JAIME HOLGUIN and DERRIK J. LANG come across a New Orleans artist who's building a wall to capture the vast, intimate destruction wrought by Katrina.
Nice drawers. (AP Photo/Derrik J. Lang)
Napoli ensures this dresser drawer is dressed to impress. (AP Photo/Derrik J. Lang)
Taken separately, condoms, false teeth, hair curlers, nail files, a set of playing cards and a dead bird may not have much in common. Taken together, these everyday artifacts paint a telling picture of a moment in time when tens of thousands of lives were abruptly abandoned and irrevocably altered.
"Sort of like Pompeii," says artist and New Orleans native Jana Napoli.
In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina pummeled her city, Napoli set out across its ravaged landscape -- from Bayou Savage to the Ninth Ward Lakeview and Algiers Point -- as residents returned to their neighborhoods to salvage and clear out what remained of their homes. In many cases, there was nothing left. Just a slab of concrete.
As grievous as it was to see people's entire lives rotting on the curb, Napoli says witnessing the growing heaps of decayed furniture, mildewed curtains, muddied clothes and disintegrating photos was also comforting and hopeful. The debris, she says, was the first sign that life was returning to the city and that the healing process had begun.
As Napoli maneuvered her pickup around the piles of detritus in once-familiar neighborhoods, one discarded piece of furniture common throughout everyone's refuse caught her attention: the dresser drawer.
This seemingly ordinary item was so poignant to Napoli that she spent the next two months collecting about 600 of them.
"It's where we all store our secrets, our heirlooms, our dream, passions and memories," she says.
Napoli is using the drawers to create an installation that will document the vast and intimate destruction wrought by Katrina. Her "Floodwall," which will measure approximately 60 feet by 10 feet, will let visitors look in each drawer and see what's inside.
Like the city's residents, the drawers she collected came in all colors, sizes and shapes, some extravagant and ornate, others meager and on the verge of falling apart. Bringing the drawers together is a chance for her, she says, to represent "in some small way, all the families who have left the city, who hope to come back but will never have their memories again in any physical form."
Not surprisingly, most of the drawers collected by Napoli had things in them that were too wet to keep. Others were already empty when she found them. The most revealing ones contain people's personal items, like the one containing some tools and a sealed orange Trojan condom. Or the one with a washed-out Bible. Or the one with a sewing kit.
Some contain belongings that were given to Napoli by the relatives of those who died in the tragedy.
One drawer came from the bedroom closet of a home on Transcontinental Drive. Inside it is a graduation book from 1945, along with a prayer book. The son of the woman who owned the house gave the items to Napoli as a way to remember his mom.
As she collected the drawers, Napoli noted the address where each one was found. When possible, she documented information about the family that discarded each drawer.
Initially, she says, it was easy to match up the drawers to specific homes, but it became increasingly difficult once Federal Emergency Management Agency workers moved in and began to consolidate the piles of refuge. Sometimes, the closest Napoli could get to identifying the drawers was a street name.
At the moment, the drawers are piled high inside her studio, some in better condition than others. The next step is to get them all glued and restored before transporting them to the New Orleans Contemporary Art Center, which is letting Napoli use its indoor parking lot to spread out the drawers and start building the "Floodwall."
She is currently in negotiations with the Louisiana State Museum to have the wall shown there as part of a planned Katrina remembrance in the near future.
Her goal is to document the history of each drawer. Each is being cataloged and an interactive database will let people access and share information about the drawers.
Napoli hopes her latest artistic endeavor attracts at least as much attention than her highly praised youth arts guild.
In the late 1980s, Napoli gained national acclaim when she founded "YA/YA" (Young Asprirations/Young Artists, Inc.), an arts and social service organization that aims to empower urban youth by teaching them how to become self-sufficient professional artists. In 1999 she was presented the "Coming Up Taller Award" by the President's Committee for Arts and Humanity, and in 2002 she received Oprah Winfrey's "Use Your Life Award."
And that's just what Napoli is doing: using her creative talent and artistic vision to memorialize and bring attention to her city at a time when it needs it most.
When people in the Ninth Ward asked what she planned on doing with all the drawers, "I told them that we were going to do a show in Washington, D.C. -- a memorial for everyone in the city and their loss."
Across the board, they all had one simple request.
"Tell them we're coming back."
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Derrik J. Lang and Jaime Holguin are asap reporters based in New York. Lang reported this story from New Orleans, and Holguin from New York.
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