Storm in My Mind
By Dwelia T. Haas
(A story to go with the print)

It is hard for me to describe the painting " Storm in My Mind". I have trouble describing it from the viewer's perspective. So if I get some of the placement of symbols in the painting wrong remember I painted this picture from the inside out.
I have several storms in my mind. I guess everyone who lives in south Mississippi has the most recent storm in his or her mind. The storm in the painting was painted after Katrina. The original hangs in my sister in law's house. Katrina gave her house about 14 feet of water where it had never flooded before.
My husband is from Bay St. Louis. His family and childhood friends lost everything. His brother's family became my heroes after the storm. We helped them as much as they would let us, but with God's help they are home now. Everyone I know had a hard time during and after the storm. I had old friends that drove hundreds of miles to see about their families and me because we had no phones.
The painting is a whirlwind. Kind of how my mind was after the storm. The catfish are swirling around as if the are caught in a tornado going in a hurricane direction. The eye is a magnolia being destroyed. The magnolia is the flower of Mississippi and Louisiana.
On the left corner are Mardi Gras beads for our neighbors in New Orleans. Some of the beads were tossed to the right top corner. That means that Katrina moved some of the people from New Orleans to my home Jones County. There are some beads on the left top to symbolize how some of New Orleans residents were moved as if they were tossed to northern cities in Louisiana.
The crab on the right corner of the painting is eating a butterfly. He is a creature from the sea. He shows how the sea destroyed the beautiful gulf coast especially my family's love Bay St Louis. You can see thorns at the bottom of this picture surrounding the whirlwind. This shows how it hurt my heart deeply to see the destruction from the coast to Jackson.
The birds are like my spirit and my son's spirit. We just wanted to leave. We had thought about leaving before the storm, but we did not know how bad it was going to be. The feelings of wanting to get away even multiplied after the storm when we saw all the work we had to do with no running water and electricity.
Everything is winding in the painting. That is how it seemed in my mind after the storm. When our roads were finally passable they never seemed so long and never seemed to have so many curves. A power pole blocked my driveway, so my son and I drove through my yard to get to my mother's house. I had to park and walk some of the way. It was a feeling that I had never experienced to be surrounded by destruction and longing for a hug from the human who loves me most. Oh, how thankful, I was when I saw my mama's face.
There are other things like glass, shingles, nails, a water bottle top, pine limbs and bugs in the painting. I will never forget not being able to put my two-year-old niece down on the ground because of all the glass everywhere. Some of the glass was beautiful, and it was everywhere. Where there was no glass there was love bugs. It seemed after the storm we had to sweep mountains of love bugs up. We knew that people who came to help from out of state would always remember all the love bugs in south Mississippi.

Storm Surge
By Dwelia T. Haas
(a story to go with the print)

Thankfully, I did not experience the storm surge that hit the coast on the 29th. I have heard stories from people who did experience the storm surge. Their stories have kept me up at night.
I saw the painting that I named "Storm Surge" in a dream. The painting that I viewed in my dream is very similar to the one I painted. The one in my dream had more neutral colors than the one I painted. Two different pictures one is a real painting and one in a dream. Two stories told. One story by the people who experienced the storm surge, and the other story of the surge in my painting.
I think that when people look at the painting they can imagine a real surge. When I view the painting I imagine sea creatures such as fish being disturbed. The fish have been tossed in the air and onto the land. I imagine the water becoming a great giant. It is as if reality has been reversed. In reality fishermen toss their nets in the water to drag treasures from the sea. In the surge painting the sea is an organic net that has been tossed on our land to catch everything we think of as being important and dragging it back to sea.
There is a circle at the top of the left side of the painting and another circle at the bottom of the painting. This tells me that the storm lasted all day. The anchor on the right side of the painting being tossed around shows me that even the things that we thought would keep us sturdy is no match for the surge. The surge takes what we think is secure and lifts it away.
The main character in the painting is a pelican. He stands strong with his wings slightly stretched. This makes me think of the people who protected others in the real surge. Compared to the surge those people are frail but for some reason God made them strong that stormy day.

Returned
By Dwelia T. Haas
(A story to go with the print)

The print called "Returned" is a print of an original painting titled "Blue Mardi Gras Crab". The original painting, "Blue Mardi Gras Crab", was hanging in Justduit, a gift shop in Bay St. Louis, on the day of the storm. Katrina took the store and everything in it. She left concrete and sand where there was once a happy little nautical gift shop.
When the storm had passed Justduit's shop owner, Elise Haas, was determined to reopen her unique store. First she got a FEMA trailer and then she started working on getting her store back. She knew that she would not be able to return to the beachfront property for years so she reopened Justduit inland. She added Again to the name of the Justduit store. She hung a large banner outside the store that said Justduit Again Bay St Louis. Justduit Again was one of the first stores to open after Katrina. Everyone that visited Justduit Again that Christmas felt like the store was an oasis from the debris-covered town.
No one knew what had happened to the contents of the original store. The only thing found was one of the store's Justduit T-shirts several blocks from the first store. Then amazingly two little paintings were rescued. A coast resident found the little crab painting and a small magnolia painting and put the paintings in the trunk of his car. When Justduit Again opened the man brought the little paintings home to Justduit. Coated with sand and looking a little distressed the tough little "Blue Mardi Gras Crab" had returned to it's home just like the people of the coast had returned to their home, beautiful Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

"The Flood Recedes"
by Dwelia Haas
(a story to go with the print)

Before the storm my aunt liked to take photos of seagulls sitting on pilings at her friend Charlotte's boathouse in Biloxi. Charlotte lost everything including her boathouse in the storm. During the storm she had to stand in water for 5 hours. Well, maybe Charlotte did not lose everything because she still has her friends. I am sure her friendships will last an eternity.
I tried to communicate that the worst is over in my painting called "The Flood Recedes". I put all the colors in the rainbow in the painting to remind us of God's promise. He loves and blesses us even after the storm. The painting is a seagull holding an oak leaf, like the dove held the olive leaf in the story of Noah. The oak leaf in the painting is from the Mississippi gulf coast's famous friendship oak. The sky is filled with little shapes that make me think of angels (friends from other states that came to help after the storm). I hope that the painting will make us realize that storms in our lives come and they go. They take what we think is important at this time, but they really can not take why we are here. Storms can not take our friendship with the one who created us.