trumpet magazine, and local artists

I was recently interviewed along with other friends regarding art in new orleans... It was a fun article, and I would like to thank kalen for writing it. Afterall, any exposure is good exposure... but I'd like to add a few things to the article.

When we originally talked, our topic leaned on the treme series, and how one of the big things in the show were the musicians, when in fact... at that time after the storm, we were without musicians. Most of the instruments had drowned in the storm, along with many other things... I even ended up with a neighbors piano at that time. What was back... were the artists, and among them was Michael Dingler, aka REX. He went about putting up street signs so we knew where we were. Many of those signs are still intact. Proving artists were more proactive than the city government. there is no artist figure in treme... there should be.

there was a big push to own anything nola, and since many of the art pieces had drowned, and clothing as well as instruments, a sense of pride was rising up among the creative folks within the city.

I came to town one weekend, and bought tshirts with nola on them, so I could show my pride back in gallatin tennesse and nashville... I was very proud to be from nola, despite what they put out there on the corporate news stations, and regardless of the rumours of how nola was full of beggars, thieves, and welfare recipients...

Jeffery Holmes did toxic art... found, drowned objects and made them into art. He did the memorial on the neutral ground that still remains. lit up with battery operated lights, even when there was no power in the city.

others took everything they could from christmas past, and put up trees with drowned ornaments, others took stuffed animals and tied them to vehicles, others found dolls, and set them up. Everywhere you looked there was a strange thing going on with found objects... there was even a house out in arabi, that sat upon the wicked witch of the west, in the middle of the road. People were trying to find humour... I went looking for it myself.

At that time I was spending my days riding my bike from place to place, getting ice for the ladies next door, whom had no refrigerator... and most of my days spent looking through things people were throwing out. My sister Faye "the tattooedpsychic" had told me that I should pay attention to what came before me. I had a local artist hand me all her supplies on her way out of town, I found canvas stretched wherever I went, I found paintbrushes, people brought me paint, people handed me all forms of media, to create with. This is what she was speaking of, when she said that I should pay attention to what was handed to me. Someone was telling me something, and I should follow the path...

I did.
I look back on that time, and it was certainly therapeutic. I look at what I'm suddenly creating now that the Treme is on TV. I have a wealth of photographs, some 7,000 of this city at her worst. My intent was to use these images in paintings, and it has taken me almost five years to do them. Sometimes I touch on them, but mostly I was doing post K dia de muerte. These days, I've progressed to an entirely different nola vision. HUMOUR of course steeps everything I do, and a sarcasm as well. I am currently painting for "Off White Linen" in August, and another show at the big top regarding women in parades, come september. I will be branching into the retreat at the riverbend, and of course finishing that MURAL at the avenue pub.

So if you get out there, and see my works at surrey's, smile... At Skull Club? grin... at the HI HO? Laugh, as we share a drink over the Treme.

I still have my sense of pride, still have my humour, and still hold some dark images within, at time to time they peek out.

Proud to call this home.