Strolling on St. Claude

"Second Saturdays" on St. Claude has become one of New Orleans art scene's highlights with the number of visitors growing exponentially, it seems. The opening night of the galleries located along the St. Claude corridor stretching from Elysian Fields to Poland Avenue is the occasion to become acquainted with local artists and, over the years, follow the members of collectives like Staple Goods, The Front or Good Children.

Venues have sprouted in anticipation of the triennial Prospect.4, among them Double Shotgun  displaying works from the collective Level Art and guests. This month, the show titled INSIDE OUT Reflections on Incarceration in Louisiana sounds daunting. The core of the exhibition is located in two rooms, one on each side of the double shotgun house. On the left, the mementos selected by Maria Hinds belonged to Herman Wallace, a convict later cleared of a crime he did not commit, after forty one years of solitary confinement. The personal objects, casual (a  pair of socks), playful (a ball made with socks) or official (legal papers or hand-written letters) are photographed by Matthew Thompson for this collaborative project. Grey takes over the black and white photographs about memories and their implied losses and regrets. The other side features the drawings from Glenn Ford, made while he was on death row. They reflect what a man without hope dreams of: birds, flowers, love. A starving man has visions of feasts, the prisoner finds freedom through his meticulous pictures. The reminding rooms are filled with works from artists like Rontherin Ratliff with his simple but poignant sculpture made of eight strands of steel falling from the ceiling to the floor, two of them featuring a basic knot. Less is more also in Out There, 2018, a white monochrome wall piece from Ana Hernandez. The two words written in braille  resume the epistolary exchanges between Herman Wallace and the artist who communicated for years without meeting in person. One can watch The Guilt of Innocence, The Truth of Lies, 2018, mixed media on TV from Carl Joe Williams, very relevant in the exhibition's context. So are the paintings from John Isiah Walton The Farm and Fruit of the Farm, both 2016. With a total of twelve artists included in the show, plan to spend some time. The exhibition is conducive to reflections about the grim subject without getting heavy and gives a purpose to lives which otherwise would have been forgotten.

The contrast is jarring at  Antenna Gallery where the one man show from Devin Reynolds Tyrone Don't Surf  takes place. Murals and smaller size works lined up along the walls feel like a visual scream. While studying architecture at Tulane University, the artist born and raised in Santa Monica, California, started to delve into printmaking and sign painting. He applies his skills for these mixed media compositions built with words from vernacular language and caricatures of a black man called "Tyrone". Surfing becomes the symbol of exclusion as implied in the title of the exhibition. The artist widens the subject and also treats of incarceration in his punchy works filled with derogatory sometimes bitter humor. Their ambivalence keeps you "on the edge" throughout the show which will leave you between tears and a smile.

The visit goes on to The Front where Brian St Cyr, a versatile artist presents his latest works on paper for his show Mississippi Mud. The display includes drawings and watercolors with their distinctive "bayou green" shade and a new work, experimentation with children toys. Upon leaving the gallery, Embrace, is the occasion to get a hug from Vanessa Centeno's interactive sculptures. Across the street, new pieces from Aaron McNamee at Good Children, a stop at UNO St. Claude Gallery to look at the works from MFAs (congrats Ruth Owens, Natalie Woodlock ), William dePauw at Staple Goods, an outstanding show at Barrister's, a visit at the New Orleans Art Center, Second Story Gallery and BrickRed, the latest gallery on the block ...
It now takes several strolls during the month-long exhibitions to see them all.

photographs by the author:

John Isiah Walton "Fruit of The Farm", 2016
Devin Reynolds "Everyone's Favorite Black Guy Until its 11 pm and hes the only other person on the street", 2018
Brian St Cyr "Mississippi Mud #1"

Art with Ideas

A century ago Marcel Duchamp submitted Fountain, a urinal-basin, for the first exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York. It was refused but Conceptual art was born. Still engendering controversy, it has become a full fledged mean of expression for artists. NOLA CONCEPTUAL, the latest exhibition at The New Orleans Art Center in the St. Claude Arts District features the works from eleven New Orleans artists, including paintings, sculptures, installations, a performance and a video.

The gallery space is left wide open for the exhibition, setting the stage for the numerous and diverse works. The immediate attraction is a slow paced performance from Ricardo Barba featuring an actor wrapped in a white blanket and bound by the wrists to a cord hanging from the ceiling. In the name of the anonymous victims of injustice, Another One Bites the Dust (Love No Matter What), 2016, makes a powerful statement. I chose to focus on one work from each artist, drawn by subject and/or aesthetic. Starting with John Isiah Walton, I found his monochrome piece compelling: a clear glass jar filled with blue water, rocks at the bottom and syringes floating on top. Its simplicity emphasizes the message. The stones refer to the heaviness of being, the syringes to the escape from it through artificial paradises while the color is about infinity, eternity and ultimately death. In this piece, the artist rejuvenates the art of the memento mori. Among the four wall compositions from Ana Hernandez, an idiosyncratic piece related to the St. Claude neighborhood and its divisive neutral ground, They call it "The Shooting Side" can also be interpreted in a larger context. A thick green line crosses the dark brownish landscape, like a slash. Carl Joe Williams's Ladder intrigued me. The least narrative of his five pieces, it is also the most conceptual. Joan Miró incorporated the symbol in his works as a mean of escaping reality and reach the imaginary world. Williams's ladder is festive, covered with glitter and bright colors but with broken steps, like a broken dream, an escape to nowhere. Locked from Alex Podesta features two symmetrical creatures with antlers, facing each other in a passive confrontation, on wheels but static, frozen in action, without past or future, locked for eternity. Nearby, Cynthia Scott brings us into a world of fairy tales with three works inspired by well-known legends. Rapunzel Moves On is a lavish installation with its golden locks spread on the floor and antique scissors laid on top. The blond mane belongs to a now cropped haired head. The gesture of cutting is final and at the same time implies a new beginning. Rapunzel is leaving, turning her back on the "prince". The piece is a whimsical reference to women's liberation from their submissive roles. Rontherin Ratliff is somber, preoccupied by death, the carceral world and a future overshadowed by genetic engineering. His sculpture Biological Fear, 2016, relates to the DNA's double helix. Will its manipulation be used for the benefit of the human race or become another weapon? In the 9 min video from Jason Childers, physical and digital worlds intermingle to create a bizarre atmosphere filled with unrelated images and sounds where reality becomes "both meaningful and meaningless". On a lighter note, Christina Juran's Good Day is a silhouette frolicking in the clouds, oblivious of surroundings and ...happy. Across, Gina Laguna offers what feels like a forest of sculptures ( six). They can be appreciated one at a time or as an installation. Their common message is about nature and its life cycle. The numbered series of sculptures from Keith Duncan, Body Brace, alludes to infirmity and suffering. The silvery replicas are witnesses of the pain endured when growing up. This can start or conclude the visit of the exhibition.

Group shows can be overwhelming, confusing, lacking cohesion. The clear labeling of the works, the short but informative wall texts and the use of the space avoid these shortcomings. The selected pieces are representative of the eleven artists, each expressing their angst, sharing their intimate thoughts through their work. Conceptual art requires the viewer's participation  and more than aesthetic pleasures, provides thought-provoking material. Challenging, it is also rewarding if one spends some time interacting with the work.
The exhibition is a landmark for conceptual art in New Orleans.

photographs by the author:

Keith Duncan "Body Brace"
Carl Joe Williams "Past"
Cynthia Scott "Rapunzel Moves On"
Alex Podesta "Locked"

Deeper Questions

The latest show at the Staple Goods gallery is filled with energy. Colors, rhythms from the music composed by Carl Joe Williams hit the visitor attracted to the old revamped television sets aligned along the wall. With decorations, new attributes, bright Caribbean colors, he reinvents a common reality and finds a new status for the unavoidable TVs which brought the world in our living rooms. Now sculptures, they become kitschy symbols of the power of the object with their crowning adornments. But his transposition of the television set into an icon also signals its upcoming death in the age of the Internet.
Carl Joe Williams's message goes further, projecting edited episodes of Good Times, a sitcom from the 70's with an original soundtrack from the artist, a medley including cheering, laughing crowds interrupted by gunshot noises creating tension or with Deeper Questions, treating of race with its succession of portraits of males melting into females, African-Americans metamorphosing into Asians, Afros replaced by blond flat hairs. Some screens are partly covered by collages, like giant pixels and the images fade in the background. The new works from Carl Joe Williams include also Urban Series, figurative scenes, short visual stories accompanied by text, in the same verve than the multimedia pieces.
The artist tackles different subjects like politics, violence, the influence of media and through cliches and stereotypes, the divisive influence of bigotry. If the colors are bright and sharp, the innuendos are subtle (sometimes not) and the artist is not afraid of using light humor and even a touch of derision.
Re-staging objects, using visual cues to suggest ideas, the artist claims his role as a catalyst for thoughts and revives the concept of art for goals other than purely aesthetics.
An interesting exhibition which provides food for thoughts and conveys sobering conclusions.

photographs by the author:

Deeper Questions, 2014
I Knew Something Was Wrong, 2013
Urban Series, 2014

Different Stories

Carl Joe Williams, multimedia artist and musician is from New Orleans where he finds inspiration and subjects. His works can be viewed in galleries like The Front on Saint-Claude or around town for his public art. His latest exhibition at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi Shades of Perception occupies the African American gallery where colors and music greet the visitor. The artist's musical compositions, part of an installation made of painted totems and speakers fill the air, the rhythm translated in patterns of bright colors on the poles.
The  surrounding paintings on the walls are narrative figurative compositions. Williams paints on  abandoned objects like doors, wood shutters, bathroom mirrors, crutches... and gives his version of Americana through works inspired by artists like Grant Wood or Norman Rockwell. In American Shotgun, 2012, the couple (father and daughter in Wood's painting) assumes the same pose but the farmer's pitchfork from American Gothic, 1930, is replaced by a musician's trumpet. Rockwell's No Swimming, 1921, a playful adventure, turns into an unlawful act in No Trespassing, 2012 and Prom Dress,1949, becomes Paulette, 2012, a young prostitute choosing a dress for work. The shift is subtle and can fool us, but the titles do not lie. The portrait of a girl blowing a dry thistle, a butterfly flying away, carrying her dreams, symbols so sweet, so fresh, contrast with the harsh design of the Calliope Project profiled on the right corner in Calliope Dream, 2012. Haloes surrounding faces and backgrounds reminiscent of stain-glass give a quasi-religious aura to Williams's paintings and looking at A Moment of Silence, 2012 or Family Value, 2012, I can hear Gospel music.
An emotional message from the artist.

photographs courtesy Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art:

American Shotgun, 2012

 Mixed media on found door, 72” x 35”

 Hearing the Voice of God, featuring   Jeremy “Mojo” Phipps, 2012

Mixed media on found wood pallet, 31” x 24”

All Flavors in the Saint-Claude Art District

Since last week-end and for the month to come, Staple Goods gallery located in the Saint-Claude Art District offers a show curated by Brenda Hanegan, one of the three featured artists. In some circles, it is "passé" to paint bouquets of flowers. Brenda Hanegan proves this wrong with her luxuriant ginger flowers, their sensual shapes and colors growing exuberantly beyond the thick boards made of Times-Picayune comics on Bristol vellum. Trough  a poetic association, the artist relates the  tropical plants' yearly cycle of renewal and decay to the city of New Orleans and its decadent lusciousness. The conventional representation of the flowers with a Southern twist, gives the paintings an air of old and new, a symbolic way of expression  that will pass the test of many fashions.
The four woodcuts from Laura Richens inspired by quotes or poems from the philosopher and psychologist William James, are colorful illustrations of his idea of cosmic consciousness. Human Hearts, 2013, also inspired by a quote from Aleksandr Slozhenitsyn, with its violent red-orange and convoluted shapes reflects the confusion between good and evil in an expressionist language contrasting with the calm, serene blue and green landscape of Island in the Sea, 2013.
Across, the works from Kelly A. Mueller offer another view of nature. The pieces are more narrative, filled with stories about a fertile land inhabited by fantastic creatures, a world born from the artist's subconscious where dreams and reality intermingle. Old maps, newspapers, instructional manuals provide a background for the wild landscapes and bring a touch of reality. Donated or found quilts furnish the frame for the stories set in an exotic world. A small gallery filled with works set up in an harmonious display.

Further on Saint-Claude Avenue, The Front gathers an interesting mix of local and guests artists, starting with a series of works from Bonnie Maygarden lining up the walls of a room which has been filled with surprising installations in the past (tons of earth, barrels of water or Jumper most recently). The compositions with minimalist geometric shapes are defined by their fluorescent yellow, bright orange or black and white colors.  The artist works with unconventional synthetic material like pleather and paints with pop, unnatural colors provoking an ambivalent reaction in the viewer, a mixture of attraction and repulsion enhanced by the pieces' haptic quality (several visitors asked permission to touch the works and I could not resist "feeling"! ). Without a focal point, the empty dreamy landscapes of peaks and valleys appear endless and come alive when the viewer walks back and forth. With common materials, unnatural colors, the artist found a way to reach an immaterial world.
The visual adventure is followed by a more intellectual quest with Nikita Gale's installation, a challenging work aimed at bringing up a reflection on the diversion of history through words and images. With her white helmet, the conceptual artist points out the twisting of events and facts in the process of vulgarization of history, to fit groups and their bias. Her three videos and the texts on the walls converge to develop the idea, taking as an example the acceptance speech delivered by Halle Berry when awarded the Best Actress Oscar.
 Dave Greber, a video artist, uses his media to immerse the viewer in a cartoonish world full of trepidation.  The sound effects and the images produce a dynamic and punchy message, funny?... maybe I missed part of it, but I found the work "very cool".
Ratss from Andrew Brehm is using an old technique, masked actors, to tell a story delivered through a video to fit the taste of the time.
In the backyard, the installation from Carl Joe Williams concludes the visit with a series of colorful totems arranged on a game board drawn on the grass. The search for universality brings the artist to mix music and visual art. His musical composition playing in the background animates the group of sculptures, combining rhythm in colors, shapes and notes.

The vibrant Saint-Claude Art District may require a visit twice a month! Good Children, Antenna,..more.

photographs by the author:

"Three Graces Oleander", Kelly A. Mueller
"Untitled", 2013, Bonnie Maygarden
"Gr8@wakening!, Dave Greber