new orleans no longer needs artist licence

Open four days a week, it’s a must-visit on any NOLA itinerary. 3/10,000 will go to the NBA” that have been spray-painted onto surrounding walls and panels. The studio is filled with installations such as one half of a basketball court emblazoned with the words “The ball should bounce the same for everyone” and “1/3 black males will go to prison in their lifetime. Now, BMike works mostly in graffiti, which is on display at Studio Be, a 36,000 square foot space in the city’s Bywater neighborhood. “The best of what we are has always been represented by the way the culture has been able to transform the negative into positive.” And so I think the creative community helped, as it always has,” he says. “We felt the mainstream media wasn’t really reflecting what we saw and what we knew was happening. I think that dynamic in this city has always been such an interesting glue.”īelow, meet several New Orleans artists whose works nourish the soul of a community still in need of healing.īrandon “BMike” Odums graduated from the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and has since become one of the city’s most well-known artists, collaborating with everyone from Ava Duvernay to Nike, Colin Kaepernick, and the New Orleans Boys & Girls Club.īMike was particularly reenergized by Hurricane Katrina, turning his content and events company 2 Cents Entertainment-which had focused primarily on music video work-to documenting and analyzing the changing sociopolitical landscape of New Orleans. So there’s always been this balance of ugliness and beauty or survival and defeat. “You can go all the way back to when the French Quarter was one of the biggest auction areas of black bodies and think about how that was happening at the same time as incredible genius through music. “Even before Katrina, there has been a narrative of bad and a narrative of pain,” says the artist Brandan Odums, who goes by BMike. But that’s not the only tragedy that has seeped into the present from the city’s dark past.

Everyone-artist or not-pointed to Hurricane Katrina, 15 years after the storm, as a defining factor in their work, life, and the fabric of the city.

But the artists here are also inspired by the less aesthetic, more complicated aspects of New Orleans. There are plenty of visual reasons to be inspired by The Big Easy: The ironwork in the French Quarter, the Mardi Gras parade costumes, the street musicians.

“Lushness and decay and how those two things play in tandem with each other is a large feature in my work.” “The aesthetic of my work is definitely shaped by the city,” says painter Ida Floreak. But the thing they all have in common is their ability to find continuous inspiration from the city they live in. New Orleans attracts visual artists of all different mediums, from graffiti to screenprinting, painting, woodworking, and sculpture.

New orleans no longer needs artist licence