Art into Action 2024

Aug 15

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At Sunday Shop and our founding studio, Logan Killen Interiors, we believe there is an inherent connection between the interior environments we create and those beyond our four walls—and that both are directly related to our well-being.

In a state renowned for the beauty of its wetlands and coastline, Louisiana continues to be ravished by the petrochemical and oil and gas industries. Though the battle to preserve our coasts is well-known, the devastating impact on minority and low-income communities across the south continues to be overlooked. At the eye-opening start to the new decade, we formalized our desire to support the individuals and organizations working to make southern Louisiana a more just, beautiful, and thriving place.

Focused on the intersection of place, identity, and creativity, Art into Action is a Sunday Shop initiative dedicated to the benefit of artists and activists in our community. We produce limited-edition prints in collaboration with a Louisiana-based artist, giving 100% of the proceeds to a cause-based initiative of their choice and supporting their practice. Through this initiative, we explore themes such as the relationship between place and well-being, how the artist addresses or explores their own identity, and how place influences creativity.

Meet the Artist: Katrina Andry

Katrina Andry is a New Orleans-born and based multimedia artist. She challenges the ideology of individualism by examining inequalities and resulting degradation as the result of our color-based prejudices. She argues the belief in individualism allows Americans to turn a blind eye to inequality, suggesting that barriers to well-being lie with the individual—and not within our social structures—in spite of documentation of the collective experiences of these groups and data on outcomes of disfavored groups.

Her work can be found in collections across the country, including 21C Museum, the Petrucci Family Foundation, the New Orleans Museum of Art, Union College, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

“I'm always questioning my own femininity, or lack thereof (at least in my eyes), in relation to how I'm viewed in society as part of a collective of women considered more masculine than feminine based off of superficial features like the broadness of one’s shoulders or darkness of one’s skin.”

“Portrait Study with Monotype”

Andry’s self-portrait explores selfhood and sense of place as a Black woman in Louisiana. Symbols of femininity like pearls and flowers animate themes of the Southern Gothic when juxtaposed with a dark, marble-like subject and background. The former serves as both her birthstone and an heirloom passed down by her grandmother, described as the “height of femininity,”—a strong motif as she questions her own in relation to how she is viewed in society.

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About Louisiana Bucket Brigade

You may recognize our 2024 partner from their work with 2021’s partner, Rise St. James. The Louisiana Bucket Brigade’s work supports grassroots action to create informed, sustainable communities free from industrial pollution. For more than 20 years, they’ve helped residents and community leaders amplify their voices and protect their health, their homes, and their way of life.

Through a variety of channels, they’re working to create a more livable state for everyone in Louisiana. On the ground, they coordinate, plan, and mobilize local advocacy groups to stand up for their health and their communities—and their work has affected more than 15 unique communities in the River Parishes of Louisiana and beyond. They spotlight the leadership of women in fenceline communities with their film series “Women of Cancer Alley,” organize climate action, and educate through “Down by the River” bike rides that put riders face to face with the effects of petrochemical production in St. Charles Parish.

Most recently, the Bucket Brigade’s Gene Team has put pen to paper, tracing the genealogy of families that have inhabited these communities since the 1800s. Not only are they documenting community connection to the land, but they continue to uncover plantations upon which enslaved ancestors were born, labored and died, discovering the burial sites of the enslaved and identifying descendants. This information and documentation utilizes history as leverage to prevent toxic industries from slowly but surely eradicating African American communities.

The Louisiana Bucket Brigade believes our state is worth saving.

Echoing the work of the Louisiana Bucket Bridgade’s Gene Team, she has most recently explored her surname through a series of photographs, monotypes, and collages that explore her ties to a landscape dotted with plantation homes, following the winding curves of the Mississippi River. She discusses this in her essay “What If It All Burned Down?” featured this spring in the Oxford American. You can read it here.