Banksy’s Gifts to the Ninth Ward …

If you’ve followed any of my New Orleans-related posts, you know i live in the ninth ward and you’ve read about NOLA rising, the Grey Ghost, and urban art.  Well, in honor of the third anniversary of Katrina, infamous British grafitti artist Banksy blessed us with his incredible art.    He even took on the Grey Ghost!!!  Here’s a sampling of his work and links to give you some more information.  Folks in the neighborhood are scrambling to ensure these whimsical marvels become permanent installations.

Banksy’s website:

http://www.banksy.co.uk/outdoors/horizontal_1.htm

Times Picayune on the works here by British Grafitti artist Banksy:

http://videos.nola.com/times-picayune/2008/09/banksy_i_presume.html

http://blog.nola.com/living/2008/09/graffiti_art_update.html

More On Banksy and the New Orleans Installations:

http://gawker.com/tag/banksy/

One of the works  (the marching band shown at the bottom of this this thread) was already painted over by the custodian of the abandoned building. Say good bye to a great piece of art, let alone the price that original Banksy’s can fetch! Not only did it beautifully capture some of the best of New Orleans Culture, it was probably worth hundereds of thousands of dollars.  The “National Looters” shown above was recently covered by plywood yesterday.  Driving by it today, the plywood is down.  My understanding is that the owner of the building is trying to protect this piece.  (Smart and savvy person that one!) They are still searching out locations of several of the works seen on Banksy’s website–including a helmet morphed into a turtle and a little girl screaming from atop a chair at the trademark Banksy rat.  This rat uses a crack in plaster exposing the bricks for its body.  One of the Banksy’s has also been damaged.  The link above to gawker talks about that senseless act.

Banksy’s sense of humor is in full play here.  He obviously has used the Grey Ghost (Fred Radtke) for the basis of this statement on the anti-grafitti artists block out of grafitti in New Orleans with gray swaths of paint.