Artists and their art projects color the pages of
Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around, my memoir of three bizarre years rebuilding my flooded life in New Orleans. Probably more than I realized. Here's a partial guide.
Citizen Loser
A guy named Jonathan had floated around the flood in an innertube taking photographs. After the water subsided, he erected photographic signs all around Bayou St. John and Mid-City. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be commentary or art or public information. But stumbling upon his flashback signs one day had been a small revelation....His photos illustrated my returning neighbor's stories.
—from Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around by Cheryl Wagner
A Monster Moonwalking
Helen's goofy green monster and Paul's monster ditty made me feel better. It gave me another picture to superimpose over some of what I had seen. When I sat on their backyard glider in my yard, instead of remembering that dollhouse kichen's owner crying with her head in her hands on her back stoop, I could look up and see Helen's jiggly green moonwalking monster. He liked his suddenly al fresco table, and he was enjoying a spot of tea.
—from Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around by Cheryl Wagner
(NOTE: Click on haunted house window #9 to watch A Monster in New Orleans. In the last frames of the animation, the monster is hanging out in the storm dollhouse in our backyard with the little second-story kitchen open to the sky.)
Birth of a Buzzkill
But Jake didn't feel like it. He said, "If you want to stand out in Hollygrove and watch some douche box himself all night, that's on you."
—from Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around by Cheryl Wagner
A few weeks later, Courtney projected a video piece at a gallery in town. A Japanese magnolia lost its pale pink petals as a hard shadow shot by.
—from Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around by Cheryl Wagner
A Bullet Ant on the Sting Pain Scale
Finally, Here's Cleveland Street Gap. It's a short film about memory and loss that was a collaboration between Helen Hill and Courtney Egan — two friends who will always hang out on Cleveland Street in the book I would rather have written.
Cleveland Street Gap from C.Egan on Vimeo.