Site #18: "Deep Water Dates" Courtney Egan: Broad at Banks, Mid City

(Click on photos to enlarge)

Google map





















"The history of flooding in New Orleans reveals some fascinating, comforting and unsettling stories. How come I've never heard these stories before? On a visit to the Historic New Orleans Collection, I met with the encyclopedic John Magill, who told me a memorable tale about the Bonnet Carre river crevasse of 1871. A giant break in the levee upriver pushed so much water into the lake that the Hagan Avenue levee broke and flooded areas of the city that were populated then, such as Mid-City, for MONTHS. People resigned themselves to living in their flooded homes, on the 2nd stories or on top of furniture. Food and staples were delivered to them by boat. Like Katrina, this flood was also a media sensation, with reporters from all over the nation arriving in droves to chronicle the event.

An informative paper about the history of drainage can be found here.

An interesting detail: a group of women in 1899 lead a successful battle to pass a tax, heavily opposed by many property owners initially, to fund the creation of the Sewerage and Water Board. The new S&WB's implementations - the pumping system, for one - so improved the sanitation of the city that yellow fever abated, life expectancy instantly increased, and commercial growth boomed. The population of the city almost doubled within the next 25 years.

The other effect of the S&WB and the population boom was that people began settling in some of the lowest areas in the city, where land had become "habitable" because of the new drainage technology. Where did the memory of horrible past flooding go? Some floods happen slower than others, allowing more evacuation time and less loss of life ­ supposedly in the 1871 flood, the waters rose about 1 foot every 36 hours.

How will we remember Katrina in 30-40 years? How will it affect where we continue to live and how we live?

The idea for this piece initially came from wanting to make permanent in some way the Katrina water marks that are slowly disappearing around the city. Shawn Hall put the history bug in the project, waterlines through time. I still may try to make more Katrina markers, and only do the "through time" parts in a few neighborhoods, like in Broadmoor, which became a 9-foot deep lake during Sauve's river crevasse of 1849, and in the lower 9th ward, which suffered uniquely from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and from other flood events due to its geography and the intrusion of large man-made canals in the area.

During the May rainstorm flood of 1995 I lived near this installation, between Tulane and Banks on N. Rendon. My car flooded over the engine. I called work to let them know I wouldn't be in, and no one knew there had been a flood! They all lived in higher areas. The water during Katrina, only 10 years later, was 7 -8 feet deep around this corner, maybe more. This neighborhood is always impacted by floods, yet the people and the businesses return. Broad St. is a busy thoroughfare, with cops passing constantly on their way to the courts and the jail, which made installation nerve-racking, until we realized that the cops didn¹t care about two white girls with a drill working on a phone pole in the rain. A local guy, "Sergeant Joe," stopped and talked to us about his Katrina experience and other flood experiences, on his way home to celebrate his birthday. I hope the colors in the piece attract attention and get more people interested and aware of the long history of flood events in the neighborhood." Courtney Egan

Site 17: "O No!" Jonathan Traviesa; Jefferson Davis Parkway Neutral Ground, Mid-City

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Google Map















This is the re-installation of Jonathan's "O Water!" piece found below (Site #3)

"Some time in mid-March, I discovered the glass pitcher for "O Water!" broken. A shard was still (grimly) hanging from the orange rope with many more scattered pieces on the grass below. Near the sand map of Louisiana (which at this point had now overgrown with unexpected healthy-looking grass) a fist-sized scrap of concrete lay - probably the weapon used by ?____curious kids? For a split second, I felt the sting of losing something. Then I almost immediately felt very fortunate that a simple art installation out in the general public / raw environment had lasted as long as this one had. I removed all the glass shards for safety reasons and went home.

A few days later I thought about glueing the pieces together and reinstalling it because it had originally intrigued and amused many people who encountered it. I couldn't quite resolve the idea to reinstall the pitcher and fill it up with bayou/lake water again because it seemed too repetative an action after the form had been violently altered and crudely repaired. Only when I LOOSELY connected the silly act of destruction to the pitcher with the senseless violence circulating the streets of New Orleans did I feel justified in reinstalling the pitcher and the sand map. This time however, instead of water being tentatively suspended above our land in the smooth rounded form of the original unbroken pitcher, the scrap of concrete rests inside the mangled/mended pitcher - a symbol of fragility and violence hanging in the air." Jonathan Traviesa

(Thanks to the Florida group with Monica and Marco who assisted with the reinstallation of "O No!" as part of their ArtInAction tour.)

Site #16: "Emerge" Beth Dary: City Park, Mid-City

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Approximate Google Map (Please email for specific directions)

























"This work is an environmental installation of a variety of cast paper “pods” into the landscape of a low-lying “wet” spot on the grounds of New Orleans’ City Park. “Emerge” is my attempt to seed something of potential growth for a landscape that was flooded and badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina. I have also chosen the park site as it holds some of my first memories of times spent exploring this city’s undeniable beauty with my family when we moved to New Orleans.

These pods, many of them unfinished fragments, are part of an earlier body of work that was interrupted by the storm. The use of elements of a partially completed work connotes an interruption and cutting off of a work in progress, much the way so many lives were caught in a particular moment at the time of the storm and dropped elsewhere out of their usual and intended context. It is likely that, for a casual passerby, the distinction between “artistic” and “natural” phenomenon will blur -- the sculptural elements of the piece, made of cast plant fibers and inspired by objects found in nature like a gourd or seed pod, are placed in a way that could be a part of the life cycle of the plants in the area.

The decision to place them back into the environment was both a way to complete a work in a different way than originally intended and a metaphor for “letting go.” It is also hoped that this work, all composed of organic materials, will be transformed in the process, whether it is appropriated by birds or insects for nesting materials, absorbed back into the earth with the ebb and flow of the watery area where they have been placed, or perhaps even collected as a curiosity by a visitor to the park." Beth Dary

Site #15: "Picture This" Elizabeth Underwood/Naftali Rutter: Deslonde between Miro & Tonti: Lower 9th Ward

(Click on images to enlarge)

Google Map











New Orleans has always been a target, as it were, for photographers. Post-Katrina this phenomena has intensifed and taken on some conflicting elements. The impulse and need to record the damage and/or absence of what used to be is elemental in spreading the message of the situation to the rest of the world. At the same time, photography can perpetuate a disconnect between the "artist" and "spectator" (one's camera is between one's self and the world) and issues of ownership and privacy are inherently raised.

In a city so visually fetishized, pre and post Katrina, a visitor might assume that taking photographs of something you aren't intimately familiar with is acceptable. Despite photography's power to connect people, articulating the needs of its subjects, questions regarding its parasitic component are always valid. In a landscape that now symbolizes the horrific destructivness of marginialization/"other-ing" (for the sake of time/space, this over-simplification of the how's and why's of the levee breaks will have to suffice) how does one who genuinely wishes to connect with the landscape/story via photography do so with respect and dignity?

Another angle: for months after the storm the loss (and attempts at recovery) of family photographs became a shared experience for survivors; a common refrain of survivors is how losing their family photos is what hurts them to this day. The power that a photograph has to function on an comforting medicinal level becomes clear. At the same time, strangers walking the streets could happen upon private family photos in varying stages of ruin and feel no qualms about taking them as souveniers (with no obvious "owner" in site, weren't the artifacts fair game? Finders keepers? Or: if I don't pick up and save that smeared photo of a kid in front of the Christmas tree who will?). How does this process connect people, how does it further object/abject-ify people? These questions linger.

In some respects, this tree filled with Polaroids of birds in varying stages (ceramics, needlework, live and in flight, etc) is nothing more than a gesture toward giving something back to this landscape that has been so relentlessly exploited. By leaving photographs versus "taking" them, the process is reversed and a measure of balance can be returned, even if only symbolically. The quiet simplicity of this gesture aims to function as a poetic remedy to the noise of the murderous waters rushing in, the tragedy, and grief. As the baler's twine disintigrates in the hard winds, the photographs are falling from the tree, a strange fruit reminiscent of photos found after flood waters receed. The surfaces of the Polaroids are altered by the weather and take on qualities that can not be anticipated. Someone might stand underneath this tree and think about what they are surrounded by (vast empty space/unmarked graves) and consider their role in the story. Someone else may not even look twice. Both reactions are valid. The photographs and the tree and the memories remain.

All are invited to contribute photographs to this tree. The only requirement is that they be of joyous, singing, and/or celebratory images.

Site #14: "Positive Thoughts" Terrence Sanders: Canal at Carondelet

(Click on images to enlarge.)

Google Map









"I created this installation for the displaced and disenfranchised citizens of New Orleans. I believe that positive thoughts can create positive results and so have made this wall of positive statements. They can serve as a catalyst for evoking potential greatness in everyone. I offer this installation as a gift in hopes that when people encounter it they will take at least one statement with them on their life's journey."

Terrence Sanders

"Making Contact" Radioproject.org Profile on ArtInAction!

Please listen to the "Making Contact" public radio profile done on ArtInAction in February 2007.







This broadcast was dedicated to the memory of Mrs. Giselle Rooney.

Site #13: "Neighborhoods: 1508 Crescent Street" One Night Only! Saturday Jan 13th 4-8 p.m.

On Saturday,January 13, 2007, 4:00-8:00 pm, for one night only, the second installment of the “Neighborhoods” art installation project will be held at 1508 Crescent Street, Gentilly.


“NEIGHBORHOODS: 1508 CRESCENT STREET” is a site-specific, multidisciplinary installation that will take place in the gutted home of Belinda Tanno, an artist who is currently rebuilding her house and studio in Gentilly. Through the use of interviews with neighbors, soundscapes, live music, drawing, photography, and sculpture, this event will confront the range of issues the community is experiencing as they revitalize this neighborhood.

Visual artists include Scott Saltzman, David Sullivan, Jonathan Traviesa, Robert Vicknair, and Monica Zeringue; sound by Anton Gussoni, and SpartieTucker, and music by the Panorama Jazz Band.


This program is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development,Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Arts Council of New Orleans.

Site #12 "Pink Tree Pink!" Elizabeth Underwood: Peoples Avenue @ Mendez/Gentilly

(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Google Map













All I want to do is create beautiful surprises in this landscape & for this community who have (and continue to) suffer/ed their share of surreal visual surprises/abuses for the past year & a half. Just a reason to go, "What the heck?!" for something other than seeing a car on top of a house or a house upside down in the middle of a road or an empty field where your favorite grocery store used to be.

On a more personal level, I realize that many elements of this installation are honoring my sister Milissa who died a year ago December 16th. Also working so close to the house where I was living at the time of Katrina, I am confronting my own “flood lines” (I lost everything), literally and metaphorically. As I climb into the recesses of this dead tree, tenderly painting away, giggling and cold, trains passing, crows overhead, I am painting my way out of a grief that is both private and collective. One passerby said, “You’re brightening things up!” and this has become my mantra for the Pink Tree Pink.

It is in process now and will continue to evolve.

Be sure to say hi to Mr. Joseph Rooney (he lives right across the street from it) when you visit Pink Tree Pink (he planted this tree and the others around it - this stretch of land used to be his garden and he's just waiting for the city to come and clean it up so he can get to it again).

Site/s #11: Generic Art Solutions: Bywater & Lower 9th Ward

Click on photos to enlarge.

Generic Art Solutions, (please visit the GAS website), is the collaborative efforts of multimedia artists Matt Vis and Tony Campbell. Campbell and Vis were educated on either side of the pond; Campbell-London, Vis-New Orleans. This Art Team was conceptualized in New York, and their artistic union was galvanized when both artists moved to New Orleans.

G.A.S. creates their own corporate entity by using the advertising/marketing vocabulary, and as in the advertising world, the creative process is often a team activity. G.A.S is not limited in style, media or message. Their ideas lead their aesthetics, and they strive to make art appropriate for modern living.

G.A.S. uses performance as a tool, but not in the traditional sense. There is no stage/audience separation. It is an on-the-fly, unscripted intercourse. This forum questions where art begins and real life ends.

G.A.S. makes concept driven artwork, often with humor and/or mischief at its core. G.A.S uses humor as a deconstruction tool, establishing the familiar, the stereotypical scenario, but ultimately turns our expectations on their head. G.A.S demands their audience to look beyond the punch line. In reference to Generic Art Solutions the famous New Orleans art critic Doug McCash coined the term "Comic Conceptualists", which is neither rejected by nor embraced by Generic Art Solutions.

Katrina Trees:
Since the hurricane the New Orleans landscape has change in many significant ways, one of which was the sudden explosion of contractor ads in the cities neutral grounds and telegraph poles. G.A.S welcome this phenomenon as a new forum for art. Katrina Trees is a conceptual attempt to freshen up our city as well as advertise Generic Art Solutions as artists.

Hurricane Free Zone Signs:
Generic Art Solutions (G.A.S) have installed in New Orleans street signs declaring various areas a "Hurricane Free Zone". This street sign was inspired by the Drug Free Zone signs found in many Neighbourhood across the country. This sign is a direct response to the inaction of government to protect New Orleans from Hurricanes (levee failure). G.A.S feel that people who are confronted with situations which are out of their control are forced to lean purely on hope, faith, collective positivity,
superstition and a little luck.
The signs read :
"Hurricane Free Zone
Hope can make a difference
Positive thoughts brought to you by Generic Art Solutions"

This is an on-going project and more zones will follow soon.