Baton Rouge ADVOCATE

Washington Watch for Jan. 29

Ex-La. artist tells about storm in paint


Published: Jan 29, 2006

Laura Elkins wanted to do something different when decorating her Washington home for Christmas. Then the former north Louisiana resident came up with a two-word idea: Hurricane Katrina.

The 53-year-old mother of two was visiting the National Gallery of Art when the inspiration came.

She saw the John Singleton Copley painting titled “Watson and the Shark.” The painting’s swirling design depicts a Cuban fisherman under attack.

“It was just something about water flowing through Watson’s hair and I wanted to do something about Katrina,” Elkins said. “I wanted to do a painting as if my house was flooded.”

The result was a two-story painting titled “A Cajun Christmas” that Elkins attached to the front of her Capitol Hill home.
Elkins, who has a degree in architecture, used 9-foot-wide strips of Tyvek house wrap.

She fastened the insulation material to her home as her canvas.

Elkins accomplished the drowning effect she was looking for by painting green and blue swirls mixed with red circles and anguished faces to depict Katrina’s devastation. Then she added a political touch, scrawling the following words down the front of her house:

“They placed the rich on high, the poor and middlin’ they laid low.”

“It almost seems Biblical,” Elkins said of the storm. “The people who were down low really suffered.”

The words, however, served another purpose, Elkins said.

“It’s a way to incorporate sound,” she said. “You read it and it puts sound in your head.”
Christmas lights were installed behind Elkins’ work, giving off a haunting green glow at night.
“It’s a way to share my work with the public who may not go to a gallery,” Elkins said.

The work stands out on a red-brick block of Civil War-era homes in the shadow of the Capitol building.

“The reaction has been positive,” Elkins said. “The neighbors who object haven’t spoken to me in years so the people who respond have been positive.”

Elkins has received support on her Web site from people like Beth B., who has seen the piece.

“I think it’s so amazingly powerful to see how one house would have been affected,” Beth wrote. “It is really just so stunning.”

Elkins and her brother were born in Alabama to musician parents and grew up in Mississippi. By day, her dad was a salesman, her mother a homemaker. She received her architecture degree from the University of Virginia, where she also took art classes.

“I’ve been working with this idea of integrating painting and architecture for some time,” she said.

What has resulted is what Elkins calls “private home as public art” or “HOME wRAP.”

The Katrina piece wasn’t her first project.

When she and her husband lived in Natchitoches for six years, Elkins created in her front yard “The Children’s Room: Why There Are No Great Woman Artists.”

The work included paintings, sculptures and landscaping.

Elkins’ goal is to make commentary about the influence of politics on domesticity.

Elkins will take down her Katrina piece this weekend and plans to sell off pieces to raise money for the Baton Rouge Area Foundation. She is hoping to get $100 per square foot or $25 for 6-inch squares at a Mardi Gras reception she is holding at a local gallery, The Warehouse Theater.

Elkins theorizes that she could probably make more money selling off the piece than she could contribute personally.
Foundation leaders were delighted by the idea.

“It’s wonderful that artists like Laura Elkins are finding creative ways to raise awareness and contribute to Hurricane Katrina relief,” Foundation President John Davies said. “I hope that her example inspires other people to develop unique ways to express their generosity and compassion.”

Elkins’ work can be seen at http://cajunchristmas.blogspot.com.

Elkins sees the eventual breaking up of her Katrina work as poignant.

“It’s kind of a metaphor for the Gulf Coast,” she said. “Everything was torn up.”