Eye of the Storm: Reflections on Violence

Posters designed by artist Penny Brice, using words and images by participants in “Eye of the Storm,” a project on domestic violence by the Union Mission, Savannah, Ga. Click here for slideshow of posters.

Whatever the current debates about its emergence or re-emergence, its popularity or its cynical exploitation amongst artists, community art, when it is effective, reframes the way the artist makes the art and challenges the other participants’ understanding of what art is, if only for the project itself. The payoff for the artist is a rare opportunity to function socially and to have her expertise valued for its own sake and not in comparison with the others with whom she is in competition, as is the case in the hyper-commercialized art world.

In Savannah, Georgia, the Union Mission has provided a number of community arts initiatives that have facilitated an open exchange of ideas between artists and other members of the population on a range of important but often ignored issues (particularly in a city that relies heavily on tourist revenue). Located at the boundary of the area of downtown Savannah that has been designated a National Historic Landmark and at a distance from any of the city’s commercial art galleries, the Union Mission’s Starfish Café has provided the venue for the work that has resulted from these projects. Shows here frequently deal with themes such as homelessness, poverty, incarceration and, in the case of the recent “Eye of the Storm” (April 6-May 6, 2007), domestic violence.

Union Mission Inc. is a nonprofit organization whose objective is to prevent homelessness in the Savannah and Chatham County area. Comprehensive programming is offered through housing, health services, family services, mental-health services, employment and job training and community education. The Starfish Café, a component of the Union Mission’s Employment and Training Center, is a working gourmet café that trains community members impacted by homelessness for careers in the food service industry. The walls of this café have long provided an outlet for artists working with the Growing Hope Artisans’ Cooperative, which is part of the Mission’s Community Education A.C.E. (Advocate. Create. Educate) program.

The Starfish Café, an employment and training program of the Union Mission and Savannah Technical College, where “Eye of the Storm” posters were displayed April 4-May 4, 2007

Originated by Laura Webb, vice president of Community Education, the “Eye of the Storm” project was a collaborative effort to bring arts experiences to the Family Services’ Family Violence Intervention Project; court-mandated anger-management classes for violent offenders and Health Services’ Conflict Resolution services; and court-mandated classes for youth violent offenders. Two other Union Mission programs, the Empowerment for Women Project and Project GROOV, brought domestic-violence survivors and youth at risk of violence to the project. Inez Boone, a Union Mission therapist with the Family Violence Intervention Project, believed that the project would “send a positive message to participants who often feel they receive only negative attention from others and are equipped with few outlets for their frustrations.”

With the aid of funding from the Grassroots Arts Program, the Union Mission was able to facilitate group sessions with opportunities for drawing, painting, writing and speaking for approximately 250 participants. Artist Christia Cummings, a longtime Union Mission volunteer, brought not only art skills but also her inspirational and effective way of engaging participants, even those averse to arts experiences. My wife, the audio artist Penny Brice, who has taken part in several recent Union Mission art projects since moving to the U.S. from Britain three years ago, also recorded interviews with participants for inclusion in a sound piece [see below] and facilitated the design of a set of posters that combined images and statements transcribed from the interviews. These posters have provided participants’ images and words with a life beyond the project; they are now being distributed to advocacy groups and other interested parties throughout Savannah and it is planned that this will continue elsewhere.

These posters, which were on show at the café during April and May 2007, serve as reminders of the struggles faced on a daily basis by people of all ages, races and genders whose lives are made dangerously unpredictable through tensions within families and communities disproportionately impacted by poverty, crime and addiction. They contain dynamic imagery alongside poignant statements of fear and regret as well as, occasionally, hope. Penny used Photoshop to combine scanned versions of the drawings and phrases taken from transcripts of the interviews. She worked rapidly with the material and we often discussed how this seemed an exciting but rather unnerving process, with the thoughts and opinions of people with no prior acquaintance with each other combining and interacting through their shared encounters with violence.

Posters designed by artist Penny Brice, using words and images by participants in “Eye of the Storm,” a project on domestic violence by the Union Mission, Savannah, Ga. Click here for slideshow of posters.

It became quite clear to us that the challenge set for her in making these posters would be to achieve a juxtaposition of word and image in a way that was visually catching but not to the extent that this obscured the message. In addition, Penny was at pains to allow a degree of openness into how the posters might be read. Her solution in one case is illuminating. Here, the simplest of drawings depicts one stick figure rendered in blue pencil accosting a black-penciled figure, while in the background is a car, again in police-car blue. Next to that is a separate image of what seems to be a woman’s face with untidy hair and colors on her face that suggest bruising. The text simply states: “I never thought this would happen to me.” The ambiguous relationship between this statement and the two images creates an open-ended message. Who is speaking, the black figure being arrested or the woman with the bruised face? Is there a connection between the arrest scene and the abused woman? Is what “happened,” therefore, arrest or physical abuse?

Other posters perpetuate this ambiguity regarding the identity of who is speaking and what is being described. Images and words of regret, fear and anger are mixed together with the result that we are witness to a cycle of abuse where perpetrator and victim occupy the same space and where emotions feed off each other. A particularly apt statement of this syndrome is contained in a poster that simply features a tornado-shaped scribble and the words “I feel dangerous.”

Undoubtedly, the range of material that came out of the workshops was powerful in itself and Penny and I spoke about how important it was that these posters, like the workshops, clearly maintain a visible sense of their collaborative nature. The victims’ recollections of both physical and mental pain, are undoubtedly compelling, but, juxtaposed with confessions of anger and acts of violence, victimization can also be seen to have a cause as well as an effect.

The range of expression and opinion is a particular aspect of the sound composition, which features the voices of men, women and children. All genders and ages fall into the categories of abused and abuser; both men and women express regret but a few show a reluctance to fully acknowledge that their violence was unacceptable. One man, seemingly a repeat offender, callously and casually speaks of maybe hitting a woman while drunk as though his lack of awareness is vindication or explanation or possibly both. A woman confesses to biting somebody who “laid her hand on [her],” promptly asserting that this is something she would do to anyone, even her kids, if they were to act in the same way. Again, Penny made an effort to segue the voices in such a way that it is difficult to assert any concrete moral stance about who the victim really is. Indeed, one can only surmise from the evidence she presents that violence is a complex dynamic in many people’s lives. That is not to say that acts of physical aggression are condoned, as becomes clear when we find ourselves listening to a clearly emotional female voice that states unequivocally that her husband is capable of “literally ending [her] life.” In this moment, violence ceases to be an inconvenient product of untidy lives and becomes a battle for survival.

Starfish Café employees/students

Union Mission’s Arts Coordinator, Teri Schell, who oversaw “Eye of the Storm,” observed that “each session proved the importance of this project because we received incredibly powerful images and words about the realities of violence in ways that also showed the humanity of the people who survive and perpetrate violence.” Beyond the positive aspects of knowing the advocacy posters might feature their own words and images, it was clear that many participants had taken positive steps in classes designed to end the cycle of violence. One therapist noted that her class was “more open and willing to discuss sensitive emotions” after “Eye of the Storm” sessions.

Penny described how her involvement in “Eye of the Storm” left her feeling “honored, privileged and informed on many levels,” and why not? There is a poignancy and depth to these encounters and their creative outcomes that artists crave, but that are inaccessible to them in their normal round of activities.

This is the gift that the Union Mission has presented to all the participants of its various programs and more broadly to the community of Savannah. The latter continues to trade in a boomtown respectability that is partly built, both historically and in the present, upon the poverty of many of its citizens, a reality with which neither the majority of politicians nor members of the artistic establishment here seem willing to deal. The unpredictability of funding, which continually threatens the possibility of sustained projects and ongoing relationships with groups who stand to benefit from them, seems to confirm this attitude.

Organizations such as the Union Mission and initiatives like “Eye of the Storm” are vital because they acknowledge those who have experienced situations most are keen to avoid and ignore and, in addition, give those affected and the artists who work with them a presence in the community of which both they and their more privileged neighbors are part.

For further information on the advocacy posters produced during “Eye of the Storm” or any other activities of the Union Mission in Savannah Ga., go to www.unionmission.org or contact Teri Schell, tschell@unionmission.org.

David Jeffreys, Ph.D., teaches art history at the Savannah College of Art & Design.

Audio files (click here to return to story)

Below are controllers for two audio excerpts from a sound work created by Penny Brice that accompanied the exhbition "Eye of the Storm." The audio played with a slide show projection of images from the workshops, alongside the finished posters.

Audio excerpt compiled from interviews with men. (3 min. 15 sec.)

Audio excerpt compiled from interviews with women and youth. (3 min. 56 sec.)

Original CAN/API publication: May 2007