Banksy’s Gifts to the Ninth Ward …

Posted: September 11, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: New Orleans | Tags: , , | 5 Comments

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.

Katrina, Graffiti, and the World I know …

Posted: July 19, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: New Orleans | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

Today, I’d like to bring you here to New Orleans for my morning coffee rant.  I live in a neighborhood called the Bywater.  Most folks call it the Bohemian Bywater because many folks that live here are involved with the creative arts.  We have a Louisiana magnet school (NOCAA.COM) that turns out students that become some of the world’s greatest musicians including all the Marsalis kids.  We also have many many art galleries here.  Some of the great news coming out of our paper today is that Starbux is finally giving up on us.  We have our brand of coffees and independent coffee spots thrive all over town.  We do things our own way down here and like it that way.

I live blocks from the habitat for humanity “Musicians Village”.  I also live within blocks of Brad Pitt’s Pink Houses project.  This is the ninth ward and it is a very interesting place.  Not all of it was destroyed by Katrina.  Since Hurricane Katrina, we have seen Sheiks, Princes of Wales, Rock Stars, Movie Stars, TV anchors, Presidents, Presidential Candidates, and regular people from all over the world in my neighborhood.   They all come back because we are a special little place.

Since Hurricane Katrina, the creative juices as well as the frustration down here have led to some new expressions.  There is no place this is more evident that the street art that has popped up.  At first, it was limited to making political statements on the nasty refrigerator sitting on your front lawn.  Then, it turned into something a bit more, well New Orleans.  The photo on the right is one I took of my friend Jimmy Lalanne’s house.  Jimmy stayed there during Katrina, despite my efforts to get his ass out of town.  He’s an ‘approximate’ artist, used to work with Andy Warhol and is from cajun descent.  You can see he riffed on his katrina cross painted by the texas guard on his own home.

So here’s our latest little neighborhood controversy, welcome to our battle against the Grey Ghost.  The Grey Ghost has decided to eliminate all of these art forms in the surrounding neighborhoods.  This has started to include grafitti art that exists every where including on buildings and walls where there is the permission of its owners.  He’s named the Grey Ghost because, well see the video below and you’ll get the story.  Also, go take a look at an article from this week’s Times Picayune.

This has turned into a first amendment issue for the Bohemian Bywater. We now have a movement with T-shirts, Youtubes, and a few law suits.  So, welcome to my world!

You can read more about this and see more videos on the graffiti here:

http://blog.nola.com/dougmaccash/2008/07/vandalism_or_art.html