Embedded in the Earth Manual Project – This Could Save Your Life — an exhibition featuring design responses to disaster preparedness — on view in the Sheila C. Johnson Center’s Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery, Home is Where the Heart Is explores local artists’ reactions to Hurricane Sandy.

As we approach the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, an interdisciplinary group of artists have come together to create a project that poetically responds to place and displacement in the face of ecological disaster.

Co-curator and participating artist Andrew Cornell Robinson recovered a dollhouse from his family’s home in a community devastated by Hurricane Sandy. The watermarks still visible on the stained wallpaper mark the receding ocean and are evidence of the loss of life and the destruction of whole communities. This miniature edifice serves as a palimpsest for each of the participants who have been randomly assigned a room to transform. The melancholy history of this relict is subdued by the balm of optimism sparked by the creative responses of this group of intergenerational and cross-disciplinary cultural producers. They include sculptors, painters, printmakers, architects, curators, illustrators, fashion designers, ceramists, photographers, a poet and filmmakers, each of whom respond to this space by creating something new from the wreckage of the past.

From October 22-29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy moved up from the Caribbean into the Northeastern seaboard and into Canada resulting in at least 147 deaths, according to the National Hurricane Center. The death toll in the United States directly attributed to Sandy includes 48 people in New York, 12 in New Jersey, 5 in Connecticut, 2 in Pennsylvania, and 5 in other states. One person was killed in Canada. The storm is directly related to the death of 54 people in Haiti and 11 people in Cuba.

Several of the artists participating in this project were impacted by the storm: studios and galleries were flooded, homes were washed away by the storm surge, and one home caught fire after the flood waters rose, burning down a succession of homes on one block in Brooklyn. All of this pales in comparison to the increasing impact of ecological disasters that we face today, including that of Hurricane Maria on September 18, 2017, which devastated the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico leading to the death of 2,975 United States citizens, according to official research comprised by Puerto Rico’s government.

Curated by faculty of the School of Design Strategies, Jim Osman, Assistant Professor of Fine Arts and  Andrew Cornell Robinson, Assistant Professor

Participating artists:

Fanny Allié, Ina Archer, Andrew Bachatif, Anney Bonney, Eddie Chu, Greg Climer, Blane De St. Croix, Brenda Garand, Scherezade Garcia-Vazquez, Julien Gardair, Edward Heins, Whitney Hess, Frank Holliday, Wendy Letven, Roxanne Jackson, Carter Kustera, John Masterson, Jennifer O’Connor, Jim Osman, Megan Pope, Timo Rissanen, Andrew Cornell Robinson, Christopher Robinson, David Brooke Robinson, Elise Siegel, Diana Shpungin, Harvey Stein, Kate Teale, Eva Perez de Vega, C. Emily Waters, Etty Yaniv.