emergency people were occupying and they had no idea where they found them. not that it mattered cause bodies floated or when they were alive they swam to higher ground and neighbors hoses and stuff.
but after all the water went down he had the task of going through all the houses to find and account for bodies.

the marks his men made are still on almost every building in the city.
one slash when they enter, one slash when they exit. the top quarter held the date, the left the team ID, the bottom the number of victims found, and the right any hazards.
at first if the door was locked and there was no answer they couldn't go in (red tape)

anywya- you've seen some of the pictures of house interiors i've sent. imagine them with fresh mud and wet and stench. he said every house smelt like dead bodies cause of the meat left in the fridge or whatever. they had corpse dogs, but they weren't all very good. there were some that were invaluable. he told anecdotes about someone knowing their family member had to be in the house and insisting and his men had checked 3 times, but they sent the dog in and in 25 seconds he founf the body. and that dog would follow behind other dogs and find bodies they missed.

this was kind of intense: more often than not bodies were found in the attic.
when they saw the attic stairs open he called that 'the death trap'
sometimes bodies would be tangled in the chords of the ladder as they tried to swim out of the attic when the water flooded all the way up the attic roof.
they learned, when looking for bodies, to look around the vents. people would tend to hang on to the vent cause it was the last place that had air as the water rose in their attics.

how gorey avision is that?

he said families were furious but he often refused to let them see the bodies of their family members.
oh-and he got in trouble for praying over bodies.
and the whole organizing and cleaning and IDing bodies was a very arduous task.
not only all the toxic shite, and difficulty with no finger prints or tattoos on bodies, and then having to
literally excavate the dental records out of mush cause LSU and Charity hospital stored their records in the basement, go figure, and the xrays would com eup blank and they'd have to take photographs of the manilla folder wehre the image was left imprinted,
well, evetually all but 246 of the 13,200 missing bodies were found. and i think there are a little over 100 bodies unidentified/unclaimed and there is still some fear over what they'll do with em cause previously in our history we've done mass graves, but he insists that won't happen.

anthro department helped by identifying the age bracket of victims.
cause of death more often than not was drowning or dehydration.
also heart attacks and deprivation of medicine.
only 18 homicides despite rumors,
but it is true that the suicide rate in NO is up 300%.

also-transfer trauma.
people, especially the elderly, rescued off rooves, bused or flown to dallas or oklahoma or somewhere where they didn't know anyonw, waking up to strangers asking them if they know their name and where they live and...trauma.
people died from it.

and 141 died in hospitals. (i'm gonna interview one of the refugees at my dad's house who was working in a hospital in NO during the storm and 5 days after till they got rescued.
52 dies in nursing homes, 35 are in court over wrongful death-euthenasia investigation.

the rescue people are having bad post traumatic stress now. alcoholism and domestic abuse.
yep.

what else did he say?
oh, he was pissed off at the media's coverage of the deaths. exaggerating and even posing images (he caught one international group posing a maniquin under a tarp as a deade body)
and they had to declair the area over the temp morgue a no fly zone and put up camofluage cause the media was so desperate to get a body count.
and he was pissed off at "hollywood"'s intervention. they just got in the way.

also-"we are an armed community"
EVERYone had guns.
that's something to think about.

not quite a week's worth of adventures to expound.
but...here's the gist.

getting back to lousiana, i spent the night in slydell,
which is on the more exposed eastern part of the north shore, a place i had not visited.
they had a lot of regular hurricane damage from wind and whatnot (my aunt lost 40 trees on her property and had roof damage leading to some minor flooding)
but as far as i could tell life went on normally there after the storm, people moved back into their houses.
repairs and stuff are taking forever due to labor shortages and insurance hoopla, but otherwise...normal.

coming into new orleans from that side of town, though, i crossed the I-10 bridge into new orleans east and...that was not ok.
a whole other chunk ...whole other city, really, to add to the list of ghost towns.
you know, apartment complex after apartment complex destroyed and abandoned.
i saw my first "Help" written on a roof, next to a hole the people had punched through to get out of the attic as the water rose.

i wandered around there a little bit, but could only take so much.

and i wasn't sure what to do with my day.
half of it had gone to escporting my grandmother to the grocery store and bank, and i hadn't done the neccessary prep to work on the painting i should be working on, plus there wouldn't be enough daylight.
so i fumbled my way to audabon park,l for no reason other than i like it.
huge oak trees and old houses and old nice comforting new orleans.

as soon as i parked i remembered that the art museum was there too. brilliant! my subconscious had figured out my day for me.
ok-so the art museum was actually in CIty park, but after a detour around audabon park i figured it out.

NOMA is small by any metropolis's standards, but served my purposes precisely. (certainly not premeditated purposes but it served me anyway)
just seeing fine art was good for me.
kind of grounded me and reminded me that its tangible and real. you know- you put some paint on som eobject in some form of representation and other people find some meaning in it.
and really, that's all its about. no pressure.
heh.
and there was a lot of local-american and lousiana artists that brought that home even more.
in a way makes "acceptance" (not that that's what i'ma fter-hehemn) less intimidating. cause, honestly, ...some of the art isn't very good. but its significant. either cause the person who did it did something ELSE that was good, or...cause tis just significant for one reason or another.

falling into the great AND significant category, i got to see what i think is my favorite painting--rodrigue's aiorioli dinner.
i turned a corner and there it was and i think i gasped and .. savored. its so much better in person. gave me more respect for him for sure.

but the thing that was most productive about the afternoon was seeing the other katrina art.
there were 6 peices.
4 as part of a preview for an exhibit that will be there next november. rolland golden.




he's a local artist who has been well known for paintings of new orleans, and is, aparantly, one of the first fine artists to take the katrina subject public in the non-craft art world.
(they sell all kinds of memorabilia type art--glass houses with blue rooves ((for the tarps)) and...all sorts of folky type art)
his paintings were fairly literal.
people reacting to the flooded city.
very powerful images, well composed and executed, but very literal.
which is the thing i'm struggling with with my own stuff.

and there was one lovely landscape. of a 9th ward block.
i think that one was phil sandusky. and i liked the way it was painted. a little more loose, impressionaistic.
and one photograph.

so-gave me a nice sense of perspective before is et off on 4 days of forced reflection.
on a boat with my mom. no work.

mississippi pictures