Dogwood Messer (b. 1995) grew up in Mississippi in a Gulf Coast community flooded by Hurricane Katrina. After Katrina, his family documented all damages with a disposable camera. His art practice began by drawing from those records not to catalog damages but to form his own record of what potential might be salvaged from disaster. Art has been his means for understanding the world, even wrecked and uprooted, and imagining new possibilities within it. His practice has brought him far from the Deep South to study at Williams College, to attend residencies at Storm King and Wassaic Project, and to exhibit across the Northeast and at art fairs like Spring/Break LA and Arrival.