Category Archives: Art

Happy #NOLA Friday!

Gumbel Memorial Fountain in Audubon Park, Sculpture by Isidore Konto

Gumbel Memorial Fountain in Audubon Park, Sculpture by Isidore Konto

Artist Spotlight: Ally Boyd of NOLA Breeze Art

Ally BoydSeven years ago, when Ally Boyd relocated to New Orleans from Austin, she considered herself crafty mom, but not an artist. While wandering around the city during homeschool excursions with her children, she found items left behind as litter: the arm of a doll, an old glass bottle, screws, bottle caps, and wood. She collected these items, seeing the beauty in ordinary things, and used them to decorate her home. The vibe of New Orleans influenced her greatly, making her want to build, create, express herself. The darker themes of work by local artists inspired Ally to push limits and redefine her own boundaries. Four years after making New Orleans her home, she was now making New Orleans her art. NOLA Breeze Art was born.

When she first started creating shadow boxes, she began using the items she had collected from around the city. She believed most of the item she found were art in and of themselves and loved bringing them to light in her own work. She reserved most of her pieces for friends and family, or for use in her own home. Last May, a friend encouraged her to try the Freret Market.

Since that first market last May, Ally and NOLA Breeze Art have participated in the Freret Market every month, selling her pieces 912847_10201075414276750_741309102_nto those both local and visiting. In 2012, one of her pieces was accepted into the 4th Annual Femme Fest.  Last month, The Green- Eyed Gator on Chartres St. began selling her art. This month a new gallery opening on Magazine St, Coq Rouge, will be featuring her art as well. NOLA Breeze Art has expanded from shadow boxes to steam punk statues, wall hangings, frames, and dolls.

Art has become a form of therapy for Ally. Recently, her estranged father took his own life. While she was hundreds of miles away from family, her art became her refuge, allowing her to process her feelings about what had happened in a way that she hadn’t been able to before. For her, art is the most constant of companions – the friend you share all of your pain with.

“The art that I created immediately after I found out about my dad is much different than the art I usually do. It helped, though, to get the storm inside of me out in something material that I could see.”

911930_10201075458717861_480247411_nAlly hopes that her art helps people to connect or reconnect and when they look at her art, it inspires them to feel – taking away something personal from something that was so personal for her to make.

It is also her goal that NOLA Breeze Art offer people a little piece of New Orleans, no matter where they call home. This is why she uses reclaimed wood and other recycled items she’s found throughout the city in her all of her pieces.cc

“The city of New Orleans is such a huge inspiration to me. I like being able to take something that I found in City Park or on the ground at the French Quarter festival and be able to incorporate it into something new. I want to give people a little bit of what New Orleans has given to me.”

You can visit Ally and NOLA Breeze Art this Saturday from 12 – 5 at the Freret Market or visit her on Facebook. 

Guest Blogger: Theo Eliezer of Momma Tried Magazine

Nola Fashion Week A/W 2013

Morgus the Magnificent

Two ordinances affecting Jackson Square to be considered on Monday, 12/3/12

Cathedral Creative Studios and L’Entrepot Hosts the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series for NOLA

Big thanks to Anna Harris for guest-posting the following wonderful opportunity for local artists!

Cathedral Creative Studios and L’Entrepot are proud to announce that we’ve been selected as 2012 hosts of the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series in New Orleans.

Since 2009, Bombay Sapphire and the Rush Philanthropic Art Foundation have
celebrated the ingenuity and insight of emerging artists with the Artisan Series. Last year, San Francisco and New York ranked top in local artist participation; this year, our goal is to put New Orleans in the lead.

Our city is unique in its rich history and diverse modern landscape, something that
definitely shows in the work of the thousands of talented artists that make their
homes here. We’re inviting all local 2D and 3D visual artists to submit original
artwork of any theme before August 24th, 2012. Submission is free, and you can submit one piece a day until the end of the competition. This is New Orleans’
opportunity to share the incredible richness of its artistic community with the
world, so please spread the word!

Of course, this competition isn’t just about showing some local pride; it’s also a great chance for local artists to showcase their talent. Semi-finalists’ work will be featured in one of three New Orleans-based exhibits at L’Entrepot’s Julia Street gallery space. Even better, winners at the local level will go on to compete at Art Basel Miami for a chance to win a solo exhibit at the Rush Arts Gallery in New York.

Visit Sapphire Artisan Series to submit your work. For more information, please contact us at info@cathedralnola.com or via our Facebook page.

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Anna Harris is the Account Manager at Cathedral Creative Studios, a marketing and photography studio dedicated to fostering client business growth and building strong brand identities through dynamic print, outdoor and interactive media. She recently moved back to New Orleans after a three year stint in Chicago, and is overjoyed to be back in the land of Sazeracs, brass bands, and daily costume opportunities.

A tale of two tourist destinations

Could it be that the French Quarter of New Orleans might have its very own “sister city” — the walled city of Pingyao, in China’s Shanxi province?

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The ancient Chinese city of Pingyao. Photo by Debra Bruno as featured in The Atlantic.

Does this not look eerily similar to the intersection of Decatur Street (left) and N. Peters Street/the French Market (right) in the French Quarter (albeit with the streets and angles being depicted in reverse), looking in the direction of Canal St. (minus the Joan of Arc statue in the green space triangle)? It’s a virtual mirror image of that sliver of our own Vieux Carré.

Similarities between the French Quarter and Pingyao include:

• Tourism as the primary economic driver;

• infrastructure concerns resulting from “hoards of tourists”;

• projects involving the collection of “oral histories” from residents;

• Disneyland facsimiles (New Orleans Square at Disneyland vs. Pingyao being compared to the Temple of Heaven pavilion at Epcot);

• hole-in-the-wall shops offering “reflexology foot massages” (there are at least four in the French Quarter these days);

• music blaring from loudspeakers; and

• concerns of local businesses being overwhelmed by “souvenir shops selling mass-produced junk next to bars and restaurants.”

Consider this: two cities, half a world apart, offering alarmingly identical experiences to their respective visitors… isn’t that homogenization defined?

“‘The exodus of indigenous residents and the loss of confidence in local Pingyao cultural traditions may be the single biggest threat to Pingyao today,’ says UNESCO’s Dr. Du Xiaofan. ‘There are threats that the Pingyao could become nothing but a city full of souvenir shops, restaurants and hotels,’ adds Tongji University’s Shao Yong.”  Sound familiar?

The N.O. Tourism and Marketing Corporation, and the N.O. Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the Morial Convention Center would still like to increase the number of tourists present daily in our city from the current estimated 24,000 visitors per day to an average of 37,500 per day (an estimated 95% of whom would likely visit the French Quarter). There are concerns that this many visitors would likely have a detrimental impact on the quality of life for the residential population of the French Quarter and surrounding neighborhoods, resulting in a further decline in the number of full-time residents.

Pingyao’s master plan, however, calls for the implementation of a deliberate reduction in the number of full-time residents to enhance its appeal. What might happen as a mere consequence in the French Quarter (not as a result of our city’s master plan) is an acknowledged and planned course of action in Pingyao, who’s annual tourist influx is a mere one million — not the 13.7 million figure desired for our city, as prescribed by the Boston Consulting Group’s report of 2009.

In MADAME VIEUX CARRÉ by Scott S. Ellis, he references the French Quarter’s early preservationists (Saxon, Irby, Fields, etc.) with the following words:

“What cannot be overstated is that this first band of preservationists left a legacy that ultimately became the economic engine of New Orleans. Their influence was slow and sometimes faltering, and there were reverses along the way. But it was at the smoky, absinthe-informed parties of the 1920s Quarter ‘bohemians’ that the foundations for New Orleans’ modern tourist industry were laid. Long after most primary industry has fled, tourism, in many ways great and small, keeps the city ever so slightly above utter destitution. Most of the oil industry has decamped to Houston, but the hotels stay busy. The high-tech sector may roll its eyes when thinking of Orleans Parish, but the souvenir shops of Decatur Street still turn the goods to each new generation of tourists. This first band scraped a few sparkling shards of ‘charm’ from the gutter and exposed the mother lode of unique character that is New Orleans’, and the Vieux Carré’s, livelihood.”

Ellis’ contention that preservationists birthed the modern tourism industry makes absolute sense, but given the recent Hospitality Zone battle and the ongoing skirmishes between the city’s administration and neighborhood groups, the truly warped part is that it may have been this very impulse to protect and preserve that has sown the seeds for the cultural commodification and destruction of our city’s most cherished traditions and customs.

Lately it could be said that the voracious triplets (the Tourism & Marketing Corporation, the Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the Morial Convention Center) seem to want to cannibalize their parent.

In the French Quarter, cast iron ornamentation, fence posts, and columns occasionally feature ornamental pineapples as part of their decorative motif, a Victorian era symbol of prosperity adopted by our city’s earliest French settlers. Much like Pingyao’s tortoise symbol and its relevance to that city’s current struggles, the preservation of our history and local culture desperately needs an infusion of prosperity in the form of community interest. It bears repeating: we are a community — not a commodity.

Please read the Atlantic’s article about Pingyao and consider the corollaries between this city and our own city’s French Quarter — might Pingyao be the Chinese Vieux Carré?: Can an Ancient Chinese City Pursue Preservation Without Disney-fication?

New Orleanians: If you’re not disgusted by the proposed Hospitality District, then you’re not paying attention

New Orleans City Park Annual Spring Garden Show

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