If you’re into cities and art, my friend makes beautiful prints of post-industrial cities and sells them on her Etsy store. Buy a print, support New Orleans art, and get down with some urban aesthetics.
Michael T. Martin
culture & the contemporary city
“thrift store landscape with color swatches”
Sometimes I’m a country mouse
WE’RE DOO-ING IT
Art : Music : Fire
Chinese painter-turned-photographer Wang Qingson’s art project that recalls walls of Bejing being covered in posters of opposition factions of the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.
(via Paris Review)
DesCours: An intersection of art and architecture
This is not to be missed: Starts Saturday 6pm at Site 02, 725 Howard Ave
“DesCours is unique in that it provides a platform for experimentation within the architectural field, showcasing architecture installations that use new materials, methods, technology and interactivity. DesCours presents an opportunity for viewing contemporary design within a historic setting by way of juxtaposition, thereby exposing the elegance achieved in the careful articulation of contrasting old and new. On a local scale, DesCours highlights the culturally rich fabric of New Orleans as a great backdrop for forward-thinking structural innovations that nod towards the future of architectural possibilities.
DesCours provides much more than a series of innovative architecture installations, in that it also invites musicians to perform nightly within the sites. This pairing of local musical talent, historic settings, and inventive architecture installations creates a truly one of a kind experience that invites audiences to see, hear, and experience these previously obscure spaces in a new light.”
Suggested site to check out
Site 03: Andy Sternad and John Kleinschmidt. Their exhibit explores the sound of water in New Orleans with recording from the lake front, the steamboat Natchez, water fountains in public parks, and even the Country Club in Bywater.
Arts and Economy, pt. 1
This weekend is Prospect 1.5 openings for the St. Claude Arts District. While I’m excited to go see innovative art, personal artist studios, strange performance and go to all the good parties, I’m most excited about the research I’m going to do afterward. I’m going to go around to a sampling of businesses in the neighborhood and survey them on their sales volume comparing this weekend and other, non-event weekends. I’m still trying to formulate a scientific methodology but if that doesn’t develop, at the very least I can have some raw data that will indicate the economic impact of what the art events this weekend had on the local economy.
While more traditional economic development strategies are succeeding and failing at a regular rate, arts as economic development is a relatively recent trend. Ann Markusen is the foremost scholar on the subject and next week, in addition to my survey, I’ll be doing a study on ways that visual artists and musicians in New Orleans can leverage their assets to assure a stable and living wage. Basically, I’m going to attempt to lay out the foundation for a working class artist that isn’t dependent on the service industry for rent.
There are many avenues to explore with this research and many galleries to see this weekend. I hope the two end up intersecting quite a bit. Also, a quick plug for the event that I’ve been organizing:
New Orleans Open Studios - 21 artists are opening their private space for public, self-guided tours. Saturday, November 13th and Sunday November 14th, noon-6pm. The kickoff party is tomorrow night, November 12th at 7pm, 1940 St. Claude Ave. There will be outdoor installations, a cadre of artists, and what ever else you might expect from a 21st century art happening.
In his piece Totems, not only is Delorme’s cyclist surreal, but the modern city in the background adds a layer of strangeness to the entire composition
Arts education and community development
Q. What’s better than sitting on the stoop?
A. Talking with a bunch of elementary school kids on the stoop who are out of school for the summer about what they are up to, what they want to do, and just generally hanging out.
Two of the girls want to be artists and it got me to thinking about the availability of arts education and funding. Even though we’re supposedly coming out this recession state budgets are suffering. Inevitably, education funding, and specifically funding for the arts, will be cut.
I guess this is the big question for those of us involved in arts education and community development but I wonder how we’ll foster their creative minds and create opportunities to explore the arts more meaningfully in the future.
Currently in my city, New Orleans, there are a lot of nascent organizations that are fighting this fight. One which I worked for, the Creative Alliance of New Orleans, has already had a successful project at the abandoned Colton School, serving as an exhibition space during Prospect 1. Their community involvement is inspiring, providing free or subsidized space to artists in exchange for teaching neighborhood kids about art, but again, this model is dependent on outside funding and internal fundraising.
I hope that as community developers and art lovers we can continue on this relatively new path of creative economy investment. The girls I chatted with today would certainly benefit from it. Our goal should be to brainstorm innovative ways for that investment to continue and flourish. The arts allow the brain to function in different ways that will be imperative for the post-Recession local, regional, and global economy. New Orleans is ripe for such investment, as are many other cities, so lets get on with it.
