By Emma Castleberry
The healing and processing power of art has been crucial to many in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Following the storm, 5th grade teacher Brooke Lefevre reached out to The Laurel to share a collage she had made using clippings from one of our magazines. “I find collage to be therapeutic because although I cannot always use words to explain my emotions surrounding a trauma, my brain can instinctively select images that resonate with how I am feeling,” she says.
Brooke Lefevre, artist
Lefevre presented collage as a way for her students at Buncombe County’s Koontz Intermediate School to process their emotions as they returned to the classroom. “Returning to school after Helene was a challenging time for teachers and students alike,” she says. “I decided to collage with my students to model and share a method of self-soothing and processing after a trauma, in case it may be useful to them now or in the future.”
She also saw the project as an opportunity for the students to reconnect as a class and for her to rebuild rapport with each of them after time away. “I didn’t want to require students to process big emotions if they weren’t comfortable doing so,” she says, “so I didn’t require that they make a collage about how they felt about the impact of Hurricane Helene.” She simply shared her collage with the students and then invited them to create freely.
“I watched over their shoulders as they cut up letters to form the phrase ‘Hurricane Helene,’ or ripped images of buildings apart before gluing them down,” Lefevre says. The students also shared a number of insights about the project.
Payton DeCraene, artist
“Collage is just like Asheville,” says Norah Lamm. “Collage is messy, and Asheville looks messy right now too.”
Other students gravitated toward words and images that offered comfort and hope. “My collage was supposed to be very encouraging,” says Willow Cabral.
For some, the process stirred more complex feelings. “When I was making the collage, I was a mixture of happy and sad because I thought about how the storm brought me and my brother together,” says Elliot Bohannon. “But I was also sad to think of what happened to others and our land.”
Lefevre noted that not all of the collages were directly related to the storm. Many were simply a source of joy and pleasure for the students, which was just as important.
Elise Moore, artist
“The students were able to recharge and rest in the company of their peers, making art together,” she says. “Recovering from trauma involves picking up the broken pieces of a difficult situation and trying to create something fully whole and healed after the pain. Although many parts of our area have been devastated, the community spirit has not dwindled, it has not been defeated. If anything, the community has deepened the resolve to unify and help one another to not only survive but recover, together.”
Need support in the wake of Helene? Find free mental health resources at NCPsychology.org/hurricane-helene-disaster-resources. Learn more about Koontz Intermediate School at ctkis.BuncombeSchools.org.
