That old chaos hag Courtney Egan has done a great installation at Banks and Broad. Check it out.
Similar idea: Someone put a marker up at Bienville and Conti last fall. It eventually disappeared but recently I noticed it’s back up again.
The idea of marking flood heights is powerful and important. Sometimes we’d rather forget, but we mustn’t allow ourselves to do that. I admire what Courtney has done, but I think it needs to be expanded. I would like to see something more permanent, in stone perhaps, at multiple locations around the city. The right sculptor could make a mission out of memorializing the big flood of 2005.
WHAT’S NEXT? BIG BLOCK LETTERS IN SPRAY PAINT? Sure Jean Paul Basquat got his start like that, but let’s get real.
Get a gallery to show your stuff, better yet, get a PERMIT to do this stuff. Emery Clark did some wonderful outdoor landmark art, but she got PERMITS.
All I can see is destruction of public property. It’s not cute. It is in bad taste.
Why not put up tennis shoes in electric wires? Now that we don’t have the folks in town doing that (marking a drug area where drugs could have been purchased) we have glass pitchers? PUUULLLLLEEEASSSSSE STOP!
Susan
Susan, I respectfully but passionately disagree. For one thing, I don’t see any public property being destroyed by any of these installations. For another, the “tennis shoes in electric wires” is not related to drugs. I’m speaking as a person who threw shoes on a wire once myself. The drug-thing is a myth, please read http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_274.html
Courtney’s piece with colored bands on a telephone pole is VERY low impact. To compare it to vandalism is really over the top.
I’ve been thinking of a modest Katrina memorial in my house. 41″ aff I think I’ll install a relief joint at the highwater mark. Sort of like the mourning line at Rosedown.
I wish there was more Art. We need it badly.
“Art Saves Lives”
Mid City has all the fun. I wish somebody would do some art over here.
BTW, the shoes in wires marking drug areas is an urban legend.
Ray, Laureen and I have been thinking about vacant lot art, bamboo and pandas…make mini enviroments,,you in?
I like the variety of comments here. thanks for posting about it, Bart.
I do agree that I think it’s a great idea for someone to expand upon. I think the official ( permitted) memorial in the lower 9th on Claiborne is inadequate. I chose my permit-less, low impact presentation due to the fact that, upon some admittedly limited research, city government is not currently ready to deal with such requests from artists, and I am not going to wait around till the point is moot.
if anyone would like one of the small, blue, low-impact, anodized alumininum “plaques” with “Hurricane Katrina, 2005” stamped into it, to place in a spot meaningful to you, please let me know. I would like to see them up all around town as reminders. You can find my email at the website
http://www.chaoshag.com