On a cold day in April 2007, the Virginia Tech and the New River Valley communities were forever changed when 33 people died in a series of shootings at Virginia Tech.

Two years later, the community is still healing.

From books and Web sites to the Hokie stone memorial on the Drillfield, memorials are still aiding the healing process.

Also affected was the community's art scene, both in public and private ways.

One project, "Honoring Experiences, Reflections and Expressions" was a grassroots effort to bring the art community together. Other projects were more personal, with the April 16 inspiration only immediately obvious to the creator.

Out of the many initiatives, projects and communities that were formed, four artists recently shared their artwork impacted by that day and the healing process that followed.

Shannon Turner, "HERE"

In the weeks immediately following April 16, 2007, "Honoring Experiences, Reflections and Expressions," known as HERE, started meeting to provide a way for the community to come together to express their feelings in reaction to the tragedy.

It was a way just "to do something," said coordinator Shannon Turner.

As an master's of fine arts candidate graduating in spring 2007, Turner was ready to get out of Blacksburg. She had lived and worked in the area before attending Tech, altogether spending nine years in the town.

"Blacksburg had been a real authentic part of my soul," Turner said.

Turner became HERE's only staff member two months into the project, which kept her in Blacksburg longer than she'd anticipated because she had planned to leave after her May graduation.

"It had been my intention to use my graduation from Virginia Tech as the ideal time to move on from Blacksburg after nine years, but this work seemed like a rare opportunity. I was particularly excited by the group's interest in foregrounding artistic response and community dialogue. I was also heartbroken that the shootings might be the last chapter in my time there," Turner wrote in a piece about her work with HERE. She eventually moved to Atlanta, where she now works.

The culmination of the HERE events took place in April 2008 with "Community Conversations through the Arts," which included presentations of visual and performing arts by local artists and community members.

After the shootings, Turner wrote her reflections and thoughts about the town pre-shootings, eventually piecing it together in "Remember When: A Love Song to Blacksburg," which she performed.

Since that show, the HERE works have been taken on tour, housed in Richmond during the month of April, which has been deemed "Month of the Grieving Child" in Virginia.

Turner performed her spoken word piece April 11 in Richmond, but said there are no current plans for HERE to formally commemorate the second anniversary today.

"In some place, that's sort of a relieving feeling because maybe that means people are moving on, healing," Turner said. "All felt called in different directions and HERE is dispersed but it empowered me to make the tour happen."

Nancy Norton

"I just kept feeling something had been shattered."

That's how Nancy Norton, a stained glass artist in Blacksburg, describes the days following the April 16, 2007, shootings.

"Even though I didn't know anybody directly, I was feeling like everybody in the whole community -- it was just a hard time," Norton said.

She had been thinking about shattering some slabs of glass and finding ways to put it back together in a piece, but had been working on other projects and hadn't gotten to it yet.

Suddenly, Norton felt like it was the perfect time to try to project.

She created three pieces immediately, and more as time wore on. Many were in blue tones, and one was in the shape of a sunburst. Some ended up with the HERE project.

"As it turns out, two of the three pieces were in blues, but they weren't symbolic," Norton said. "One was in the shape of a sun, kind of like a dawning of a new day, but it's a sad day."

Working on the project was cathartic, Norton said.

"I always get joy from working on it but these were definitely therapeutic," Norton said.

Darcy Meeker

Every once in awhile, Darcy Meeker sits on her couch with a cup of tea, graph paper and a pen and draws whatever comes to mind. She turns off the TV and other distractions and just draws.

Sometimes, she doesn't come up with anything. Other times, she comes up with ideas for her copper sculptures or rock carvings.

On April 16, 2007, Meeker kept coming up with images of black holes and white ovals with black outlines that reminded her of chalk drawings at police crime scenes.

"At the time when I'm doing these, I don't know what's happening outside," Meeker said. "I guess I was feeling a disturbance of the force field or whatever, I don't know."

When she later found out what had been going on at Virginia Tech that morning, she felt more compelled to bring her ideas to life.

She created a sculpture from black and white silk that represents what she was feeling that day.

"It's not just the pain of the loss, I think there's also this kind of fear that any one of us can lose it at any time," Meeker said.

Eventually, she would like to make a bigger version of the black and white holes, as she calls them, that would be big enough to walk through, also in silk.

Meeker's creation was displayed at Penn State in 2008 and a section now hangs in her home.

She is planning a similar exhibit at the Gallery at Mish Mish in Blacksburg in April 2010.

Carole McNamee

A mandala is a drawing, loosely based on a circle, that is done by free association.

It is then titled and the creator free-associates a poem or writing with it, often representing the state of the creator at the time it's created.

For Carole McNamee, it's also a way to heal.

A licensed family and marriage therapist who uses art therapy, among other methods, McNamee used mandalas personally and professionally after April 16.

"It's the process, not the product that heals," McNamee said.

As the wife of Virginia Tech provost Mark McNamee, she was close to the situation and felt personally affected, which shows in her art.

One mandala, called "Sun from the end of the universe," created in December 2006, is done in sunny yellows and oranges. In May 2007, McNamee created a mandala called "Cradle of Darkness," in blue and black.

For a few months after the shootings, McNamee noticed a darker theme to her works, like the dark colors and poetry associated with "Cradle." Not until September 2007 did her work even begin to return to its lighter tones.

That summer, she also created a painting by layering paint on a canvas and then peeling strips of it away without a plan as to what it would end up as.

Now hanging in her living room, the painting resembles Virginia Tech's Burruss Hall and Drillfield.

"It just emerged," McNamee said.

She hosted a mandala night for the community at Willowbank Creative Center, where members of the community could come and express themselves through drawing.

"When people don't know how to deal with something, that's one way art can be used," McNamee said.