IDA: BE A RESILIENT ARTIST

In the midst of a pandemic already disrupting lives worldwide, Hurricane Ida blew in to Louisiana on August 29, 2021, exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina. It unleashed the strongest winds ever reported in the state. For many young people in our community, Ida was their first experience of a natural disaster. The confluence of these dramatic events inspired the project idea of being a resilient artist, and has governed PHOAs programming for the past year.

Under the direction of Raudol Palacios, PHOA students translated their response to the hurricane into a musical work, composing a piano trio, titled Ida. The young musicians gave the premier performance of this work at NolaChamberFest in New Orleans, and later preformed in Baton Rouge. Other PHOA musical activities included collaborations with chamber music ensembles from the Cresent City String Academy and Lyrica Baroque in New Orleans.

This piece of music served as inspiration to create the mural. Conceptually complex, the mural integrates both visual and musical ideas. Along with the artwork, the mural includes the students’ Ida composition in musical notation.

The PHOA mural project installed at Goodwood Library includes a series of five 8-by-4-foot mixed-media panels that explore the nature of resilience. Hurricane Ida serves as the organizing subject of this work. Art instructor Jamie Heidelberg and PHOA director Gloria Ruiz encouraged students to use both traditional and non-traditional tools, materials and techniques to explore description of their subject.

Panel 1 suggests an aerial view of the approaching hurricane with a tracking pattern. The artists chose to use strings to show the path of the hurricane.

Panel 2 shows a closer view with the recommended evacuation routes. This routes are represented by colorful plastic arrows glued and stapled to the panel in the direction that cars were moving out of the state.

Panel 3—the center panel—features a swirling Ida with a mirror in its eye. Representing the arrival moment of the hurricane the paper mâché structure texturized by many layers of paint almost seems like it jumps out of the panel.

Panel 4 reflects displacement of residents and the community’s rebuilding effort. Using collage as the main technique for this panel, it contains blue tarp (used to cover the roofs after hurricanes) pieces of wood, violin bows and bridges, mirrors, among other materials.

Panel 5 features an irridescent cypress tree against a golden sky, a silhouette of Louisiana embedded in its trunk. The gold and silver paint used on this panel is accentuated by foil paper and small circle mirrors around the branches of the tree resemble Mardi Gras beads.

The tree is a firmly rooted and ever-reaching network of growth. It is an enduring symbol of resilience that inspire the expression of complex ideas and feelings.