The renaissance of New Orleans

[Geee]

U K Independent :

The renaissance of New Orleans
Five years after the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, the Big Easy is enjoying a cultural boom thanks to an influx of creative young talent from across the US

By David Usborne
Thursday, 26 August 2010

On the calendar of anniversary events in New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina, one stands out: a party tonight at the Eiffel Society, a new restaurant and lounge on St Charles Avenue, where guests will be asked to celebrate something good the storm left behind: a burgeoning and highly boisterous arts scene.

It's an eruption that has provoked – and is sustained by – an influx of mostly young and creative people from across the US, all with the common hope of finding inspiration and purpose in the battered urban landscape of the city, including painters, film-makers, dancers, designers, musicians and architects.

Some will be at the party on St Charles, like the American painter Elliott Coon. This spring, she and friends with the Life is Art Foundation here in New Orleans, spent 30 days barricaded inside the octagon structure of glass and steel (it was once part of the tower in Paris), sleeping, eating, working and playing without leaving it once, though they were occasionally joined in their experiment by other artists.

The result will be on view for all the party's guests, set to include the city's new mayor and enthusiast for the arts, Mitch Landrieu, and the economist Jeffrey Sachs. Never mind what's for dinner; look at the art they have installed, whether it's the pagan-like labyrinth painted in grey and gold leaf across most of its floor by Coon or the mesmerisingly delicate embroideries of naked figures suspended like cobwebs in the central skylight by the British artist, Louise Riley. (Riley was there for much of the live-in too.)

Other pieces – there are 20 – include a book table from wood salvaged from Katrina-stricken homes by Robert Tennan, a legendary figure among New Orleans art-goers, and, hanging over the kitchen door, a slate-grey photograph of a tug surrounded by oil from the BP spill taken by Edward Burtynsky.

[SrWoodchuck]

Geee! Thank you for the post!

 

I'm sure this is an "art-bomb" of epic proportions, full of the most elite celeb-artiste's that America has to offer.

Mayor & brother of the "Putain de la Louisiane," Mary Landrieu; will preside as "King Creyola." We'd make millions if paid a quarter tax for every utterance of "Bush & Failure" used in the same sentence.

 

The majority of Louisiana's "coonass" constituency [which is most everyone else] will gaze in wonder at the prancing fairies as they sprinkle each other with their "poussiere de fee magique" and eat waterbug randoo, chased down with an '05 Guffens-Heynan Pouilly-Fuisse.

 

Hard work and house building like Brad Pitt [really] and Harry Connick, Jr. are the real deal.

 

NOLA high brow culture appreciate the arts......coonasses "laissez le bon temps rouler" by "suckin' heads & pinchen' tails" with an Abita or two.

 

When the "merde" hits the rotating cooling device, these gatherings will be by very limited invite only.

[AceRimmer]

Geee! Thank you for the post!

 

I'm sure this is an "art-bomb" of epic proportions, full of the most elite celeb-artiste's that America has to offer.

Mayor & brother of the "Putain de la Louisiane," Mary Landrieu; will preside as "King Creyola." We'd make millions if paid a quarter tax for every utterance of "Bush & Failure" used in the same sentence.

 

The majority of Louisiana's "coonass" constituency [which is most everyone else] will gaze in wonder at the prancing fairies as they sprinkle each other with their "poussiere de fee magique" and eat waterbug randoo, chased down with an '05 Guffens-Heynan Pouilly-Fuisse.

 

Hard work and house building like Brad Pitt [really] and Harry Connick, Jr. are the real deal.

 

NOLA high brow culture appreciate the arts......coonasses "laissez le bon temps rouler" by "suckin' heads & pinchen' tails" with an Abita or two.

 

When the "merde" hits the rotating cooling device, these gatherings will be by very limited invite only.

 

I can't argue with anything you just said. The one good thing that's happened to N'Awlins besides Pitt and Connick rebuilding homes was the Saints winning the Super Bowl. We're still kind of in a daze over that...