Lending a hand

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Shea Sulkin’s initial plans for Spring Break 2006 didn’t involve volunteering to help with the recovery effort in New Orleans. “I called my Mom and tried to talk her into letting me go to Acapulco or somewhere like that,” says Sulkin, a Nashville native and a fashion design major in the Department of Human Ecology. “Then I tried for New York City. Then she told me that I should do something for other people, that I already had a lot of time in college to have fun and to take care of myself.”

Mother and daughter talked it over, and they ended up focusing on New Orleans when Shea remembered what her textiles preservation instructor, Dr. Ann DuPont, had once mentioned about the plight of museums affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Marilyn Dittman, assistant director of special exhibitions at the New Orleans Museum of Art, was cautious when she first heard from the Sulkins. “The daughter was interested in art history,” says Ditttman, “and I said, ‘That’s not where we are right now.’ We weren’t talking about the finer points of art. We were talking about survival. I said, ‘This is not glamorous work.’ And they gave up their break, just came over here and pitched in, in their jeans and T-shirt, and acted like they were born here, like the rest of us.”

Sulkin and her family put themselves at the disposal of the museum, helping out wherever help was needed, including in the membership and accounting offices, trying to locate and contact members and donors who’d been displaced by the hurricane.

“Most of the art was fine,” says Sulkin, “but the museum is donor-supported, and nobody was making donations anymore. The museum was also closed, so no one was paying for admission, and so they had to lay off a lot of people. It was kind of a domino effect.”

For Sulkin, who describes her parents as “humanitarian-activist types,” the trip was worthwhile on its own, humanitarian terms. It was also, however, another opportunity for her to learn how to get the balance right in what she’s hoping to craft into a life that blends a passion for art and design with a commitment to civic ideals. Her grand ambition, she says, is to create a fashion design company (Chez Shea, she’ll call it) that makes clothes inspired by, and in partnership with, different nonprofit organizations.

For now, she’s applying for fashion internships in New York for after she graduates in May, and she’s grateful for the chance she had to help, and to see, New Orleans. New Orleans is grateful too. “It’s people these like these people,” says Dittman, “who have really brought the city back.”