In August ‘08 I worked in New Orleans with artists and students and people in the community.

As
part of the process, I asked people to bring in bits of ceramic kitsch or other things from home to
make the work and somehow bring histories of objects and the life of objects from communities
into the space and into the forms that we would shape together.

In this case some of the artists brought me to their homes and workplaces. They offered so many
objects that were underwater during Hurricane Katrina. Just take what you want, they told me. I
wasn’t completely comfortable with this so I asked them to help me choose. What do you want to
bring into the space?

This is a chandelier that was underwater for several weeks.

It was under the house of Holis Hannan. She is a sculptor in New Orleans and her house went
through the storm to such a level that most of this very high piece of architecture on the right was
underwater and there are cat claw marks scored deeply into it.

For me, these marks of survival made by the cat over the weeks that the neighborhood was
underwater—she was leaping up there to keep out of the flood— these marks convey urgency.
They reflect something that I sense in the students right now. Marks of urgency infiltrate not just
my interactions in the gallery or the classroom but together with students and colleagues, I am
grappling with how do we move this practice, ceramics and other practices, to be relevant and
part of the way we maneuver survival in the 21st century?

© Linda Sormin (excerpt from “forage/salvage”, a conversation with Vancouver poet, Rita Wong)

Full version of “forage/salvage” will travel to Belladonna: Advancing Feminist Poetics and
Activism: A Gathering at CUNY Graduate Center, Fall 2009