The time is truly flying by. We only have two more weeks in New Orleans, and next weekend we’re going to be in Florida visiting family, so it’s not even a full two weeks. I’m looking forward to being on the beach though, so no complaints.
I thought as we wind up our trip I’d do separate posts about the art we’ve seen, the food we’ve eaten, and throw in a lagniappe of my #Festooned photos just for fun.
First up: ART WE’VE SEEN
There are three main parts of town focusing on art which we spent the most time in this visit. I have to add that there are “new” places which we didn’t get to this trip which are rising out of the reconstruction and a new generation of emerging artists doing their own thing. I hope to spend more time exploring those places next time.
For the parts of town we did spend time in, there’s Royal St. in the French Quarter which has a lot of art meant to appeal to tourists, but is starting to have more individual local artists who are self supporting. The gallery scene is much stronger here than in Boise, but the call to “just do it” on your own is also alive and well.
Cathy Rose of the Lucky Rose Gallery is one of those artists on Royal St.
Cathy was very encouraging and supportive about the idea of two more artists moving into the local art scene, and she even had suggestions about parts of town to consider where we could still afford live/work space.
We also had a couple of conversations with Jim Pennington of Pennington Fine Art.
Jim was generous as well with his encouragement and advice about returning to New Orleans for part of the year as working artists.
Interestingly, we had seen Jim and his work in Savanna, GA a few years ago when he was there regrouping after Katrina. Small world, baby.
One of my favorite artist-run galleries on Royal St. is the Antieau Gallery which shows Chris Roberts Antieau’s gorgeous work.
Antieau is a textile artist who does realistically detailed embroidery as well as appliqued “fabric paintings.”
She is also the mother of Noah Antieau — who runs The Red Truck Gallery — the first gallery I looked at and thought might be a fit for my tarps (if only they were a wee bit smaller, or the gallery was a crapton bigger).
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Julia St. in the Warehouse District is a well known part of town with a number of good galleries. We spent a couple of different afternoons there on our own, and with friends visiting from New York (holler, John and Hiromi!).
The Arthur Roger Gallery is a long standing favorite. I thought the current show of work by Amer Kobaslija of paintings of birds’ eye views of artist’s studios was appropriate to our current quest.
We also saw work at boyd/satellite gallery and talked to Blake Boyd. Blake shows his own work at the gallery, but the work currently on exhibition is by Errol Barron and is titled “rigged.”
Another gallery on Julia St., the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery has a show of giant matchbook covers by Skylar Fein.
The show cracked me up because our metaphor for doing anything but what we’re supposed to be doing is “reading matchbook covers.”
There are several other galleries on Julia St. that we spent time in which I’m not going to get to this time, but I would be totally remiss if I didn’t mention George Schmidt and his eponymous gallery.
George is a real character and a true Renaissance Man. In addition to being a painter and printmaker, he’s a musician. We saw him play banjo and sing with the New Leviathan Oriental Fox-Trot Orchestra at the Botanical Gardens a couple of weeks ago. What a hoot!
I’m afraid both my iPad and I are running out of juice, so I think I’ll stop here for now and continue in ART WE’VE SEEN Part 2 very soon.
Stay tuned!
