When Matjames Metson hit rock bottom after Hurricane Katrina, it was the daughter he hadn't seen for 16 years who turned his life around.
After losing everything in the horror of Hurricane Katrina, artist Matjames Metson was broke, traumatised and"braced for the end" when he received an unexpected phone call. It was from the daughter he hadn't seen since she was a baby, and it gave him a reason to live."Selanie walked into my American history class and I was just blown away. I was like, 'Oh my God, who is that?' It was an instant: 'I need to know who that person is.
"We got together and we had a relationship for several years and then it had actually ended, but we had what they call now 'a hook-up' and Selanie became pregnant," says Matjames,"but we were still not a couple.""I was utterly terrified. It threw my world upside down," he says. He'd always been an artist, but now began getting more attention. As he didn't have a permanent home, all his work had to be on paper.
"I was submerged in a creative environment from the time I was born basically, and that has never ended," she says. "It was utter destruction," says Matjames, who is still distressed by what he witnessed."If I close my eyes I can still see it."There was a lot of loss of life, everything was completely broken. The stores weren't open, the groceries weren't open, the crime was insane. There's so many people just losing their houses and possessions, it was nothing more than just utter desperation on everybody's part.
"Once I'd moved into this flat they literally tore down every building surrounding me. So the little four-storey building I was in suddenly was infested with mice and cockroaches and meth heads," he says. Whenever the phone rang, it would be bad news about a friend from New Orleans suffering from the after-effects of the storm.
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