Finding Shelter: Surviving the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Hurricane Katrina

Finding Shelter was a public art installation in a restored 1906 emergency shelter with text, photographs and a free sound-portrait CD take-away. The project began with a free portrait studio I created for families fleeing Hurricane Katrina at a relief center in Oakland, CA. I then recorded interviews with 15 displaced families about the storm and how it changed their lives. The edited sound portraits were given away inside a restored emergency cottage (one of the few remaining from thousands the city of San Francisco built to house residents after the 1906 earthquake). The cottage was placed in downtown San Francisco for the month of April, 2006 and received over 13,000 visitors. The exhibit inside included photos, interviews, and historical data comparing the experiences of survivors from the earthquake with those of Hurricane Katrina.