Tupelo artist’s work damaged in Saturday’s tornado

Jan. 25--TUPELO -- Artist John Armistead was safe in his Tupelo home when his creations were in the path of a tornado in Hattiesburg on Saturday.

"Besides the four deaths in Hattiesburg, there were a lot of people hurt and injured and lost their homes," he said. "The campus took a lot of damage."

He was referring to William Carey University, which received damage to several buildings during the EF3 tornado. Two of those buildings contained Armistead's paintings.

The Lucile Parker Gallery had its roof torn off, and some 3 inches of rain dripped onto paintings that were part of a solo exhibition slated to run until Feb. 6.

"There are 29 paintings. Five are watercolors, and I'm told three of them took some heavy water damage," he said.

Art faculty and volunteers moved the paintings to a building on campus where they were separated from frames and matting and put out to dry.

Those paintings belong to Armistead, but the work in the Sarah Gillespie Museum belongs to the school. Three of his pieces were bought and added to the collection about 15 years ago.

"What's interesting is they were loaned to the Gulf Coast campus, which was damaged during Hurricane Katrina," he said. "So my work has been through this before."

The Sarah Gillespie Collection has been taken to Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel and put out to dry.

As for his paintings at Lucile Parker Gallery, there's a chance some will be totaled by the insurance company and Armistead will receive payment. Others might have been damaged in ways that can be repaired.

"Of course, people are experiencing far worse than anything that happened to me," he said.

But the situation has created the possibility of a domino effect.

"That was basically everything I have, except for what I've painted in the last month," he said.

Armistead has a show scheduled for Fairhope, Alabama, in March. That'll be followed by a solo show in Columbus in June and a Mississippi College exhibit in August.

He said he has confidence in William Carey's faculty and staff. He's also been reminding himself that events are beyond his control.

"It's a freak thing," Armistead said. "It's one of those acts of God, you know, that God gets blamed for."

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Twitter: @mscottmorris

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