October Honeycomb artist raises awareness with paintings

Art is a form of communication - a way of relaying a message or documenting history.

Some art pieces are created just to communicate beauty, while others have deeper meanings reflecting realities that people sometimes refuse to see.

While Jerri Pogue, the Honeycomb October Artist, is not opposed to painting a beautiful bouquet of flowers, her main focus is taking the blinders away.

Pogue, along with her husband, Ben, has been extensively involved with a volunteer outreach group associated with the Saint Clare of Assisi Catholic Church on Daniel Island. The group, Saint Vincent de Paul, assists neighbors in Charleston County and the Cainhoy/Huger area that are in need while focusing on long-term recovery.

Pogue’s experience working with the survivors of the October 2015 flood, an event that resulted in devastating damage and loss, has inspired her art and led to a series of primitive paintings showing their struggles and recovery.

Inspired by her mother, Pogue has been both an active volunteer and artist her entire life. For October, works of art displaying the crossover of Pogue’s two passions will be displayed at the Honeycomb Café.

Lucie Couillard: How does your volunteer work relate to painting?

Jerri Pogue: It relates to my painting and the content, because our volunteer work here has been really in response to the great flood in October 2015. In October, a year ago actually, the people who were already poor in that Cainhoy/Huger area, and really Charleston, they were devastated by the flood. So all of their pre-existing poverty and damages to their home, all of that got worse. My husband and I had training and experience in helping and human service. So that’s why we started doing the volunteering. We got some other people involved and started working with a non-profit. It is focused on the people here who are marginalized. And so that effects what I paint - I paint pretty flower pictures and I paint all kinds of things. But I often paint of the experience of being with these people though the floods and the storms, and their recovery.

LC: What is the volunteer work you are doing?

JP: What we do is go out and interview the people in trouble. We have this board - the organization is Saint Vincent de Paul - we go and interview the clients and victims of the floods or people in need of help. I interview and assess. Sometimes we’re collecting furniture and other times fundraising. Once a month we collect food and bring it to the food bank. So we also work with the other non-profits to coordinate services. I also tutor at Cainhoy Elementary School.

LC: How does this inspire and impact your art?

JP: I take away. These people, although they live with deprivation, they are resourceful. They are patient. They are resilient. When we go and interview people - any age, elderly or a young mother with kids - they will understand. When we say, ‘We will get this out to you, but we don’t know when,’ they will say, ‘Whatever you can do, thank you.’ So they are incredibly patient. What I take away is a sense of urgency…These people haven’t had water for six months because there isn’t a waterline and they can’t pay for the hook ups. So for me, it isn’t only a conscious piece - because it is - but it is also a sense of urgency because I am impatient.

LC: How is this reflected in your art?

JP: I have painted primitive scenes of the area. Rainy pictures, pictures filled with umbrellas. I show people trying to walk - because transportation is terrible there - people trying to walk in the rain to places to receive services and help. So I paint a lot of that. I am very aware of the weather. When it is raining here, my husband and I know it is leaking in these people’s houses. And it’s moldy and full of mildew, and they carry on. Some of that is in my work.

LC: What drives you to paint?

JP: I have some outrage of what’s happening and that people are not serviced. I don’t think it is well documented. So part of our job in this nonprofit is raising awareness and advocacy for help for these people. Part of my artwork is my wanting to document it, and my wanting to express compassion and empathy. And they are just my neighbors. I don’t even want to say ‘those people’ - so it is for our neighbors. I wish I could help in better ways and make it go away, but it won’t. So there is also frustration expressed. I often express what I interpret. Which is certainly my own expression and emotional cognitive reactions to things - so there is a bit of that in it, too.

LC: What do you hope for the show at Honeycomb?

JP: I hope people enjoy it. There are messages there that are important, and maybe people will understand that. I would love it to be a voice for people for what they experience. And for people to be aware of the human need around them - especially in an election year.

LC: What is your process with your work?

JP: I do take photos with my I-phone. We had to take photos of the damage. I would take the pictures of the damage in these dwellings then stretch them and paint them. In a primitive way - I haven’t learned to paint, but I have painted and drawn my whole life. It was fun for me. I have the picture. I stretch it, then paint. I use oil. I use acrylic. I used to do much more watercolor, but I don’t now. I am usually working on five or seven paintings at the same time.

Ten percent of the profit from the sale of paintings at Honeycomb Cafe will be donated to local community outreach organizations Saint Vincent de Paul, The Music Battery and ECCO.