It's been a rough couple of years: the fluctuating number of Covid cases determining whether I'd be able to work from one month to another. Still, with each new season, I strapped on my optimistic headgear and signed up for every festival and market that I could only to watch as one after another canceled.
I watched the same pattern emerging this fall, feeling low and then lower, and then Hurricane Ida spun into being and wiped out the remnants of my hopes, crafting destruction in her wake.
Before the storm, I'd signed up for an Art Series Challenged through the Abundant Artist program which I originally joined back in 2019. As the date for the start of the challeng loomed, I scrambled to decide on a subject for my art series.
It really shouldn't have been difficult. What do I love more than New Orleans?
"New Orleans Fairy Tale: Surviving the Storm"
Since its founding in the early 1700s, New Orleans has survived many devastations: yellow fever, fires, storms, plagues. As a bustling port town, New Orleans thrived in the early decades even as nation after nation passed through, hanging their flags from the poles for the duration.
With the advent of trains and flight, New Orleans status as a bustling commerce suffered, evolving into more of a tourist town with its unique music scene, flourishing art scene, and world class cuisine.
People came for the history, the architecture, the parties.
They loved us until the levees broke and the party stopped, but again, we survived. We rose from the stormy waters of Katrina and we thrived.
Sometimes we may be tempted to pack up and flee; to see where the winds might blow us, but we remain because we love this city and this place. New Orleans might not have been made for me, but I was made for New Orleans.
We suffer, yes, but still we endure.
