Message in a Bottle: Reconstructing Lives
Documenting Hurricane Katrina Recovery in New Olreans

Exhibit dates: July 26 - September 21, 2007
The Light Factory’s Middleton McMillan Gallery

The Light Factory's 2006-2007 art exchange project is centered around Hurricane Katrina recovery and is entitled Message in a Bottle: Reconstructing Lives.  The project will educate selected Charlotte youth about the devastation and recovery from the storm and will prepare them for a journey to New Orleans, where they will pair with local teens who survived Katrina.  Each group will document their experience with still and moving cameras, the results of which will be assembled in installation form and exhibited at The Light Factory’s Middleton McMillan Gallery.

Charlotte participants chosen for Message in a Bottle: Reconstructing Lives, include filmmaking students at Providence High School and photography students from Harding and Myers Park High Schools.  Starting September 2006, the students will receive instruction on the ecology, geography and socio-political history of the Gulf Coast Region. 

From professional photography and film instructors, students will learn how to create conceptual images that communicate their ideas and feelings about the devastation and recovery from Hurricane Katrina.  In addition, students will interview Katrina survivors learn first hand about how Katrina effected the lives of individuals and families in the region.  The sessions will conclude with a trip to New Orleans for approximately 40 of the students February 5 through 9, 2007. 

Upon their return from New Orleans, the students will create a photographic exhibition and produce a film scheduled to open July 26, 2007, in association with Artifacts of Remembrance, an exhibit which features photographic art illustrating the physical remains and evidence of tragedies created by natural disasters and war.

The name of the exhibit, Message in a Bottle: Reconstructing Lives, is taken from a portion of the students’ finished installation.  Students from Charlotte and New Orleans will individually look for and find bottles in the Gulf Coast area and use these bottles as containers for creatively expressing a “call for help.” 

“The ultimate goal of this project is to give students an opportunity to express and discuss the issues of tragedy and rebuilding through photography and film,” said Marcie Kelso, Executive Director for The Light Factory.  “The ‘power of image’ is not confined to what we all felt watching the news coverage of this terrible event.  The ‘power of image’ is also the profound way that we can use the creative image-taking process to heal.”

Message in a Bottle: Reconstructing Lives is aligned with classroom curriculum for which participating students will receive credit.  The Light Factory’s Director of Education, Charles Thomas created and planned the project concept, and will oversee the educational sessions with Crista Cammaroto (Artistic Director), Jen Crickenberger (Assistant Director of Education), Dorne Pentes (filmmaker and educator), Jeff Passe (evaluation consultant) and Carl Bergman, a fine art photographer and instructor in New Orleans.