.: Birthday Trip to New Orleans

For my birthday, on Monday, we took a spur-of-the-moment roadtrip to Bay St. Louis, MS and New Orleans. Seven hours to the other side of Mississippi and another hour to NO. We discovered that BSL is terrific little city (12,000) right on the beach, just off the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition to a bunch of restaurants and attractive shops, they boast six art galleries and other artistic offerings. We only ended up spending Monday evening there, though we were staying in the area.

On Tuesday, we went exploring in New Orleans, beginning with the Lower 7th Ward and Marigny neighborhoods. Here is a picture of the faubourg from September 7, 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Looks a lot better now. We walked aimlessly up St. Roche, St. Claude, and I don't know where.

CLICK HERE to see more of what we saw:

Then over on Rampart Street to Louis Armstrong Park, where they have a few sculptures:

NO Brass Band by Sheleen Jones-Adenle, 2010

Congo Square by Adewale S. Adenle, 2010

Louis Armstrong by Elizabeth Catlett, 1980

Nigerian artists Adewale and Sheleen are a married couple.

We crossed over the trolley-tracks and Rampart Street, to see what was going on in the French Quarter:

One place we visited, Gallery 2, featured the work of the owners Scott Long and Betsy Youngquist who make beautiful art together. Scott is a carver and Betsy adds beads and doll parts to transform his work into wonderful pieces.

We didn't take these pictures, but here is some of their latest: https://byart.com/gallery/latest-work/

We also visited the Antieau Gallery where artist and owner Chris Roberts-Antieau offers her whimsical and bizarre world of fabric applique. As it was explained, she uses her machine as a brush to "paint" her subjects. It must be a fairly sophisticated machine, I'm guessing, because the work was beautiful. Point of interest: In addition to this gallery, Chris owns another in NO and one in Santa Fe.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE OF THE QUARTER.

It was a short drive to Poydras Ave, for the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition:

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE REST.

We discovered that NOMA - New Orleans Museum of Art - was closed on Tuesday for a special event. But this was probably for the grand opening of another section of the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, which adjoins the museum. Previously, there had been sixty-four sculptures in a five-acre garden, but now they were adding twenty-six artworks on six and a half more acres. It was very nice.

NOMA is located in City Park, which has its own history. Included is a stadium whose gates featured some very nice reminders of the past:

We got there at ten so we'd have an hour inside the museum before the sculpture garden opened. NOMA, founded in 1911 as the Delgado Art Museum, as the sugar producer wished. There is range of collections: