Crayons and Bad Memories Make for Art and Therapy

Black, menacing clouds and swirling winds. Rising floodwaters washing away cars and homes. Floating bodies, dead dogs, helicopters plucking survivors from rooftops.

These are the memories of children who fled New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina, and they are the images the children drew when volunteers at Houston shelters gave them crayons and paper.

The artwork went on display last week at the Houston Public Library, 30 often-disturbing scenes of experiences from the hurricane through children’s eyes. If the funding can be found, the exhibit will go on a national tour next year to raise money for young hurricane survivors and promote art therapy, say the Houston mothers behind the project.

“It amazed me that children could convey their emotions so accurately and vividly in drawings. I had no idea it could be such a release for them,” said Ashley Bryan, one of the founders of the Katrina’s Kids Project. “We want Americans to understand what really happened to these kids. Our goal is to institutionalize art therapy as a response to catastrophe. The mental health of these children is as important as food and shelter.”

The project began unintentionally in September, when Johna DiMuzio collected some of her children’s art supplies and headed to the Reliant Center here -- where thousands of evacuees were being housed -- to work as a shelter volunteer. An activity that was meant to be fun took a sobering turn when DiMuzio saw children gripping black crayons and drawing big, angry swirls, pressing so hard that they tore holes through the paper.

“When I saw all those children pouring out their horrible experiences, I thought: ‘There’s something going on with this artwork,’ ” she said.

DiMuzio recruited friends to donate time and crayons, and the drawings kept coming: a house floating in floodwaters with a person on the roof exclaiming “help us”; the face of a person crying red tears; a scene inside the Louisiana Superdome with stick figures marked “hungry people” and “scared people.”

Janine Schueppert noticed that the drawings by toddlers just learning to hold a crayon were as expressive as the works by older kids. One boy drew a tangle of black lines. “The child said he was drawing how he was afraid,” she said. Another boy, about 2 years old, scrawled black and blue marks all over the page while repeating “Katrina, Katrina, Katrina,” she said.

Reginald Otkins, 15, drew his house as the floodwaters rose and power lines snapped. “It helped me express what people had to go through. What I had to go through,” he said.

The pictures on display at the library were chosen from 600 pieces drawn by the children sheltered at the Reliant Center and the adjacent Astrodome. Also on display is a quilt made from 48 drawings that were transferred to fabric and trimmed with cloth salvaged from the ruined homes of New Orleans quilters.

One of the young artists, Donald Expose, is staying with Bryan’s family during the holidays. His mother, who could not swim, is thought to have drowned when a levee broke near their home in the Lower 9th Ward.

The last time the 13-year-old boy saw her, she was clinging to a curtain rod as muddy water crashed through windows and filled their front room. Her body has not been found. Expose is living with an aunt in Dallas.

Expose attended a performance of “The Nutcracker” last week with Bryan’s family; the day before, he gave authorities a DNA sample so that coroners could continue to search for and possibly identify his mother. He shifts from hope to resignation about his mother’s fate, but his drawings -- precisely rendered scenes of his neighborhood underwater, as seen from a rooftop -- offered a way for him to talk about his frightening experience, Bryan said.

“He didn’t open up about what happened until he drew the pictures,” she said.

Money largely raised through the group’s website, www.katrinaskidsproject.org, will pay the salary for an art therapist.

“Many children don’t know how to express what’s going on inside of them,” said the therapist, Margaret Wheeler. “Through art, they can get it out and start talking about it so they can begin to release what’s bothering them and let it go.”

The art therapy has had an effect, DiMuzio said. The children’s drawings have evolved from dark images of crying stick figures to scenes of smiling suns, hearts and blue skies, she said.

“Those children were drawing horrific images, and then they started bringing me rainbows,” DiMuzio said. “You didn’t have to think too hard about what was going on.”