Photographic Exhibition Features Images from New Orleans Based Artists

The Community Folk Art Center, 805 East Genesee Street in Syracuse, will present “Environmental Injustice and the Artist Response to Hurricane Katrina,” curated by Redell Hearn, featuring the work of Donn Young and Gus Bennett, Jr. The exhibition will be on view from March 3rd through April 21st, 2007. There will be a reception on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. with a special panel discussion with the artists and guest curator. Regular Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

When photographers Donn Young and Gus Bennett, Jr., stared loss in the face after Hurricane Katrina they searched through their emotional and physical lives, assessed the damage and moved on. They entered spaces and captured images and rescued items that were difficult to see, but needed to be saved in order to help tell the story of New Orleans.

Donn Young returned to New Orleans to find his studio and over one million images taken during his twenty-five year career virtually eliminated. In light of this, he began documenting the devastation of not just his life, but the lives of others in the City as well. Gus Bennett documented the efforts of curator and archivist Linda Hill to rescue a collection of African antiquities that were left unattended and deteriorating on a local university campus. She endured the hazardous environment, located the items, removed them and began working to restore them.

For those who make New Orleans their home after Katrina, it is not always easy to find the beauty that has been covered up by the debris of the storm. This exhibition is about three remarkable individuals who chose to help save New Orleans through their individual efforts and are now sharing those efforts collectively; a metaphor for what it takes to live in New Orleans today.

This exhibition will challenge your senses, in part, because we dare to display the images of objects that under different circumstances would be gazed upon with notions of beauty, humor and historic documentation. In this context, however, we are sharing those objects in their vulnerable state, straddling the line, in appearance, of art and refuse. This is a story about seeing devastation, experiencing the pain and moving forward by will and choice.

The Community Folk Art Center will continue its Cinema Thursday series on Thursday, March 22nd at 7:00 p.m. with a screening of the film Robert, Mary and Katrina directed by Marjoleine Boonstra. The film is about how one New Orleans family, led by Mary and Robert Manuel, aged 70 and 72 respectively, survive Hurricane Katrina. Admission to the film is $5.00 for adults, $3.00 for students and $1.00 for ages 3 and under.

For more information about the exhibition and events, please call the Community Folk Art Center at 442-2230. The Community Folk Art Center is a unit of the Department of African American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University. This exhibition is sponsored in part from a grant from the Ford Foundation.