21 KATRINA CANES: Alchemy of the Falling Acorn by Monique Moss

The exhibition 21 KATRINA CRANES: Alchemy of the Falling Acorn is not only a selection of striking drawings, from a collection of hundreds, created in 2006, by children in New Orleans, to document their real-life experiences during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It is an attempt to articulate the survival strategy of centering how we learn and evolve from tragedy. It is an attempt to portray trauma as an inexhaustible, inextricable constant of the human condition, which has the power to weaken or strengthen resolve. It is an attempt to make trauma visible as a crossroads where each of us must choose the direction of our next step: Defeat or Alchemy? Twenty-one years after Hurricane Katrina, the legal duration of time it takes to be declared an adult, drawings about loss, recovery, and peace created by first through sixth graders at Live Oak School, during a KIDSMART Artist Residency, reflect the delicate balance between emotional, mental, and economic stability and instability. In current times of record increase and record uncertainty in occurrences of natural and man-made disasters, we can look at real life stories of children with incredible creativity and willpower in the face of life-threatening adversity; from Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes in Hiroshima, Japan to Katrina Cranes in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is my hope that, at the crossroads of trauma, the haunting of victimization succumbs to metamorphosis fueled by the spirit of healing, survival, and evolution. Like the falling acorn, detached from Mother Oak Tree, blown by adversarial Wind and lodged into Mother Earth, only to be nurtured by Father Sun and non-binary Rain… From little acorns do great oaks grow.