Local Artist on NPR

http://thekatrinacollectionbylorikgordon.blogspot.com
http://lorikgordon.blogspot.com

2/12 Hey y'all-It has been a very busy-and productive-three months since I last emailed. First, I was able to move my studio to its new location in an old barn on Pinetucky Road (really!) in the beautiful community of Henleyfield, Mississippi. Although it means an hour one-way commute for me, the simple fact that I have electricity in my studio, for the first time since the storm, makes it worthwhile. What a luxury.This fall, I traveled to Washington DC for a terrific show in Georgetown, and a piece of The Katrina Collection was purchased for inclusion in the Safeco Corporate Art Collection in Seattle. An image from The Katrina Collection was included on the holiday card from the Southern Arts Federation, and the Mississippi Humanities Council again honored my work by choosing an image for the cover of their Annual Report. I hosted a very enjoyable workshop in Ocean Springs, MS recently and was invited to join the featured artists at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, also in Ocean Springs. I began writing feature articles on other artists on the coast for South Mississippi Living, and finally, the State of Mississippi commissioned me to create twenty pieces of The Katrina Collection as gifts from the state to journalists from six Western European nations. The next few months look to be busy as well; towards the end of this month I will leave for a road trip back to the DC area, where I will be participating in a show in Alexandria, VA and teaching a workshop in the same location. From there I will fly to Midland, Texas for the opening reception of The Katrina Collection in their 2007 Contemporary Artist Series. April will see another show in Richmond, VA and in May, Cairo and I will make the drive to Minneapolis for a show at Frank Stone Gallery. In June I will be teaching a workshop for children at Lynn Meadows Discovery Center, and another workshop is scheduled in July in Bay St. Louis. In September, I have been invited back for the annual Art for the Sangres Show in Colorado. In between trips, I have been working up at the barn on Pinetucky, creating a bunch of new pieces of The Katrina Collection. I have just finished updating the website, so please take a look, and if you are inclined to forward the site on to your mailing list, I would be very appreciative. The new work is all posted towards the top of the site. Hoping that the New Year is bringing good things to all of you-

12/11

Hey y'all-
I have finally updated the blog for The Katrina Collection with several new pieces. The past three months have involved so much traveling-Colorado, Louisiana, Washington DC, Jackson, New York City-that I have not had any time to be working on the collection. It's good to be home again for a few weeks, and doing what I love.
While I continue to work on The Katrina Collection, I am also creating small, very affordable (starting at $20) collages created from handmade, hand painted papers and polymer clay. While I have several ongoing series, the most popular collages this holiday season are the works which feature bas relief images of Russian icons. The molds for these pieces were created directly from exquisite bronze Russian icons which are estimated to be two centuries old. The images translate beautifully into the polymer, which I then paint with acrylics. I choose a variety of handmade and/or hand painted papers to complement the iconographic images and include an interpretation of the icon, written by an authority on the Byzantine tradition, with each piece. Other pieces in the series are created around giclee reproductions of painted icons and incorporate ancient text images which I acquired from one of the Smithsonian galleries on a trip to Washington, DC last week.
At 4 pm today and again on Saturday and Sunday, I will be gifting a collage from this collection. Stop in at The Artists of 220 Main in Bay St. Louis and enter your name in the free drawing. For those of you who are out of the area, please visit one of the two blogsites listed below, scroll down to the end and email me the confirmation number, and I will enter your name in the drawing.
On December 2nd, I will be spending the day with my friends in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Lynn has invited me back to Birdman Coffee and Books for their annual Christmas in the Country, and I hope to see many of you there in this most delightful of southern communities. Again at this location, I will be gifting a piece from The Icon Series.
One last note. Our Mississippi premiere screening of The Art of the Storm was very well received. I'd like to remind all of you to visit http://www.theartofthestorm.com/ to purchase one of the documentaries. The film follows the stories of several coast artists as we struggle to rebuild our lives and careers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and at $20, it is another very affordable Christmas gift.
Here's hoping that you all have a great holiday season-
Take care,
Lori
http://collagebylorikgordon.blogspot.com/
http://thekatrincollectionbylorikgordon.blogspot.com/

9/13 - Just got in From Lori

Hi everyone-The feature story on The Katrina Collection is scheduled to air on the CBS Evening News tomorrow-Thursday the 14th. So unless we get bumped, see you then!

Lori

9/1

The last couple of weeks have been a very busy time down here. I am pasting on a few links to some recent coverage of The Katrina Collection. There will be more coming, as I spent yesterday morning with some wonderful people from the CBS Evening News. I will send along an email when that interview is due to air. For now, here are the links-the first is to an Associated Press story which just came online yesterday, and the second is an interview which I did with National Public Radio. In addition, I just returned from a trip to Minneapolis for the premiere screening of a documentary by Watts Up Productions. "The Art of the Storm" follows the journey of several Gulf Coast artists in our efforts to recover from the storm. Please go to http://www.theartofthestorm.com/ for more information about the film. If you wish to be removed from this mailing list, please let me know- Take care,Lori

http://asap.ap.org/stories/834056.s

All Things Considered, August 5, 2006 ·
In Bay Saint Louis, Miss., artist Lori Gordon has quite literally picked up the pieces in the wake of Hurricane Katrina... and is trying to make sense of the storm with bits of the rubble left behind.
Gordon's "Katrina Collection" is full of mixed-media collages that are meant for wall space in living rooms or display space on bookshelves. They're attempts to draw meaning and order from hurricane debris.
As early as a week after the storm hit, she began combing through muck and mud for pieces of her life and the lives of her neighbors. She found a copper frying pan bought in Mexico, smashed flat as a tortilla. She found bits of furniture, the bleached appendages of dolls, scarred and twisted metal, a pastoral sketch of a tree-lined country road turned ghostlike by sludge and mold.
Gone were the coastal landscapes Gordon painted before Katrina. But she began to see artistic promise and peril in the massive piles of debris that remained.
"I started doing this out of some kind of psychological desperation," she says. "I was so desperate to be doing something productive."
She says her series is about "rebirth" and "rebuilding" and "taking whatever it is you have left -- even if you have lost everything -- taking whatever it is you can find and starting again."