Our minds become numb and our eyes glaze over as the harsh reality of yet another natural tragedy in the world enters the corner of our visual field. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has once again been devastated by disaster. Having the misfortune to be built over one the many tectonic faults that thread their way across the Caribbean Ocean floor, Port-au-Prince was, at best, a house of cards before the recent quake. Afterward, the rubble that was once the city may serve as the final resting place for thousands.

This is not so much a matter of the quake’s intensity (a more powerful tremor in San Francisco Bay in 1989 claimed 83 lives). This is a story of poverty and desperation for a people that know no relief from sorrow. Hurricanes, civil unrest and unemployment at 80% leave most of the population living permanently on the precipice of despair. Now with an estimated 200,000 dead, 350,000 injured and three million more desperate people displaced onto the streets, the community of Haiti is on the brink of violence and social collapse.

The work pictured above is entitled, The Wedding Party, by an artist whose name I no longer recall. But, I referred to him as ‘The Haitian Sensation’ when I bought the work at a cultural celebration in Boston some years ago. My nickname for him derived from his effusive personality and his enthusiasm about the lives of his people, portrayed in his paintings. I remember buying this piece, not so much because I collected outsider art, but because I was struck by his spirit and the energy that he brought to his dealings with people at the street fair.

Now, I think of the face of that artist on the many bodies abandoned for lack of a burial place on the streets of the city. I imagine these wedding revelers and whether they might be alive today.  I think about the zest for living that this artist expressed and how many school children, health workers, shop keepers and mothers will never know the joy of a life fully-lived. I see images of front-end loaders dumping bodies onto truck beds for mass burials, the dusty ruins of collapsed buildings further shifting and settling from aftershocks, while the faint voices of the living still trapped in the debris go unheard; and the dying, whose lives might have been spared for want of supplies that you or I could have easily obtained at our local pharmacy.

We are bound as a species by our unique ability to think and work creatively. Tool-makers, city builders, creators of the legends and stories of our place and time, music makers, artists, inventors and dreamers—every culture has their share and every society misses them when they pass. Imagine losing them all in just a few seconds, at five o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon; taken from us while wrapped in a shroud of dust and panic by the hidden force of nature’s powerful hand.

ARTES will be contributing to the relief effort in Haiti. As publisher and editor of a magazine that devotes its pages to the pursuit of meaning in fine art and design, I encourage you to remember those for whom the sight of a clear, clean glass of water and a filling meal will mean more than we can ever know.

GIVE GENEROUSLY AT:

www.unicefusa.org

Watch the George Clooney-sponsored Haitian Relief Telethon on Sunday night, January 24th on all major networks and donate to a sponsored charity at that time.

Or: text message “HAITI” to 90999 and make a $10 donation to support the American Red Cross Haiti relief efforts. Donations will appear on customers’ monthly bill.