After I evacuated with my wife and son, I bought a pack of moleskins, but I didn’t have a conscious plan. I just started drawing these animal characters enduring our circumstances. We were all in flight from the storm, so maybe recreating our story as birds made sense. New Orleans is diverse, and each neighborhood has its own issues now, but in those early days, everyone was connected by some sort of loss and fear. The published version of Revacuation retains the original notebook’s sense of improvisation, scratch-outs, and misspellings, reflecting the messy and often anxious work of the reconstruction.

Brad Benischek is a visual artist, educator, and scenic painter. He is a member of Press Street, a New Orleans-based non-profit which promotes art and literature in the community through events, publications, and arts education, and the founder of Drawathon, Press Street’s twenty-four hour drawing event. He received his MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and some of his most recent work has been shown at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Acadiana Center for the Arts, and Antenna.