One year after historic flooding ravaged parts of eastern Kentucky, many people continue to look for ways to rebuild and recover. A local nonprofit sponsored a day camp for elementary students who survived the flood. It included singing, healing, playing, puppet shows, and art projects.
Children at Camp Noah painted a mural with eastern Kentucky artist Lacy Hale.
On a summer day at the Floyd County Community Center in the mountains of eastern Kentucky artist Lacy Hale gently guides a group of 5 to 12-year-old kids as they paint a mural with images of cardinals, the state flower, and helping hands. The mural is one of resilience and hope.
Hale designed the 5-feet-tall by 10-feet wide piece of art for the elementary children attending Camp Noah, a weeklong day camp for kids who survived last July’s floods in eastern Kentucky. The camp is sponsored by the nonprofit Appalachian Regional Healthcare for Healthier Communities. Hale believes a mural makes sense in this setting because she says working on an art project like this can be therapeutic.
”And I think they get to see something that they’re making together. I think that’s really an important part of it too because they’re not just working on something alone. I think it’s really meaningful in those ways that they can see something come together that they worked on just to have some sort of creative outlet to make this imagery they know will last and they can be proud of it," said Hale.
The 42-year-old said she does a lot of this type of mural work, and public art with communities and with kids. She and the camp coordinator discussed resiliency and a sense of place as themes for the piece of art. Hale says she wanted to incorporate something that would be uplifting and beautiful. She said she also wanted to honor those lost in the flood.
“So, I used the cardinal to symbolize that, those people we had lost and then the goldenrod is the state flower just because I thought it would add a nice pop of the yellow color. And then the lady slipper which is a wild orchid found in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, just because it’s so rare and it’s kind of fragile but it’s also beautiful and it grows against all odds. Then there’s hands on the top and the bottom touching each other, that symbolizes the community helping each other and the people who came in and helped us here and there’s a heart in the center as well," explained Hale.
The artist lives in Whitesburg and drives an hour to get to the camp in Floyd County. She’s emotional as she recalls how she and her husband lost their record store and her art studio in last year’s horrific flooding. Hale said the boots she wore while cleaning up one year ago from the flood remain on her hearth, and are full of mud.
“ You know our place had been there, the store had been there eight years that June of last year. And so there were customers we had that were coming in and helping, bringing cleaning supplies. So, most of the days I started out in tears because I was so overwhelmed by the generosity that people were showing us and the kindness. You know, just total strangers coming in off the street that we didn’t know and getting covered in this noxious smelling mud just to help us clean out our business, it was pretty you know I hadn’t cried about this in like a while but…it really made an impression on me,” reported Hale.
And now Hale’s work is making an impression on the children at Camp Noah.
Eight-year-old Ethan Smith holds a long paintbrush and carefully dabs blue paint on a section of the mural.
“We did the sky and the mountains so far,” said Smith.
Smith takes pride in the part he’s painted.
“ I like how we’re very precise with the colors," said Smith.
Hale assures each child that it’s fine to make mistakes because as she says, it’s just paint.
While Lacy Hale has produced other art related to July’s historic flooding, she says working with the children on this mural touches her heart.
”Yesterday evening one of the little girls just came up and just held onto my leg and hugged me. It was just so sweet. It made me feel like she obviously enjoyed what we had done and she felt like she trusted me and that really touched me. Because sometimes it’s so chaotic (laugh) these murals are messy and there’s kids running back and forth and dipping paint and paint gets everywhere and so that really meant a lot to me. And today a couple of them came back in to paint, they were like WE’RE BACK and they were just so excited. I do these projects for the community but also just as much for myself probably. This one because of the flood and because of what I went through as well, I thought it would be as beneficial for me as for the kids. So, yeah this has been a really good project. I was excited to come to this project,” said Hale.
For now, the mural hangs in Hale’s art studio in Whitesburg but next month it will be on display at the Celebrate Resilience event in Wayland.
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