A few weeks back, I added some photos of a piece I entered in a local recycled art show. This piece, titled Paradise Lost, was created in September 2005, right after Hurricane Katrina.

I thought I’d talk a little bit about this piece’s evolution. This is less a how-to article than it is a piece about process, which is why it ended up over here at LisaVollrath.com rather than in the how-to instructions at Go Make Something.

I’ve written in the past about shrine making, and the personal nature of this process. Each artist makes shrines for a different reason, and approaches their pieces in different ways. While my smaller shrines are often created to express brief thoughts or sudden ideas, my larger pieces tend to be the result of some large event that I’m having difficulty processing. My father’s death, or my anxiety about leaving the corporate world and starting my own business have sparked some of my larger shrines.

Hurricane Katrina and the events that followed it were extremely difficult for me to process. New Orleans is not far from where I live. It’s a place you can hop in the car to visit this evening, or fly to in an hour or so. I’ve been there several times since I’ve moved to Dallas, and I was there for a long weekend just two months before Katrina hit.

I have hundreds of photos of The French Quarter and the historical cemeteries from this May 2005 trip. I also accumulated a large pile of found objects on this trip, because I was playing a game with the other photographer who travelled with me—we’d find an object, photograph it, and then I’d pick it up and take it with me. My plan was to use the photos and objects in a series of pieces.

When Katrina hit in August, I know that most of you saw the same images on your televisions that I did, and had your own responses. I can’t really talk about most of this even now, because I’m pretty sure this article would quickly turn into a big political rant. What I can say is that many of the people around me felt a sense of hoplessness. There was also a deep sense of anger. Why wasn’t anyone doing anything?

Like many artists, I started letting those feelings out in my work almost immediately. I did a whole string of pieces that were my way of venting. Paradise Lost was one of them.

One morning, I set out to find a box of some kind. Whenever I start a big piece, I always seem to begin by a need to find a box to hold whatever I’m feeling. It’s almost like I need to get these feelings out, and put them somewhere outside myself. For this piece, I looked through my pile of boxes and containers, and none of them seemed right. I found this old bathroom cabinet at the thrift store up the street, and it seemed right—it was old and sort of architectural, and in bad shape.

I’m generally a take it apart kind of girl. By wiggling and pulling, I discovered that I could take pieces off the cabinet. The mirrored panel in the front was removable, as was the whole wood panel in the back. Once the back was out, the inner shelves were also removable. I started thinking less of a bathroom cabinet, and more of a house or a shop. A lot of the photos of the area taken as the water began to receed showed water stain lines high up on walls, and debris draped over household items still sitting on their shelves.

I started to relate to my subject in terms of color. New Orleans is a strange place for color. At a distance, you might see a building that’s quite bright and colorful, but when you get close to it, the paint is chipped and faded, and there’s often a lot of water staining and mildew, because even without the hurricanes, it’s a wet place. I started thinking of this piece as something that was once colorful, but had been stained with water and mud. To make that happen, I built up the layers—first gesso applied unevenly to tone down the dark wood, then very bright colors applied in uneven layers to represent years of painting and repainting, and finally layers of walnut ink staining.

While the outside of the box was getting its many layers of paints and stains, I contemplated the front panel. At first, I considered replacing the mirror with some plexiglass. I decided to play with the mirror a little, to see if I could do something with it rather than discarding it. I was thinking in terms of layers—that looking at this mirror shouldn’t be a direct reflection, but a revelation of many layers. I sanded off a big chunk of the back coating to give me an area of clear glass, and then worked on both the front and back sides of the mirror. The front got a transparency of one of the French Quarter photos I took. I used this transparency as both artwork and support for the glass.

I applied some prints of vintage photos on the back side, in the clear area. Now, the photos seemed to be floating in space—building in front, people in back. I realized that if there was a mirror here, it had to be broken, so I backed the whole piece with some sturdy board, and in a particularly nerve-wracking moment, I smacked the finished collage with a hammer. The mirror shattered, but the pieces were held in place by the board and transparency.

With the box painted and dry, and the front panel finished, I reunited the two pieces. Rather than using the little plastic stoppers to hold the mirror in place, I glued and nailed pieces of wood across, thinking of the wood panels that people used to cover their windows.

Turning my attention to the interior of the box, I started to recreate the images of the common household things covered with debris. I stained the whole interior, using walnut ink to recreate the dried water stains. I also painted a few things that had disturbed me—some of the messages people had left behind on their homes, and the coding used by the officials as they searched each building.

I thought the items that went into the box should look as though they all came through the same dirty, muddy water, but they should also appear to have been old before that. I did a lot of strange aging of items. I dripped wax over bottles, and fogged glass with acrylics.

I also did a lot of aging of paper with Distress inks. Almost everything I’d collected in New Orleans was already water stained, because it was raining while I was there. Real water stains and age weren’t quite enough—I did a lot of wadding up and flattening, then inking.

I added a ghost to the box by doing a gel medium transfer, and applying it to the interior of the hurricane glass.

I filled the box with all sorts of random items from my New Orleans trip blended with things like branches from my backyard, and spanish moss from the craft store. (Spanish moss does grow wild here, but it’s usually filled with tiny spiders—it needs either fumigation or freezing for an extended period to kill the spiders and their eggs.)

I worked back and forth with the branches, figuring their final placement, and then removing them to add items that would sit behind them. When everything was finally placed properly, I had to gently lift each item, apply glue to it wherever it might tough the box, then reposition it. This part is always very tedious, but there’s something really calming about it.

One tiny, sad arrangement went on top of the box. I really did find this lone baby shoe on the street, and took a lot of photos of it—it seemed so sad. I also spent a lot of time in the Garden District unearthing Mardi Gras beads and photographing them in the dirt. They get pressed into the wet ground during parades, and they’re also hanging in all the high branches of trees along the parade routes.

Making this shrine really helped me get over some of my anger and saddness. When I finished it, I thought at first I would sell it and donate the selling price to the Red Cross, but I found I couldn’t quite part with it right away. For a long while, I had it hanging in the hallway, right outside the door of my studio. This month, it’s finally moved to a gallery, where it’s for sale. I’m finally ready for this box to leave home.