You may not know this, but there’s a treasure in Clermont Harbor, Mississippi. Her name is Lori Gordon, and she sees art where you see rubble; she finds inspiration in devastation. Loris is a painter, mixed media artist, writer, and storyteller. She has also created the Katrina Collection, several collage pieces created from salvaged storm debris.

Like numerous others, Lori lost everything in Katrina. Her home and studio in the small town of Clermont Harbor in coastal Mississippi was completely swept away by Katrina’s tidal surge on August 29, 2005. The home, sitting at a mere seven feet above sea level, was engulfed by the thirty-five foot wave of water that rushed in. Included in her studio was close to forty years of earlier work and countless treasures.

Originally from South Dakota, Lori moved to Mississippi with her husband after seeing the beach and falling in love with the Mississippi Sound. Together they purchased a small home near the water, and both enjoyed their semi-retirement. When I met with Lori, she told me without hesitation, “That was sixteen years ago, and I don’t regret a minute of it. I love it here. This is home.”

Lori began collecting debris about six weeks after the storm. Working early in the morning when the days were cooler, she began piling salvaged pieces inside of a garage in Bay St. Louis. This garage space that she describes as “smurf blue” was donated by one of her friends, and was one of the only structures left on the property after the tidal surge took her home as well. It was also the space where Lori and her husband lived for the first three months after the storm. Her friends still live just down the drive in a barn converted to living quarters and a FEMA trailer parked outside serving as master bed and bath. Lori and her husband have since moved into a FEMA-donated camper on her cleared property in Clermont Harbor, just west of Waveland, Mississippi. She remembers the heat and long water lines following the storm and her need to find some kind of work that kept her mind off of all she’d lost. “This was a psychological lifesaver for me,” she told me, speaking of her new collection.

“We have lost so much. I mean, not just stuff … but all the photographs, all the memories, all the feelings that go with stuff. That, to be able to take something and say, ok, this is no good for me anymore, but to give it to someone else who’s going to turn it into something else, makes you feel like you haven’t lost it all … like there’s something that’s going to remain. It’s almost like an immortality.”

Once she began creating and the word spread locally, Lori began receiving boxes of treasure delivered by her friends or even just mysteriously deposited at the garage. Some shop owners from nearby downtown Bay St. Louis allowed Lori to search their rubble-strewn parking lots for unsold treasures. She told me that 98% of the debris is post-Katrina, and most from the Bay St. Louis area. Amazingly, not a single person who has donated a piece or collection has asked for recognition in her artwork. She guesses that from the debris she’s collected, she could continue creating pieces for another year, and she sometimes holds onto pieces for months before putting them together to create a unique montage.

Always intrigued by the creative process, I wondered, and in time asked, how she decided on each of her creations. Lori described the inspiration she feels when she finds bits and pieces and told me that just that morning, one of her pieces had come together. A month earlier, her interest had been captured by the small, graceful legs of a dancing doll – and I mean specifically legs. Lori herself said that she couldn’t fathom what had happened to the head of the small doll, but she was intrigued with the shape of the legs and intricate fabric bloomers. On the morning of our interview, she happened across a faded black autoharp which she paired with a bit of salvaged wood. Lori is very careful to always ask permission before sifting through any piles of rubble that she happens upon, and this particular bit of wood had been part of some wedding furniture from an 80-year-old woman in Bay St. Louis. Lori had spotted it in a debris pile on the woman’s property and knocked on the door to ask permission to look around. What she got, along with the wood, was a harrowing tale of how this elderly lady rode out the storm hanging onto an oak tree on her property after having swam from a window of her home. Lori recounted how, by knocking on doors and speaking to residents, she’d not only found these wonderful bits of treasure that surrounded us in piles in the blue garage, but she’d also gathered countless stories and tales from storm survivors. In most cases, she’s made a point to gather mostly broken fragments of wood and metals, leaving the more complete pieces to the owners as keepsakes. She’s even managed to recover a collection of six African masks for a friend who had given up hope on finding any of his surviving artwork in the devastation. During some of her searches, Lori has had the voluntary aid of cleanup crews and engineers who’ve helped her uncover both debris and salvageable furniture for the owners.

Looking at Lori’s work, I couldn’t help but notice what I thought was a spiritual theme through several of her pieces. Knowing that she held a Master Degree in religious studies, I asked her about one of her pieces in particular, “Cruciform 1”, which chronicles a famous Bay St. Louis tree right after the storm. Debris and tidal material had wrapped this weathered tree and created a very powerful visual image that had become popular in the area. She told me that she doesn’t consider herself a religious person, but she considered the imagery of the tree and in her artwork to be universal. “[After the storm] We all felt like martyrs. We all felt like, why did this happen to us? … It was like a universal human feeling that’s not necessarily related to Christianity.” Lori had found in her studies that several religions used common imagery, and that those symbols translated well into the emotions she was trying to convey with her art.

We went on to discuss more of the collection, and she shared with me that one of her favorite pieces is “House of Katrina,” an early piece that, to her surprise, hasn’t garnered much interest. It currently resides in a gallery in Minneapolis, Minn.

Despite the success of the Katrina Collection and the need it has fulfilled for Lori creatively, she spoke with me about moving on to other projects. “After the whole Katrina thing is done, I am so excited to start phase two of the Labat Project.” “Labat: A Creole Legacy” was a project of Lori’s concerning Celestine Labat, a graceful centurion who shared her life’s story with Lori in order to create an intricate fabric collage. The completed quilt now hangs in the Smithsonian Institute. Lori looks forward to continuing the project with a traveling exhibit to showcase the collection of Celestine’s family photographs and oral history, collected over numerous interviews before Celestine’s death in 2004. Lori also feels that need to paint again, practicing her technique with landscapes which she feels is still a work in progress.

Overall, there are 170 pieces in the Katrina Collection which can be viewed by visiting Lori’s website at http://thekatrinacollectionbylorikgordon.blogspot.com. The site displays images of all the finished pieces, sold or available. The site also contains photographs of pieces mentioned in this article, including the recent “Harpie Dance” montage with the beautiful dancing legs. If you find yourself in the Bay St. Louis area, you can also view some of Lori’s work, including around 30 pieces from the Katrina Collection, at the Gallery for The Artists at 220 Main in Bay St. Louis. Lori, along with eleven other area artists began this co-op in October of 2005 following the storm. For purchasing or information, feel free to contact Lori directly at lkgordon@bellsouth.net, or by calling 228-466-9253 or 228-342-0877.