On the Scene: Art's Healing Powers in Tornado-Ravaged Tuscaloosa

 

I wasn't planning to do any “On the Scene” reporting until I move to Chicago. After all, I’m living in Tuscaloosa, AL for the summer and the market is not exactly a major one. However, I was watching “Parks and Recreation” on Netflix the other day and changed my mind. This piece is much longer and more personal than I foresee any future piece in Chicago being. You see, in the episode Pawnee’s local government was having a murals contest, and Tom Haverford is talking about a particular piece of abstract art when he says in a very shocked tone, "A piece of art caused me to have an emotional reaction. Is that normal?" I laughed, and I loved that Parks and Rec poked fun at ignorance over art. Of course it is supposed to make you feel something! A recent tragedy in Tuscaloosa has made us feel all sorts of things, and naturally art intertwined with that.

April 27^th is a date that will stick in the minds of those of us who live in Tuscaloosa, AL for a long time. I was working in Atlanta then, and when I first heard there was a tornado in Tuscaloosa county, I wasn’t very panicky. Tornado warnings are a fact of life during Alabama springs.  Then I saw a warning it was coming straight toward downtown and the University of Alabama. There were photos of the largest tornado I’ve ever seen just behind the downtown buildings. There was video of what looked like the tornado making its way toward our mammoth football stadium… and the stadium looked dwarfed. I was officially panicking now. The cell phone towers were down, information regarding what was destroyed was coming in, and very gradually I was able to get in touch with family and close friends.

With my biggest fear out of the way, I started going over the photographs being produced. I was in shock as I looked at pictures of ruins where buildings once were and at pictures of a child being pulled out of the rubble or a grandmother comforting her granddaughter as they sat on a mattress where their house once stood. We’re used to tornado season, but tornadoes usually graze along the south side of town. They never just come straight up the middle, decimating neighborhoods, apartment complexes, and high traffic areas of Tuscaloosa. They also never range from half a mile to a mile in width. I couldn’t go back home for over a week, and so instead I turned to the photographs and narratives coming out to try and wrap my head around the fact that this actually happened. An article from Sports Illustrated was surprisingly emotional and shocking to me. Seeing a tough Crimson Tide football hero standing outside of the rubble that was his house (Javier Arenas… or as I exclaimed when I saw it, “Javie!”) or reading the narrative of a baseball player who had barely made it into his tub and under a mattress in time, only to later join with his team to help a mother of a UA student find a white dress amongst the debris so her daughter could be buried in it, brought me to tears. The town was initially filled with the shock and grief over the tragedy, and the photographs and narratives reflected that.

I’m very proud of how quickly the mood shifted to nostalgia and hope. News stories reported on it, and art reflected it. There is “Tuscaloosa Runs This,” an e-book compilation of poetry and prose written by Tuscaloosa writers about the town before and after the tornado. In the introduction, Brian Oliou really captured the feeling of the city when he said,

After the tornado, “Tuscaloosa Runs This” became a rallying cry amongst friends involved in the recovery process.  In one sense, when everything happened we didn’t know what to do, but we knew that we needed to do something.  And so, we played to our strengths—our counseling, our writing, our ability to haul, to swing an ax.  As a result there was a lot of attempts:  some more successful than others, but attempts nonetheless.  The works in this anthology are attempts (essays, Montaigne would call them) to capture what it is we love about this city and what it means to us to repair and rebuild our home. The quality of the people of Tuscaloosa is only matched by the quality of their writing.  Here, we have some amazing work from amazing people—all with our city on our minds and in our hearts. 

Some of the selections made me laugh and some broke my heart. Josh Tucker’s “For the 15^th Street Taco Casa” does both as he goes into the history and love of fast food chain Taco Casa in Tuscaloosa. I remember being horrified when I saw a tweet that the original one on 15^th Street was destroyed in the tornado. How many times did I beg for a Taco Casa stop growing up? Why am I getting emotional over a building? I would just be providing a long list if I mentioned every story that made me feel pain about the destruction of such a huge chunk of Tuscaloosa. (However, I will mention Jason McCall’s three pieces. Three months later, with most of 15^th Street leveled so we can start the rebuilding while so much still looks like a warzone, and his work still makes my chest feel tight. Three months later, and Barry Grass's "Smoke" and Katie Jean Shinkle's "Time & Space in Tuscaloosa, Alabama" bring tears to my eyes.)  “The Storm, in Fragments” by Andrew Grace is absolutely fantastic for all non-Tuscaloosans to understand our feelings. The first bit really captures a uniqueness Tuscaloosa has despite its central location in the Heart of Dixie:  "the non-Southerner’s Southerner." His accounts of hiding in the closet during the tornado, seeing the total destruction, and then the community’s reaction directly after really cover all the stages of the tragedy. The feeling in the pieces and the project itself made me proud of Tuscaloosa. Yes, art was making me feel all sorts of emotions regarding the tornado.

Recently Kentuck Art Center, home to local Tuscaloosa and Northport area art, held an exhibit of art inspired by the tornado. “April 2011: Turmoil and Transcendence” contains photographs, paintings, sculptures, art created from debris, and other visual art inspired by the tornado. These pieces can be bought and some are on silent auction, with 80 percent of proceeds going to United Way of West Alabama for tornado relief. So many of the artists attached stories to their pieces to explain the person or area in the piece, or to describe their own experience. So many of the artists survived the storm themselves. I couldn’t be in Forest Lake or Alberta or Crescent Ridge, but the art made me feel their pain and be in awe of their resilience despite this huge struggle. The human will to survive and thrive, the town’s desire to rebuild and be stronger than ever is documented, from Henry Busby’s photographs to Jessica Patterson's pop up book that states that “Everything will be ok.” Holt Elementary, a school that serves an area devastated by the storm, teamed up with their Adopt-A-School Partner, the Junior League of Tuscaloosa, to create art that could help the students heal. The Junior League brought in an art therapist for the event, and many murals and pieces were created. “heArt for Holt,” a mural of hearts painted by the students, was entered in “April 2011: Turmoil and Transcedence.” Thanks to these projects, I was feeling more and more okay. (Note: If you click the hyperlinks for these works and go through the set, you can read the stories attached to the work. To quickly view a large amount of the work displayed, just view the slideshow below.)

So yes, art makes you feel. It should make you feel. It can make you feel you were there and feel the feelings of the artist. In my case, and the case of so many others in my broken hometown, it can make you heal. You relate to what the artist is feeling or you take your own history and beliefs and pull something out that touches you, something you need. In the beginning, I needed proof. I needed to see the horror. It didn’t seem real and I needed to see photos because the McFarland Blvd/15^th Street intersection was unrecognizable, despite it being an area I saw almost daily growing up. I hated that I couldn’t be there, and I needed to see and hear and feel what the Tuscaloosans were feeling. Next, I needed the closure and the hope. As I read prose and narratives of the human will to survive and the human instinct (it can’t just be a Southern thing) of hospitality and helping your neighbor, I felt hope and pride and, as a result, I felt healed.

When you look at these photographs or paintings or other creations, and as you read the narratives you can see how the art healed the artist. Andrew Grace admits that he cried for his neighborhood, the trees that were gone, the lives that were lost, and because “the way things used to be, the way things used to look and sound, [was] gone forever.” Henry Busby attached background stories to many of his photographs, and in one he expresses the frustration of not understanding how the tornado could carry and drop a porcelain dish full of lasagna, leaving it intact, but not give the same courtesy to the broken bodies and houses. It allowed them to get the emotion out, to understand how such a terrible thing could happen on an unsuspecting April afternoon, how buildings full of memories could be reduced to cement slabs, how 65 lives and a 5-7 mile stretch could be decimated. Seeing their frustration and hurt only makes you feel more connected to their work.

Tornadoes killed 249 people in Alabama that day, and healing was needed. Thank you to the artists in “Tuscaloosa Runs This” and “April 2011: Turmoil and Transcendence” for taking us along with you in the journey to recovery. Thank you for giving us the words we couldn’t find when trying to describe how we’re coping or what it is like, and thank you for giving us the photographs, films, and other visual arts we need when words couldn’t even capture it all. Thank you for reminding us in a time of economic uncertainty where arts are being cut right and left (because it always comes back to the economy, right?) how important art is in our lives. Thank you for creating art that makes people not only “feel something” but feel many things.

T-Town Never Down!