The New Orleans Drawing Project (2006-16)

PROJECT STATEMENT

I lived in New Orleans in the 90s, working with Teach for America and starting my career as an artist. I fell in love with the city and it’s been an important part of my life and history ever since. When the levees around New Orleans began failing on August 29, 2005, I looked for a way to help beyond sending money. It was clear to me that my response would be through drawing, but the form was elusive, and I struggled with how to communicate so much from so far. For months after the storm, I used news reports to make drawings in my studio, trying to put into images what seemed to be so many layers of disaster. Missing from the studio drawings was imagery derived from genuine experience, a quality I value in my work, and the reason I work in the landscape. Eventually I decided to bring my studio to New Orleans, realizing that drawing the disaster meant being among the people and places that had drowned.

When I search for a place to paint or draw, I usually pick remote areas that make it difficult for someone to look over my shoulder, so that being alone is part of my process. Drawing the aftermath of Katrina demanded that I act differently, that I make my drawings a public art project, not a personal one. In New Orleans I planted myself in the street, inviting people to stop and tell me their stories. I needed to talk and listen to those people who share a similar experience, to bring their pain, frustration, and hope into my drawings. Drawing in urban spaces is a social activity that invites the public into a private dialogue with an artist.  

My experiences drawing in post-Katrina New Orleans have changed me, turning my practice of drawing through observation from a personal activity to a political one. Representing a specific place, over time, reveals a breadth of reality that is hidden when an environment is only casually engaged. The question I find myself asking is who holds the information that allows true understanding of an environment, and can drawing give me access to that truth?

PORTFOLIOS (image galleries open in a new window)

PRESS

ART NEW ENGLAND, 2015: Artists as Witness: Documenting the Katrina Disaster 10 Years Later

WORCESTER LIVING MAGAZINE, 2015: Holy Cross Exhibition Reflects on New Orleans

ART NEW ENGLAND, 2014: Jeffrey Marshall, Looking for Hope

TRACEY OLINE JOURNAL, 2009: The New Orleans Drawing Project

ARTSCOPE MAGAZINE, 2007: Featured Artist- Jeffrey Marshall

BOSTON METRO, 2007: Re-Covering New Orleans Through Art

NECN-TV INTERVIEW, 2007

CAPE ANN BEACON, 2007, Drawing on Hope

THE NEW YORK TIMES, AUGUST 29, 2006: Op-ArT: A Flood of Images