Public Installation- Rockport/Fulton TX
"Rockport Weathers the Storms"
and interactive Rockport Weathers the Storms Public Art Installation | 2021–2022
Rockport Weathers the Storms is a visual record of a small coastal community navigating an extraordinary convergence of crises. Created in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the installation examines how natural disaster, public health emergency, racial unrest, political polarization, immigration, and cultural conflict can fracture, and sometimes reshape, the social fabric of a community.
The works move between landscape, abstraction, allegory, and recognizable imagery. Some respond directly to specific events, while others use metaphor to explore the deeper psychological consequences of living through them: isolation, fear, displacement, scapegoating, moral conflict, belonging, and the struggle to maintain one's sense of identity amid competing social forces.
Although rooted in a Rockport and its surrounding coastal communities, developed to provide a safe gallery experience and an audience interactive art experience during COVID, the installation extends beyond a particular place. These paintings ask what happens when private lives become entangled with collective trauma, when institutions fail the vulnerable, and when deeply divided communities must continue living alongside one another. Together, the works form a portrait not simply of storms endured, but of a community, and a nation, struggling to determine what survives after the storm.
Rockport Weathers the Storms is a visual record of a small coastal community navigating an extraordinary convergence of crises. Created in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and during the COVID-19 pandemic, the installation examines how natural disaster, public health emergency, racial unrest, political polarization, immigration, and cultural conflict can fracture, and sometimes reshape, the social fabric of a community.
The works move between landscape, abstraction, allegory, and recognizable imagery. Some respond directly to specific events, while others use metaphor to explore the deeper psychological consequences of living through them: isolation, fear, displacement, scapegoating, moral conflict, belonging, and the struggle to maintain one's sense of identity amid competing social forces.
Although rooted in a Rockport and its surrounding coastal communities, developed to provide a safe gallery experience and an audience interactive art experience during COVID, the installation extends beyond a particular place. These paintings ask what happens when private lives become entangled with collective trauma, when institutions fail the vulnerable, and when deeply divided communities must continue living alongside one another. Together, the works form a portrait not simply of storms endured, but of a community, and a nation, struggling to determine what survives after the storm.
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The Rebirth of Con Rong
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Waiting for J.L.
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The Holy Light of ALL the Colors
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The Rebirth of Con Rong
Inspired by the Vietnamese legend of Con Rồng Cháu Tiên, “Children of the Dragon”, this work explores cultural survival, displacement, and renewal. Created in response to the Vietnamese community’s history along the Texas coast, the dragon becomes a symbol of resilience: a culture carried across oceans, challenged by conflict and disaster, yet continuing to transform and endure.
Waiting for J.L.
When we discover who we are beyond the identities assigned to us; as provider, student, parent, child, or family member; we confront what Richard Bach called the “prejudice of our species” and society’s expectations of who we should be. Inspired by Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Waiting for Godot, the work explores self-determination and the struggle to create meaning beyond inherited constraints. Don’t wait for J.L. to arrive. Become J.L.
The Holy Light of All the Colors
This work explores immigration, racial tension, territorial conflict, violence, displacement, and reconciliation. The Madonna, modeled after a Black woman, holds a Vietnamese infant, bringing together two communities shaped by the complex history of the Texas coast. Created for a Vietnamese Catholic church destroyed by Hurricane Harvey, the work invokes faith and rebuilding while confronting the region’s history of racial conflict and continuing divisions.
This work explores immigration, racial tension, territorial conflict, violence, displacement, and reconciliation. The Madonna, modeled after a Black woman, holds a Vietnamese infant, bringing together two communities shaped by the complex history of the Texas coast. Created for a Vietnamese Catholic church destroyed by Hurricane Harvey, the work invokes faith and rebuilding while confronting the region’s history of racial conflict and continuing divisions.
Safe Harbor
During the pandemic, nurses often faced unsafe assignments caused by understaffing, exhaustion, and inadequate resources. “Safe Harbor” can protect a nurse’s license, yet may jeopardize employment. The term also refers to laws intended to protect trafficked children from prosecution for crimes committed in survival. The fractured vessel within a protective harbor becomes a metaphor for these contradictions: Who protects those entrusted with protecting others; and those who have never been protected at all?
Azazel and the Goat
Drawing upon the biblical story of the scapegoat, this work considers the psychological consequences of being made responsible for the emotional burdens and failures of others. The goat becomes a metaphor for the person onto whom blame is repeatedly transferred; a role that can become psychologically and physically dangerous. The solitary landscape suggests that escape from the system that created the scapegoat may ultimately become an act of survival.
The Hurricane, the Phoenix and the Big Blue Crab
Rockport TX has been home to the iconic 'Big Blue Crab' from 1957-1983 (when it fell apart) and then again from 2012-2017 (when Hurricane Harvey took it out). This year, 2021, the Blue Crab will rise again from the proverbial ashes as the newest version gets installed in the latter half of the year.
The Returning
Those of us born and raised with salt water in our veins have a hard time living far from the water that nourishes our souls. Most of us will still dream of the cooling balm of watery silky smoothness floating across our skin and lilt of feathery seabreeze on those hot still nights of summer or the blustery chill of north winds whisking the wave foam high off the water as it renews and invigorates our dampfilled spirits. Even the minerals and grains of far off life in the mountains spend a lifetime heading back to the sea on the river drifts. We all return whence we came; but maybe we should consider why we left in the first place?
Rosie and the Blue Woman
The fabric of our society is destroyed by the divisions of our beliefs which are sometimes just the presentation of two sides of the same coin muddied by illusions created by those who seek to divide us.
A political allegory of isolation during the social upheaval surrounding COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and the increasing political polarization of a small Texas coastal community. The roseate spoonbill, a native South Texas bird celebrated for its extravagant pink-red plumage, becomes a metaphor for the overwhelming atmosphere of perceived political consensus and complacency. An isolated figure representing the experience of being politically and socially alienated within the community, her ghostly presence is psychologically displaced. With stones in her pockets, she contemplates a Virginia Woolf–like escape from an environment in which she feels increasingly unable to belong. The work transforms a recognizable Gulf Coast landscape into a psychological landscape of political loneliness, alienation, and the cost of feeling profoundly alone within one's own community.
Untitled Jan 2021
This painting was never placed on display due to the controversial nature of the content.
Created in January 2021 in response to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, this work uses allegory to confront the violence, political manipulation, and erosion of democratic ideals revealed by the attack. Donald Trump is rendered as a predatory spider, its body consuming a dove, a symbol of peace and democratic aspiration, while the U.S. Capitol burns in the distance. Beneath and beyond the scene, the collapsing Colosseum evokes the historical fragility of civilizations when power, spectacle, and political allegiance overwhelm democratic institutions. The work uses distortion and symbolism to express the artist's perception of a democracy being preyed upon from within.
Rockport Weathers the Storms is a public-art project examining the transformation of a small coastal community through a convergence of natural disaster, pandemic, racial unrest, political polarization, and cultural conflict. Created during 2020–2021, the works move between landscape, allegory, symbolism, and personal observation to consider how large-scale events enter the psychological and social fabric of a community.
This installation sponsored by:
Fine Line Group
The Family Office of Sasha and Edward P. Bass
in partnership with
Gallery of Dreams and Rockport Center for the Arts
Fine Line Group
The Family Office of Sasha and Edward P. Bass
in partnership with
Gallery of Dreams and Rockport Center for the Arts
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