DAPHNE, Ala. - Nancy Raia embarked upon her most recent trip to Tuscaloosa yesterday, highlighted by an art auction last night benefitting Holt Elementary School, whose students bore witness to some of the worst tornadoes to hit the state April 27. In her role as community outreach director at Eastern Shore Art Center, Raia made her first trip to the area less than three weeks after tornadoes leveled parts of the city ¬¬¬- when the clean-up process had only just begun and the shock of the loss had yet to wear off.

With an invitation from the Junior League of Tuscaloosa, two graduate students and a war chest of art supplies, Raia left last May hoping to promote art as a therapy. Within four days, the students she worked with at Holt Elementary School produced more than 430 pieces of original art depicting their emotions and recollections of the storm.

“Art can be very therapeutic after tragic events, especially for children,” Raia told a group of Catherine Place residents Wednesday. “I wanted them to express all of their thoughts, all of their emotions, any of their insecurities on canvas because it helps them cope with whatever they’ve witnessed.”

Raia had successfully employed the technique after other natural disasters, first after the Northridge earthquake in California in 1994 and later after Hurricane Katrina, but she said she was struck by the clarity with which the Holt students depicted the tornado.

“When I told them to draw the first thing that came to their minds after I said the word ‘tornado,’ immediately everyone picked up their darkest crayon and started drawing in circles,” Raia said. “The whole room was making a circular sound.”

In addition to drawings of the tornado itself, some students embellished the art with depictions of cars and houses flying through the air, families huddling and praying and trees snapped in half. One student presented his rather minimalist work to Raia explaining, “That’s a tree. It’s on my uncle. He’s dead.”

The tornado that ripped through Tuscaloosa passed within a quarter mile of Holt Elementary, which caters to a largely poor and minority neighborhood northeast of downtown. The school was deemed structurally unsound after the storm, and the students have since been relocated to Northport, where they are expected to remain throughout the 2012 term.

The Junior League hosted last night’s auction, which was the culmination of Raia’s work and a fundraiser for the Holt community. But Raia hopes she’ll be able to duplicate the effort in the future or encourage others to respond creatively to life’s tragedies.

“Just like you need food and shelter after a disaster you need art. You need music. You need drama,” Raia said. “It’s an important part of any sense of community or humanity.”

Reproductions of artwork from the “heART for Holt” art outreach project are on display in the lobby of the Eastern Shore Art Center through the end of the month. For more information about how to help Holt Elementary art therapy visit www.jltuscaloosa.org.