The Phoenix Flyer

Online art project tells harrowing Hurricane Michael stories

By: - December 3, 2018 3:22 pm
never forgotten coast

A Hurricane Michael survivor where his home once stood #neverforgottencoast art project, Mexico Beach, Fl.

T shirt design
#neverforgottencoast logo

A group of Tallahassee artists, a drone pilot and Nashville photographer Jeremy Cowart have a new online art project that highlights the devastation caused by Hurricane Michael in Florida’s panhandle.

The project,  Neverforgottencoast.com, shows arresting aerial photographs of storm victims  lying on large red hearts placed where their homes and businesses used to be. The hearts are also part a themed logo for T-shirts which are being sold as a fundraiser for local nonprofits working to help impacted communities, including Panama City and Mexico Beach.

Alex Workman, 32, of Tallahassee, was part of a creative project called  Voices of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a project where artists and volunteers used drones to photograph victims and their devastated surroundings after a 2016 fire that destroyed half of Gatlinburg, claiming 14 lives and destroying 2,000 homes and businesses.

For the neverforgottencoast project, Workman, his wife, Chelsea, designer Jesse Taylor, and Tallahassee drone pilot Jonathan Smith combined forces. For the website, storm victims tell their harrowing stories and articulate their hopes for the future.

“We thought maybe a window would break because we couldn’t board our house, but we were not thinking we could come home to nothing,” say the owners of KCSportfishing in Mexico Beach.

 

 

 

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Julie Hauserman
Julie Hauserman

Julie Hauserman has been writing about Florida for more than 30 years. She is a former Capitol bureau reporter for the St. Petersburg (Tampa Bay) Times, and reported for The Stuart News and the Tallahassee Democrat. She was a national commentator for National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday and The Splendid Table . She has won many awards, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is featured in several Florida anthologies, including The Wild Heart of Florida , The Book of the Everglades , and Between Two Rivers . Her new book is Drawn to The Deep, a University Press of Florida biography of Florida cave diver and National Geographic explorer Wes Skiles.

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