from google image

The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.
Tennessee Williams

 ASHEVILLE AT LAST

The good news is the Southern Highlands Craft Fair is this weekend.  What a wonderful surprise!  I will go and peruse for us all and have many post about artists, craftsmen and their work.

Hunter Museum of Art

This is a museum of American Art and looks to have an excellent collection.  Chattanooga looks like a wonderful town with a strong public arts program and a river arts district.  As we are driving through, I have marked it a must see to come back to and do a review of arts for the blog.  Chattanooga is not to far from my Asheville studio for a long weekend.  Check out this link for the Hunter Museum until we can do more posts for this area.  Will be on the road tomorrow driving through the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains.

Hunter Museum of Art 

PARADE AS ART/MARDI GRAS!

MARDI GRAS(click)
Click on arrow and turn up sound


When I first came to New  Orleans I thought Mardi Gras was one big parade, only to learn it is two weeks or more of parades all over the city.  It is wild and wonderful. The beads are bigger and better than anywhere, and they throw more. They even throw whole bags of unopened packages of beads!  People are free here to express themselves however they want and the do!  Drinking is a big part of the fun, and everyone is walking up and down the streets with a drink or offering someone else one. Of course in New Orleans Mardi Gras is just one parade among many...from the Irish Day parade to the Irish Italian Parade and more and more.  If there is an excuse to party New Orleans can find a way!

New Orleans Food, Helping the Culture Survive

John Besh, chef and restauranture, talks about how Hurricane Katrina effected the food culture of New Orleans.  The largest natural disaster to ever effect a major American city.  He talks about stewardship and being a leader to restore the food traditions of a great city.  

BBQ shrimp is really not BBQ at all!  No one quiet knows how it got its name, except for the red color, but with a little butter, what a dish!

Jambalaya and a Crawfish Pie/New Orleans Recipes

I thought it would be fun to share some New Orleans with you.  As I get ready to leave tomorrow I am trying to leave you with a lot of last minute things about the Big Easy I think you would all enjoy. 

The first is a Chef's recipe for Jambalaya, a favorite Cajun dish.

And here is the famous song Got have Some fun Down on the Bayou

                                           from you tube

A NEW ORLEANS ART SAMPLER...WOW!

Ernest Brown, New Orleans Street Artist

After the Hurricane he started drawing.......

Heather Patterson, Street Artist

New Orleans Museum of Art

Great Program of Public Art in New Orleans



Flood Walls, A Story Of Katrina's Damage to a city and its people

Contemporary Art on Julia Street in New Orleans

Prospect New Orleans

The Accents of New Orleans

This is a fascinating video on all the different dialects in New Orleans, it is down to neighborhood by neighborhood, it tells about class and origin in the most amazing ways.  I think you will find it as interesting as I did.  There is even a Brooklynese dialect in the Irish Channel area..that is where the yat come from...where yat, who dat,...

The more I learn about this wonderful city the more I am amazed.

                                             click and turn up sound      you tube

GUMBO DONE RIGHT!

GUMBO

                                                           Click on image, turn up sound             from you tube
Everyone here has their gumbo recipe, but Dookey Chase does it best and right!  Check out the video on Dookey by John Besh, a New Orleans Chef, talking about the best gumbo in the city.

Mother's Restaurant New Orleans/Food Art

Food Channels Man versus Food highlight Mothers Restaurant in the French Quarter.  What was special about it was we were there during the filming.  It was a surprise when the filming crew came in and starting taking pictures...all of sudden we were part of the show. My partner Ann's Father was having his 89th birthday and we had gone to celebrate.  It became even more special when Adam came over to interview Andy.  They took out most of the interview, but you do see Andy in his little hat and mustache eating a big bit out of Roast Beef po boy with debris!  As we are here to tend to Andy's passing and estate this week, running across this video was bitter sweet.  It was a great day and Adam was so personable with Andy.  It made him feel very special.  The food at Mothers is cheap and awesome.  It is a must if you come to New Orleans.

                                            from you tube

New Orleans BBQ Shrimp

Well, there is one thing for certain, in New Orleans food is an art form.  From the worker to the executive, food is such an important part of the culture that a chef would have to be very brave to serve ordinary food.  It is just not accepted here, the most common person in New Orleans has a highly educated palate.  On the food channel Adam goes to different areas looking for good food where the locals eat.  He found these BBQ shrimp at one of my favorite restaurants in Metairie/New Orleans, Deannie's.  I have not had their BBQ shrimp, but I have had Drago's, Mr. B's, Pascale Maneli's..Each is different and all delicious.  I thought you would enjoy it if I threw in a recipe of two in this city of the best food in the United States. Go ahead and argue, yours is better, but only after you come to New Orleans first.  

                                           from you tube

NEW ORLEANS IN 1920'S

1920's Film of New Orleans   from you tube




This is really a neat old film showing New Orleans during an earlier part of its history.  For a country that is only 236 years old as the United States is, having a famous city that has been around since the 1700's is quite amazing.  6 flags have flown over this city, of the different nations that have occupied it.  It is so wonderful to get to peak in to the past like a time machine and see this glimpse of a city becoming what it is now.  


As artists we observe and use all our senses to absorb things around us.  We can be in the moment or walk backwards or forewords in time-it is our gift that we are hyper observant so we can offer that back to others in our unique forms of expression..be it visual art, writing, drama or music or dance.  When I walk the streets of New Orleans I can sense earlier times, a thousand images come at me in waves as I look from wrought iron filigreed balconies, to layers of generations of lives lived breaking through pealing paint, and peaking through gated gardens into lush waterfalls of confederate jasmine hanging over antique brick walls, the velvet humid evenings and misty nights, and somewhere there is music...always there is music...playing echoing down Bourbon Street To Royal and back to Canal Street.  What work will this come to life in for me as an artist.  I must first absorb and process, then it will be born from an idea into a creation.

Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans

                                            Click on screen and turn up sound   from you tube




BILLIE HOLIDAY(click) AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG 
1947
 Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?

New Orleans, Birth Place of Jazz

 

click picture and turn up sound to play


Jim Robinson/Trumpet/New Orleans/Blues &Jazz


Jim Robinson was particularly known for his unusual playing style that was later copied in other sections of the United States and Europe.

Jelly Roll Martin and the New Orleans Blues

JELLY ROLL MARTIN(CLICK)


THE BIRTH OF THE BLUES/NEW ORLEANS


Though Louis Armstrong was thought to be the first soloist of the Blues, Jelly Roll was known as the first composer of the New Orleans' Blues.  There is a wonderful historical fiction book on New Orleans in the early 19oo's that weaves Jelly Roll into the story...it is called Jass.

Where The Blues Was Born

Turn up your speakers and enjoy!

Looking at the Art of Music in the Big Easy

LOUIS ARMSTRONG "SATCHMO"(click)                  

NEW ORLEANS WHERE THE BLUES WAS BORN


We ate breakfast by Jackson Square today, up early to run errands. Stanley's, as in Tennessee Williams play, STANLEY!!!  I had oysters on poached eggs with canadian bacon and an English muffin and hollandaise sauce...oh my!!!!  It made me want to break out singing!  A good cup of strong French Market coffee with chicory on a rainy day was perfect.  Char-broiled oysters and a salad for lunch/supper at Drago's and a stuffed snow ball....I will just be rolling out of New Orleans on Thursday.  




Film from you tube

Dixie Land Jazz/New Orleans

A Continuation of our look at music as art in New Orleans, the epic center of Jazz.

Dixieland, which was developed in New Orleans, is one of the earliest styles of Jazz music. The style combined earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, ragtime and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. While instrumentation and size of bands can be very flexible, the "standard" band consists of a "front line" of trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet, with a "rhythm section" of at least two of the following instruments: guitar or banjo, string bass or tuba, piano, and drums. from Wikapedia

Dixie Land Jazz (CLICK)                  from you tube

Buckwheat Zydeco Jazz Band

I am a visual artist and often see my world from that point of view, but all forms of art are expressions of the human soul and in New Orleans there is no end to the forms of expression of the spirit. I thought I would post a few of the musicians and music festivals that are particular to New Orleans and Louisiana.  One of the liveliest types of music in the area is Zydeco.  It is called a folk art and comes from Southern Louisiana in the Cajun area down in the Bayou. Its origins are from the early celtic and French tunes to the 1700's that immigrants brought with them from their home countries. Buckwheat Zydeco is one of the most popular zydeco bands in Louisiana.  So lets continue on our virtual tour of Rabbit's Moon Studio in New Orleans...for in a few days we are on the road again to Mississippi and then to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.  

Buckwheat Zydeco

New Orleans is a Living Breathing Art Form!

“If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time.Quote by Tom Robbins, Jitterbug PerfumeLacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promises of the future but keeps at least one foot firmly planted in its history, and in the end, conforms, like an artist, not to the world but to its own inner being--ever mindful of its personal style.”

 

The longer I am here and breathe in the scented jasmine, and feel the soft velvet humid summer nights caressing my skin, and hear the beat of city of jazz, lively and constant, I realize that this city is an art installation....the art of food, music and culture. One cannot just observe in New Orleans, though you may try,....no, you become a part of this mysterious city, it draws you in and holds you tight.  

I remember when Hurricane Katrina damaged the city so badly, there were those who thought it couldn't and shouldn't be rebuilt, but they didn't realize New Orleans would never even consider their thoughts...it was here, it will always be. It is the impossible city, a city built where no city should be, but is.  If you can ever come do and you will leave with a part of your soul forever changed.  New Orleans with love, Betsy

Bill Hemmerling

                                                    google image

was an artist I became aware of as of late in New Orleans.  From looking at his work and subject matter I was sure he was an African American Artist, but he is not.  He is a white artist from Chicago who moved to the South.  He was originally a window dresser for Sears in Chigago, when he moved South he began his career as an artist. I think it says one is never to late to become an artist.  This is a style of art I would like very much to find the roots of .  I see it a good bit in this area, art with words and a collaged or assemblage approach.  So my question is why more in this area...where did it originate from?  So there is a bit of research on my part to find out.  Much of outsider art is mixed media and includes words.  New Orleans is such a mixture of ethnic backgrounds that this approach could have originated from many sources and it may not truly be from Louisiana alone, but the complete South.  Don't miss the orange sentence that says " The Preacher on the woman's role."

Sweet Olive                                                google image

Politics       Bill Hemmerling         Google image