Dawn DeDeaux:

Pattern: The Order of Chaos

November 3 -  December 15, 2007 

Pattern: The Order of Chaos brings together works created by the artist just prior to Katrina that were destroyed and recreated, together with post-Katrina works. Her investigations include patterns found in trees, flood marks, hurricanes and mold rendered in a broad range of media. DeDeaux says of these studies, "one can find within these markings life's primal script spun within a structure of chaos."

Her post-Katrina works provide a more illustrative link to the order to chaos. DeDeaux's 'Hurricane Suite in Nine Movements' is a floor-based sculpture that incorporates two tons of shattered glass and electronic light as overture to Katrina as she swirled across the Gulf of Mexico in 2005. DeDeaux says of this work: "Through catastrophe we are presented with the "material" of our lives deconstructed, and the mirror of our relativity splintered into patterns anew.  These sacred mounds of debris beckon for new interpretation. "And so it was on the day following Katrina as I stood in parking lots stretched to the horizon where massive shopping malls once stood. Now only shards of shattered glass covered the buckling asphalt.  Under an innocent sun, these millions of radiant diamonds became the shimmering offering to the new day and the inspiration behind this piece.  For even in the paradoxical cruelty of nature's wrath it offers a sublime organic beauty.  To pursue such beauty is to satisfy hope; it is to understand that light emerges from darkness."