Art for Haiti

HaitiLives.org

I have to do something for Haiti. I feel helpless, as do many of us.But what's the appropriate way to help? What Haiti needs, I don't have. Money. But I do have something that I can use to raise money from those who can afford to give. My art.

Soon after I started painting back in August, I knew I had to use my art to help people.  I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have a house, security, health, enough money, family and friends. It is my obligation to help other simply because I can. I have been looking to connect my art to a cause for several months and now I have one: Haiti.

The first step I took was to respond to an e-mail I received from The Sheldon Concert Hall and Galleries. I am on the press release list from when I filmed there a few times for my site, CultureSurfer.com.  The press release was about a concert which will take place on February 9 to raise funds for Haiti. I asked if I could donate a piece of art to be auctioned off. When they said yes, I asked if they'd like more art from additional artists. I posted a call for artists on Facebook and now at least a dozen donations of art have been made. I am grateful to all of the artists who so generously donated their work.

But now I am planning a long-term effort to raise funds. In my previous post, I told you about Ray, my personal connection to Haiti. But I have another connection to Haiti. I met Rene several years ago when I met his girlfriend who was then working at a local art gallery. Last week, I e-mailed Rene, asking him how he was doing. He told me they had been unable to find out how family and friends in Haiti were doing due to all of the phone lines being down. I can't imagine what he's going through.

Rene created the site, HaitiLives.org. He's an IT guy so he, like many IT people, is volunteering his time to do whatever he can help (I recently heard about someone creating a Creole-American translation site.). So I told Rene I want to donate a portion of everything I sell on NaomiSilverArt.com over the next year to Haiti. The challenge I have is that I'd like the donations to occur automatically when someone buys a painting, so the buyer a) knows for sure that the donation has been made b) the buyer gets the tax deduction (a further incentive to buy). I'm waiting for Rene to get back to me on this. He's got enough on his plate for now, and Haiti will be in need for years to come.

My Haiti Connection

http://haitilives.org/

Haiti is weighing heavily on my mind. I know I'm not alone in this. It's a struggle wanting to stay aware of what's happening with the relief efforts in Haiti while continuing to live our daily lives. How does one strike a balance
between being compassionate while avoiding sinking into a depression? The sheer magnitude of this tragedy (an insufficient word) is unimaginable. Yet we cannot help but imagining it. What if it had been us? By what stroke of luck were we born in a wealthy country and not in a country like Haiti, destitute beyond our comprehension even before the earthquake? We won the lottery of fate, you might say.

My tie to Haiti is personal. About 10 years ago, my husband received a letter in the mail from his friend, Ray, in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Ray had been on a program through the St. Louis Public Schools in which teachers from Haiti would came to observe teachers here. He observed my husband's French class and the two stayed in e-mail contact after he returned home. And now Ray was asking for a letter inviting him to come visit, something required in order for him to obtain a tourist visa. My husband wrote the letter and Ray got the visa.

The first thing that came out of Ray's mouth at the airport was "Where do I get a green card?" We had suddenly been saddled with an immense responsibility with which we felt totally unable to cope. Just like that. Out of the blue. Ray was helpless. He had very little English. He had absolutely no ability to fend for himself. We went to the grocery store & I broke down in tears. But what were we going to do? Throw him out on the street? No way.

Ray was my agen but it was like taking care of a child. Ray would stare into space for hours, not speaking, just sitting there. We suspected he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and probably a large dose of culture shock. He told us that his life had been threatened in Haiti. Why? Because he was educated, which meant he had money. When you have money of any kind in Haiti, you're a moving target. Someone had literally shown up at the door & threatened to kill him if he didn't give them money. So he left. He felt he had no choice. He left his mom in Haiti. Not an easy choice.

Over the next 5 weeks, we took care of Ray. We fed him, fixed up an old bike for him so he could get to the free English class we enrolled him in, and went in search of help for him. We found a Haitian church and attended services in order to speak to the pastor. He promised he'd help yet did nothing. We were astounded. At that time, I didn't have the contacts I now have to the many non-profits that help immigrants and refugees in St. Louis. We had no idea what to do but kept looking. We found a free lawyer who gave us some advice. In the end, we had to send Ray off before his visa expired. Even though this happened before 9/11, we feared that harboring an undocumented person could result in the loss of my husband's teaching license. We had to find somewhere else for him to go.

Finally, after many phone calls, Ray found someone in the US who was willing to take him in. He was in tears as we put him on a Greyhound bus bound for Delaware. We've only had sporadic contact with him since then. We know that for a while he worked in a chicken factory, married a Haitian-American named Noemie (the French version of my name!), and he went back to school. We Googled him last week and found an address so we could send him a card to find out how he's doing, how his family is doing. We are still waiting to hear from him.

Warm Embrace

Here is the the brown paint I was so dreading working with, which was very easy to mix by the way (blue + yellow + red). The paint looked so much like chocolate pudding that now I'm thinking I need to try some of the Belgian chocolate pudding I noticed in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's. I have to admit that I didn't really mind working with the brown because it was such a warm brown, not dark and depressing.


 

And here is the painting. I did, in fact, use the brown as an undercoat but only on the bottom of the painting. It's actually on top of some others layers at the top of the painting. I tend to like to "anchor"  the bottom of my paintings that I do with a straight brush stroke (as opposed to the textured ones which I do with a brush & then my fingers) with a darker color so your eyes tend to wander up to the lighter colors, giving the painting a sense of upward moving energy. I love the warmth of this painting. I call it Warm Embrace because the brown shadows stretching upwards look like 2 people hugging and the colors in the painting feel so warm & nurturing. I'll be looking at this one tomorrow morning when it's -1F outside!

More information on Warm Embrace.

Brown? Blech!

Unless it's in the form of chocolate, that is.

I've changed the way I approach painting. Back at the end of August when I first began painting, I couldn't stop. It was an obsession. I'd go to sleep and wake up with colors floating through my mind. It's typical for me when I begin anything new to take off running out of the gate. Whole hog.

But now I've slowed down, thankfully. I don't have to stress over tearing through canvases so quickly (to the dismay of the lovely ladies at Dick Blick). Now I wait for an inspiration. The inspirations seem to come in the form of a color popping into my head. I let it sit there for a few days, just to make sure it's going to stick. This is how Dune came to be. That flourescent pink got stuck in my brain until I put it down on the canvas. This time it's brown.

Why am I surprised & a bit repelled by the idea of using brown? Because I really don't want to end up doing depressing, emo paintings. There's plenty of that out in the world & I don't want to contribute. I love the fact that even my darker paintings have a feeling of light in them.

But I have learned to trust my intuition to the extent that I can & go with it. I'm thinking tomorrow will probably be the day to paint. We'll see what happens.

NaomiSilverArt.com

Dune

I finally had to move my "studio" up to the front bedroom from the basement. It was just too cold down there-brr! Dune is my first painting done in a combination of room light and natural light (as opposed to the flourescent light I was painting under in the basement). The colors are, well, bright! Just think traffic cone when you look at the orange. Strangely enough, I find this painting both energizing due to the bright orange and relaxing due to the texture & design.

All I knew when I sat down to paint this one was that I needed to get some flourescent pink about the entire edge of the canvas. Then I just went by intuition. I knew I needed to add a slightly new technique as far as creating texture, but it was difficult to really understand what to do. I ended up working the paint slightly differently with my fingers. The end result looks like the waves formations you see in sand in the desert (visible if you click on the close-up to the left); hence the title Dune.

Not a bad way to close out my 40+ paintings for 2009.


For more information on Dune.

Slideshow of my art

Find more photos like this on MySLART.org

For more information about my paintings.