Art: Blog of New Orleans, Gambit

Review: O Bury Me Not

D. Eric Bookhardt — Wed, 01 May 2013 10:42:00 -0500

Winston Churchill once said “History is written by the victors.” But it also is true that stories are for everyone, and in America, stories appear almost everywhere, from song lyrics to comic strips or even old vintage scraps of paper, as we see in Michael Pajon’s striking O Bury Me Not collage exhibition at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery. The title, taken from a Depression-era cowboy ballad, sets the tone for a wide range of folksy snippets of printed matter that, when shrewdly reworked into evocative collages, lead us straight into the wayward residue of American dreams of the past, those alternative histories that can never be written except by the poets, dreamers, musicians and inspired madmen among us — those rare creatures who are capable of capturing life as it is lived rather than simply chronicled.…

Review: New work by Monica Zeringue and Stephanie Patton

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:32:00 -0500

Go to any major museum and you see art based on mythology, from the Renaissance to modern times. Nobody knows why.…

Review: Brilliant Disguise at CAC

D. Eric Bookhardt — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 10:18:00 -0500

The Contemporary Arts Center’s Brilliant Disguise show is nothing if not surprising. Organized by New Orleans Museum of Art curator Miranda Lash using work from NOMA’s collection, it is not only an unexpected example of institutional collaboration, it also is surprising for its unlikely visual relationships.…

Backyard Ballroom gets City Council approval

Alex Woodward — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:11:00 -0500

As the New Orleans City Planning Commission (CPC) cited the neighborhood's "resurgence in commercial activity” and arts and entertainment, the New Orleans City Council approved the St. Claude Avenue theater and performance space Backyard Ballroom's request for a conditional use to permit to allow the theater's operation with its newly acquired zoning change.

In October 2012, theater operator Laura Campbell (aka Otter) requested a zoning change for Backyard Ballroom.…

Neil Barclay named director of Contemporary Arts Center

Will Coviello — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:57:00 -0500

The Contemporary Arts Center named Neil Barclay its new executive director. Most recently, Barclay was a consultant with Arts Consulting Group, a group that handles interim management and organizational services for arts and cultural institutions.…

Beasts of the Southern Wild at CAC

Will Coviello — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:39:00 -0600

The Contemporary Arts Center opens an exhibit focusing on the film Beasts of the Southern Wild, other earlier movies by Court 13 artists and art installations by Eliza Zeitlin, younger sister of Beasts writer/director Benh Zeitlin. Many of the buildings and props in the film were created by Eliza, and she's been active in local art installations, including the Music Box.…

Review: Wessel Castle by Trey Burns and Alli Miller

D. Eric Bookhardt — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 14:21:00 -0600

You see them everywhere if you look hard enough, but they are especially prevalent along stretches of older highways in the rural South and West: Places where boom years came and went and where the buildings and signs of earlier times have been adapted to appeal to the trends of the present, sometimes in vain. Abandoned signs with words mangled by wind or vandalism litter the landscape, broadcasting jabberwocky messages to uncomprehending drivers, and even those buildings that have found a second life can look lost in their new roles, surreal artifacts at the intersection of aspiration and desperation.…

Brooklyn Brewery Mash heads to New Orleans

Ian McNulty — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 09:26:00 -0600

The Brooklyn Brewery Mash rolls into town next week with a six-day schedule of events at venues around town mixing cuisine, art, film, music and, of course, beer.

New Orleans is the second stop on an 11-city national tour for the Brooklyn Brewery Mash, which is organized by the New York-based brewery and benefits the nonprofit Slow Food USA.…

A nontraditional Lenten fish fry on tap at Grow Dat Youth Farm

Ian McNulty — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 07:49:00 -0600

The Lenten fish fry is a long-running tradition in New Orleans, but not all of these events follow a traditional script. For instance, one coming up next Friday, March 8, won’t be held at a church but rather at a nonprofit urban farm for local high school students, with music, art and a menu with lighter options alongside the fried fish.

The local/healthy food advocate Slow Food New Orleans is hosting this one-night fish fry at Grow Dat Youth Farm, a youth development program operated from City Park with acres of crops and a facility built from stacked, repurposed shipping containers.…

Review: The Heir Show

D. Eric Bookhardt — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:19:00 -0600

One of the cool things about the St. Claude Arts District is that you never know what you’re going to see. Now in its fifth year and bigger and better than ever, St. Claude has attracted national and global attention as the only experimental artist-run gallery district of any size in America.…

Justice League of... Louisiana?

Alex Woodward — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 11:50:00 -0600

DC Comics’ storied superhero supergroup Justice League of America will become Justice League of Louisiana, sort of. On Wednesday, Feb. 20, the publisher will unveil its series of covers picturing League members hoisting every U.S. state flag, including Louisiana's.…

Doug and Gene Meyer's installation opens at Longue Vue

Missy Wilkinson — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:50:10 -0600

Whether the objet d'art is a rug, a dress or an interior, if Doug and Gene Meyer designed it, it's likely to feature a graphic, jarring-yet-subtle interplay of color. "It's a real discipline," Gene says of the color selection process.…

Review: They Call Me Baby Doll

D. Eric Bookhardt — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:50:00 -0600

They Call Me Baby Doll

For decades, the Baby Dolls were among the more enduring mysteries of New Orleans’ African-American Carnival celebration. Women dressed in vintage baby bonnets and short, frilly skirts showing off their legs and strutting their stuff were fixtures in Zulu parades for ages, but by the 1960s they began to fade away, possibly due to emerging concerns about negative stereotypes.…

Craft cocktail bar Trèo planned for Tulane Avenue

Ian McNulty — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 15:56:00 -0600

As the massive state and VA hospital projects take shape on one end of Tulane Avenue, new businesses from local entrepreneurs are cropping up along other parts of this central but badly-faded corridor.

A new example is Trèo (3835 Tulane Ave., phone n.a.), an upscale bar now in the works from the owners of Finn McCool’s Irish Pub.…

Review: New works by Alison Pebworth, Jonathan Taube and Imen Djouini

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:03:53 -0600

America has always been many things to many people. It was beautiful, bountiful land that promised wealth and freedom to people who had neither, and it was tainted by slavery, oppression and genocide directed against its native inhabitants.…

Review: Photographs by Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 15:51:33 -0600

For more than 30 years, Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun have been the most dedicated documenters of African-American life in Louisiana, especially in New Orleans and their native 9th Ward. Partners in art and life, their photographs have recorded the vanishing lifestyles of the countryside as well as the seemingly timeless traditions of New Orleans’ second-line parades, Carnival, church rituals, marching societies and social aid and pleasure clubs.…

Review: Photographs by Keith Carter and Josephine Sacabo

D. Eric Bookhardt — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:43:42 -0600

In art, there is a point where romanticism and magic realism intersect. In photography, that point, or place, is southern Louisiana and adjoining regions.…

Review: PhotoNOLA exhibits

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:55:48 -0600

PhotoNOLA is the New Orleans Photo Alliance’s big annual event, and although its official festivities only last a few days, many of its more than 50 photography exhibitions run through December, and some go through January. (Visit www.photonola.org/exhibitions for the list.)…

Review: Photos by Deborah Luster, Shelby Lee Adams and Tav Falco

D. Eric Bookhardt — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 08:15:00 -0600

More than any other medium, photography is about time and time’s relationship to light and circumstance. In the hands of three Southern photographers, the results are often poetic.…

"Drums and Roses" pushes petal to the metal

Will Coviello — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:40:30 -0600

Ted Riederer created the art installation Never Records, which for one month served as a recording studio and record store archive of the pressed vinyl projects. New Orleans was the fourth iteration of the project, following New York, London and Ireland.…

The Marigny Opera House grows into an arts center

Will Coviello — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:41:00 -0600

The Marigny Opera House (725 St. Ferdinand St.) is home to Press Street’s 2012 Draw-a-thon, which goes from 6:30 a.m. Saturday to 6:30 a.m.…

Review: Jacqueline Bishop at Arthur Roger Gallery

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:49:00 -0600

Does anyone seriously doubt global warming anymore? Some people who used to ask why we live in such a vulnerable place had a rude awakening when Hurricane Sandy made it clear that vast storms are no longer confined to the tropics but now threaten even New York’s financial district.…

Landrieu's measure would keep late-night visitors out of Jackson Square

Alex Woodward — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 17:45:00 -0600

In 2010, a task force (assembled by District C councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer and headed by the Vieux Carre Property Owners, Residents and Associates) organized to "study ways in which Jackson Square and its environs could be enhanced and protected for the benefit of residents, businesses, and visitors."

A resulting report proposed 15 recommendations for the French Quarter landmark, from security to preserving the "artist colony" around the Square to cleaning and maintaining flagstones and pedestrian malls. All points addressed a variety of concerns from community meetings.…

A sneak peek at the studios featured in Art Home New Orleans

Missy Wilkinson — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:58:00 -0500

There are few pleasures greater than nosing around in someone else's personal space. If that person happens to be an artist, the urge to snoop is even more compelling - there's the sense that something of the creative process will be revealed by the angle of an askew photograph, the aperture of the window's shutters.…

Never Records closes soon in New Orleans

Will Coviello — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 15:56:55 -0500

Never Records - New Orleans from Jason Berry on Vimeo.

Never Records, the art installation/pop up record store/music project, will close on Nov. 4.…