Four for Mardi Gras

It’s impossible to live in the Gulf South and ignore Mardi Gras.  It spreads from Galveston to the Florida Panhandle, affecting our judgment, so that ‘normal’ becomes beads, wigs, costumes and masks. 

(pictured, Four for Mardi Gras, 2012, 24x38 inches, edition 190)

In New Orleans we expect parade traffic most evenings and all weekends, shrugging our shoulders, ditching our cars, and missing whatever obligations we set out to make, standing instead on the neutral ground* and shouting,

“Throw me something, Mister!”

…or, in the case of the all-female Muses parade,

“Throw me something, Sister!”

Like me, George Rodrigue grew up with Mardi Gras.  His mother dressed him in costume for the country parades and balls.  He’s been king or grand marshal of various krewes* from Lafayette to New Orleans to Washington D.C., where 5,000 Louisiana residents gather annually for a three-day Mardi Gras extravaganza. (related post here)

(pictured, George Rodrigue with his cousin Arlene, dressed for Mardi Gras in New Iberia, Louisiana, 1949)

For the past ten years, my sister Heather and I ride in the Krewe of Muses parade.  This year, for the first time, we ride on the coveted Float Number One!  Not only do we have the honor of greeting the crowds at the head of this magnificent and popular parade, but also we vary in head gear from the other Muses floats. 

(Our wigs, custom-made by Fifi Mahony’s, sit on display in our living room on the heads of Jeff Koons’s famous Puppy and George Rodrigue’s tribute, a junk shop sculpture he painted blue)

This week, after purchasing our wigs, Heather and I, wearing dresses and heels, strolled down Royal Street for the fun of it.  Used to anything on the streets of New Orleans, most people passed us with barely a glance, our confidence contributing to our normalcy.  One comment, however, stands out:

“You guys look great!” 

...exclaimed a well-dressed gentleman, confirming our drag queen suspicions.  At 5’10” without the wigs, Heather and I tower at about 6’5” in our heels and hair. 

“I can’t believe he missed our curves,” 

...mumbled Heather, as I smiled and hollered “Thank you” towards our admirer.

Mardi Gras runs in our blood.  Our mother, Mignon McClanahan Wolfe, reigned as Queen of the Fort Walton Beach Mardi Gras in 1993-4.  Along with her wedding day, she spoke of it as the best day of her life, an occasion she prepared for over the course of a year, seeking the right dress and shoes, decorating the stage, and practicing her dance routine, as she boogied in the ballroom of the Okaloosa Island Ramada Inn.

Admittedly, George and I have slowed a bit in our Mardi Gras enthusiasm, unable to sustain the non-stop weeks of parades and parties while fulfilling other obligations.  We still attend the Washington D.C. festivities; we occasionally ride on the Blue Dog float in the Argus parade; we dress in formal attire and drag our cooler into the Superdome for the Endymion Extravaganza; and (our favorite), we stand in our Faubourg Marigny window watching the Krewe du Vieux. 

This year, at the request of the Sheraton Hotel, George decorated a slice of Canal Street. (click photo to enlarge)

Over the coming weeks, I’ll post stories of our Mardi Gras adventures and trace, in words and pictures, George Rodrigue’s years as King.  I hope you'll stay tuned...

And Happy Mardi Gras!

Wendy

*'neutral ground':  New Orleans-speak for 'median' 

*'krewe':  Mardi Gras-speak for 'club'

-I hope you also enjoy “Remembering Etta James and More,” my latest story for Gambit Weekly, linked here

-for more Rodrigue Mardi Gras images, see the post "Mardi Gras Silkscreens:  A History," linked here

Risky Business

"It is a dangerous business going out your front door."*

This morning I watched from my desk in Carmel Valley, California as a great-horned owl took a bath.  It glanced at me, assessed the danger, and then continued, even as I eased open the glass door and stepped into the rain, camera ready.

We all know that the greatest chance for joy and inspiration comes with the greatest risk of pain.  It’s the reason we stay in a ‘dangerous’ city, New Orleans; it’s the reason we argue the murder-rate and dismiss dramatic press; it’s the reason we stare dumbfounded at anyone suggesting, following 2005, that we leave or, worse, let it go.  (For a related post, see "For New Orleans")

(This year I'm over-the-moon excited to ride on the giant shoe, Float #1, of the Muses Parade, February 16th; photo by Tabitha Soren)

On the plane last month from New Orleans to the Monterey Peninsula, I thought, as I do on every flight, about artist Georgia O’Keeffe looking down on the clouds, inspired to paint the experience.  I thought of my grandmother Helen McClanahan and her hours of 1950s videotaped sky, taken through the airplane window as she puddle-jumped from New Orleans to Lafayette to Houston to Fort Worth.  And I checked my superstitions and fear, replacing any form of the word “death” in my book with any form of the word “life,” as I replayed in my head a line I heard years ago on a TV show I can’t recall:

The most important thing holding this machine in the sky is the combined will of the passengers.

O’Keeffe was a brave woman, making art in a man’s world, resettling alone in the New Mexico desert. 

(pictured, a photograph from our collection hangs in my Carmel office, Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz by Arnold Newman 1944)

My grandmother (pictured below as Grand Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star) was also a brave woman, traveling alone in the 1950s and 1960s far beyond New Orleans and Fort Worth to Singapore, Thailand, Africa and India.

We choose our dangers and balance risks against rewards.  I recall the waiver we signed several years ago, as George and I rafted the Grand Canyon with friends: 

You understand that you might die on this trip.

By day two our terror of the ten-rated rapids morphed into elation, as we hooked our arms through the trampoline’s ropes and plunged into the freezing water, pulled off balance by rocks and a raging current.  We hiked, climbing straight up in the 110-degree heat, to waterfalls and Anasazi drawings.  At one point, four days in and now fearless, I swam (blind, lest I lose my glasses) through a deep pond to a mossy cave, where I scrambled like Gollum from Lord of the Rings to an opening thirty feet above.  Standing at the cave’s window, I stared across the water at my fuzzy friends, cheering me on and reminding me to clear the rocks below.

For the first time since my childhood, I held my nose, leaping, falling, sinking, choking, laughing …. and living.

(See photos of the great-horned owl splashing in our pool this morning here-)

What’s the biggest risk you ever took? I asked George Rodrigue, who skipped that Grand Canyon leap.  

I assumed his answer involved the train from New Iberia to Los Angeles, calling himself ‘Cajun’ when Cajun wasn’t cool, or painting a Blue Dog when everyone (from the art world to his personal world) questioned his sanity.  

Instead he replied, without hesitating,

“Marrying you.”

Wendy 

*“It is a dangerous business going out your front door,” wrote J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

-for more photos of George Rodrigue this week at his easel, please join me on facebook

-for more by Wendy Rodrigue, visit Gambit Weekly, linked here

Swamp Dogs: A Series on Metal

More than a year in the making, George Rodrigue’s Swamp Dogs combine print, photography and varnish on large sheets of metal, resulting in a unique perspective of the Louisiana landscape.

Beyond materials, however, the series originates with two stories.  Rodrigue, a Cajun artist for forty-five years, illustrates Louisiana lore including not only the loup-garou, but also, in this case, allusions to the feux follets, or swamp gas.

-click photos to enlarge-

“It comes from the earth and explodes at night into large balls of fire,” explains Rodrigue.  “The Cajuns thought it was something magical – a swamp mystery they couldn’t explain – when actually it was natural gas ignited by static electricity.”

The loup-garou legend, the origin of Rodrigue’s Blue Dog, talks of a crazy wolf-type animal living in the swamp.

“With Swamp Dogs, I combine these mysteries, the loup-garou and the feux follets.”

Before releasing the series last month, Rodrigue experimented for more than a year, both in paint and photography, ultimately combining the two mediums within his computer.

“In the minds of the Cajuns, the feux follets was magic, but real, just as the loup-garou was mythical, but true.  To inject reality, I started with my photographs of the Atchafalaya Basin and altered them, stretching shapes and changing colors.  The loup-garou is in the water, through the water, and part of the water.”

Using computer technology, Rodrigue combines his imagination with reality.  He painted several versions of the Blue Dog, scanned them into the computer, over-laying them onto his altered photographs.  He manipulated these computer collages, increasing saturation but reducing the colors to only five or six, lending varying levels of transparency.

“I blended the photographs and painted imagery onto metal surfaces, using archival ink on aluminum so that parts of the metal show through, such as the dog’s nose and areas of the swamp. They appear as raw metal, as does a two-inch border around the final artwork.”

Finally, Rodrigue focuses on scale, with an average size of 3x5 feet.

“The larger the scale, the more stretched the photograph.  The metal becomes more obvious, as does the color enhancement.”

At this time, Swamp Dogs includes six versions, each an edition of 10, all pictured within this post and on view at Rodrigue’s galleries.  The computer screen does them little justice ……an irony, considering the artwork’s digital origins.  I encourage you to view these exquisite, unique works in person.

Wendy

-read about the first annual George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts Digital Art Contest here

-new for Gambit Weekly, in honor of Louisiana’s Bicentennial, I hope you enjoy the following essays:

“The Creole Gourmet Society,” featuring George Rodrigue’s paintings of early 20th century dinner clubs, and “Cora’s Restaurant,” a look back at CODOFIL and our French heritage, including Rodrigue’s classic painting He-bert, Yes – A Bear, No

Farewell to Exhibitions; Welcome to Painting

George Rodrigue and I spent much of the past eighteen months on the road visiting museums and communities for exhibitions, lectures, and education events coordinated by the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA) and the New Orleans Museum of Art, which organized the tour as part of its 100th birthday celebration. 

Locations included Baton Rouge (pictured above, during a painting and cooking demo with Chef Paul Prudhomme), Lake Charles, Slidell, Shreveport, Alexandria, Monroe, Auburn University, Little Rock, and the Florida Panhandle. (click any of these cities for the story and photos from that event).

The tour made for a rewarding year, as we raised money and awareness for arts education, the focus of George’s foundation.  In Louisiana, these efforts strengthened the success of GRFA’s annual art contest, now in its third year.  In addition to scholarship money, this year’s first place winner, announced next month, works with George Rodrigue on the Official Bicentennial Poster, celebrating the two hundredth birthday of Louisiana’s statehood.

Last summer we opened the GRFA Education Center on Magazine Street in New Orleans and participated in our first White Linen Night (story here), followed by Dirty Linen Night the following week in the French Quarter, events we’ve missed in the past while in California.

In addition, George Rodrigue received in 2011 the Distinguished Eagle Award from the National Boy Scouts of America (story here) and the James William Rivers Prize from the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.  His Number One Tiger Fan raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the LSU Museum of Art, the Tiger Athletic Foundation, and the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts.

For George Rodrigue, these programs and exhibitions left him with little time to paint.  We spent just a brief few weeks at his Carmel studio, so that in one year he created only a handful of paintings, most in New Orleans in between openings.  He also painted during more than a dozen public demonstrations, when he worked quickly and with large brushes before an audience, such as the examples pictured at the top of this post.

(Most of Rodrigue's 2011 studio paintings are enormous in scale, such as At the Head of the Red River, 48x72, pictured below; see more here)

In late 2011, however, he completed a one-year project, Swamp Dogs, a series of six large-scale prints on chrome.  (Pictured below, Swamp Dogs Series #1, 48x58 inches; I’ll detail the complete series in a blog post later this month)

-click the photo to enlarge-

I spent 2011 recording our travels and sharing in depth studies of George’s art (see the categories to the right of this post).  I also marked one year of writing for the New Orleans newspaper Gambit Weekly and began a new blogging project for Country Roads Magazine, as well as contributing essays on numerous Louisiana artists to the book The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana (published April 2012) and KnowLA:  The Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture, projects sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.

Although I enjoyed writing, the news was not always welcome.  If we lump the artist-losses together, 2011 could be like the day the music died, but for art.  In August I wrote for Gambit about my favorite, Lucian Freud (1922-2011), whose 2005 Venice exhibition entranced me for days, as I wandered alone or dragging George, my obsession and questions trying his patience.

In December we lost John Chamberlain (1927-2011), the great contemporary sculptor whose work, as pictured above with George Rodrigue and Houston collector Don Sanders, was nothing more than crushed cars to some, while a brilliant statement of Minimalism to others.  -click photo to enlarge

The art world mourned Helen Frankenthaler and Cy Twombly, both 1928-2011, American Abstract Expressionist painters heralding from within the worlds of Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991).  I thought about blogging on these artists but changed my mind when I read New Orleans artist Mallory Page’s succinct statement: 

“I hope somewhere in their last days they sent out a spirit passing the torch to a new generation to bloom; and I hope, somewhere, some of that breeze hits me.”

(pictured, a painting by New Orleans artist Mallory Page; click photo to enlarge)

Page’s thoughts transition nicely into the New Year – not only for her – but also for George Rodrigue, who plans five months at his easel, creating with a time and mental dedication unavailable to him since series such as Bodies and Hurricanes.  In other words, expect surprises in 2012.

His plans also include paintings for upcoming exhibitions at the Amarillo Museum of Art (opening August 2012) and the National Steinbeck Center (opening Fall 2013). 

Most thrilling, we’ll hit the road in our truck, resuming our annual cross-country drives,* this time incorporating three weeks in April exploring the state of Texas.  I look forward to sharing our adventures and George’s paintings with you throughout the year at Musings of an Artist’s Wife, Gambit Weekly, Country Roads Magazine, Facebook and Twitter.

Many thanks, as always, for reading.  Happy New Year to all!

Wendy

*for a few of our favorite past adventures from the road, including Texas, New Mexico, New York and more, see the links under “RODRIGUE ON THE ROAD,” listed to the right of this story

--George sends a big ‘hello’ to Antonia Valpredo (pictured below) of Luigi’s – a highlight from our Bakersfield New Years Eve -- where he drew an alligator on the restaurant's famous bread, ala Galatoire's (for the Galatoire's story and painted bread from the famous New Orleans restaurant, see the tail end of the post "The Sketchbook")

           

Happy Christmas

So this is Christmas

And what have you done

Another year over

And a new one just begun*

I wandered through college with a guilt complex.  Like many naïve students, inspired by a voting voice and new knowledge, I embraced the world’s problems as my own, determined to improve things somehow, even as I failed in family relationships and winced at dateless Saturday nights.

Looking back, it was a crazed mental time, when a skipped meal, prayed over, transported magically to a starving child; when vegetarianism meant one less chicken in the over-crowded coop; and when five spare dollars in my checking account meant more money that Sunday in the offering plate.

I saw need everywhere, a vision I gradually narrowed, or at least focused, lest I went crazy.   Although some of us remain protesters and activists as we age, most concentrate at some point on peace within our own home as opposed to peace on earth.  Despite this age-accompanying cynicism, I still believe that one person’s actions make a difference, and that even a small difference counts.

Children see the world with broad vision.  They love and give without worrying about perception.  “We’re all artists, Ms. Wendy,” explained a young girl recently, as I complimented her on her painting.

Children also see beauty where adults might miss it.  “If you stand here,” said a child, as she held my hand in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden, “the light shines from underneath the trees, just like in Mr. George’s paintings.”

(pictured, The Tree Where I Sat, 2009, 24x30, oil on canvas)

I was a sophomore at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas when I met Gladys at the H.E.B.  She struggled with her cane and over-sized handbag as she loaded her groceries into the trunk of a cab while the driver sat helpless, rolling his eyes with impatience. 

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Alamo Heights,” 

...she replied, referring to the old and, were this New Orleans, ‘uptown’ nearby neighborhood. 

She trusted me, and I gave her a ride to a Tudor-style house, classic and cracking on the outside, decaying and 1950s within. 

I recognized the old-lady smell, the one that comes from piles of junk mail and dusty lace tablecloths, from floral hand cream and moldy wallpaper, from warmed leftovers and stale coffee.  Except for a tic-toc, the house was deadly quiet, as though no one disturbed its air with laughter or speech in years.

Gladys looked like Miss Havisham, and her home, although not quite Satis House, sat neglected and lonely.  We made a date.

(pictured, The Shadows of New Iberia, 1969, 16x20, oil on canvas)

That Friday, I fetched Gladys for lunch.  She wore her vintage Sunday best to the Mexican cantina (paid for with an advance from my job at the school auditorium) and afterwards served me tea from her floral Windsor china, as we made small talk on a plastic-covered faded blue sofa.

As I recall those days, it’s the silence that screams loudest in my memories, broken only by the metered sound of the old clock and Gladys’s hesitant answers to my predictable questions:

Tell me about your husband.  What is the name of this china pattern?  Shall I refill your tea?

We repeated this visit every Friday for more than a year, eventually expanding our afternoons to include museums, the Alamo, and Olmos Pharmacy (for chocolate malts).  Along with my peer tutor class, we decorated a Christmas tree, her first in many years.  Holiday music filled the house from a student’s boom box.

(pictured, Tree Topper, 2000, 20x16, silkscreen)

In January of my junior year, I joined a study-abroad program in Vienna, Austria.   Gladys protested, but I left her anyway, and two months later she died.

The following year I returned from Europe, changed but still -- perhaps more -- guilty.  The modern world seemed incongruous with my intense journey through Art History.  Without Gladys, I sought diversions.  I volunteered at the local A.I.D.S. clinic.  One by one, scared young men (because honestly – they were all scared young men) dropped in for testing.  Within weeks I answered the A.I.D.S. suicide hotline, forwarded to my college apartment’s phone on Monday nights.

I was an unqualified, healthy, heterosexual twenty-one year old girl.  But it was the 1980s, and young gay men died faster than counselors were trained.  People feared the infection, and volunteers were scarce.  My mother worried, correctly and on several levels, that I didn’t know what I was doing.  But this was my protest, my creed, and in my mind, I had no choice.

We all remember when we were young and set out to change the world.  Maybe you held a picket sign, chained yourself to a tree, or delivered Meals on Wheels.  Maybe you still look at the world in this way, out to make a difference.

My sister and I learned this vision from our mother.  Despite barely covering the weekend’s hot checks with Monday’s paycheck, she sent money every month, along with our letters, to Ernik Tukiman in Indonesia, a child matched to our family by World Vision.

(Thirty-five years later, Ernik’s photograph still hangs on our Christmas tree).

I asked George Rodrigue about those years in his own life, and his answer surprised me:

“All I wanted was to get to art school.”

His focus paid off, and he fulfilled that dream and more, supporting his family with his art by his mid-twenties.  George’s generosity of time and money kicked in later, first in small ways in his Lafayette community, and later with large-scale projects for the Boy Scouts of America, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the Red Cross following 9/11, the International Child Art Foundation, humanitarian and arts-related relief following Hurricane Katrina, and countless small-town projects involving festival posters, student lectures and more.

Today, through the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts (GRFA), these efforts are near full-time, with programs devoted to the arts and education.

At one point, we all realize that the joy of giving cannot match the weight of need.  Even through GRFA, it is impossible for George to reach every school, anymore than I could befriend every lonely old lady, or my mother feed every child.  But does it mean we shouldn’t try?

And so this is Christmas

I hope you have fun

The near and the dear one

The old and the young*

Wishing you and yours a joyous, giving holiday-

Wendy

-also this week:  "Highlights of a Blogging Year" - your favorites and mine from Gambit's Blog of New Orleans, linked here

-for more paintings, photographs, and discussion, please join me on facebook

*John Lennon and Yoko Ono, "Happy Christmas (War is Over)," 1971

George Rodrigue: Painting Louisiana

Note:  Based on an essay scheduled for publication in an upcoming book* celebrating Louisiana’s bicentennial, published in April 2012 by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, this blog version includes added images, as well as links throughout, referring you to specific relevant posts and websites.

Born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana, George Rodrigue (b. 1944) determined his future in art while sick with polio as a child.  His mother brought him paint-by-numbers, a 1950s invention, to ease his boredom.  Eight year-old Rodrigue used the paints and canvases, however, to paint not the suggested country lanes and Last Suppers, but rather fire trucks, monsters, and alligators.  Following a full recovery, he set his course on art and never wavered.

Seeking a formal art education, Rodrigue enrolled in 1962 at the University of Southwest Louisiana (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette), where he studied Abstract Expressionism.  It was his project for Professor Calvin Harlan’s design class that proved most useful when he applied to art school.  His design book secured his acceptance to the prestigious Art Center College of Design (then located in Los Angeles; now in Pasadena), where Rodrigue studied not only the fundamentals of art such as figure drawing, but also graphic design, illustration, automotive design, and photography.  Most important, at Art Center Rodrigue studied for the first time with working artists, significantly Lorser Feitelson, the master of Hard Edge Painting.

(pictured, Pop Goes the Ads, a mixed media by Rodrigue, 1966 - click photo to enlarge-)

In California (1963-1967) Rodrigue also admired Pop Art when Andy Warhol premiered his Campbell’s Soup Cans at the Ferus Gallery.  Furthermore, the literal and figurative distance from south Louisiana influenced the young artist, who worried that his unique Cajun culture faded within a modern world of television and travel.  Unlike his Art Center classmates, who pursued careers in the art capital, New York City, Rodrigue returned home, using the hard edge and pop influences of California to paint the landscape and people of Louisiana.  Ultimately Rodrigue graphically interpreted his culture, coining a new phrase, “Cajun Artist.”

(pictured, Aioli Dinner by George Rodrigue, 1971, Collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art)

In 1974 Rodrigue won an Honorable Mention for his painting The Class of Marie Courrege at the historic Le Salon des Artistes in Paris, prompting a review from the French newspaper, Le Figaro, which dubbed him “America’s Rousseau.”  And in 1976 he wrote the first national publication on the Cajun culture, The Cajuns of George Rodrigue (Oxmoor House).  The National Endowment for the Arts gifted the book to Rosalind Carter, who chose it as an official White House Gift of State during the Carter Administration.

Rodrigue first painted what would become his most famous image, the Blue Dog, in 1984, imagined for a collection of ghost stories.  The book Bayou (Chris Segura, Inkwell Press) included forty Louisiana tales, including the loup-garou, a werewolf or ghost dog said to lurk in cemeteries and sugar cane fields.  As a boy, Rodrigue’s mother warned him, “If you’re not good today, the loup-garou will eat you tonight!”

(pictured, Watchdog, 1984, the first Blue Dog painting)

The artist invented a red-eyed, frightening image loosely based on photographs of his deceased studio dog, Tiffany.  He painted the loup-garou at night under a blue-moon sky, casting a blue-grey shade on the dog’s fur. 

Over the following ten years, the loup-garou developed into the iconic Blue Dog, an image that catapulted Rodrigue’s fame worldwide.  In 1992 the Wall Street Journal featured Rodrigue and his Blue Dog with an article on its front page, and in 1993 he joined artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring in creating art for the international Absolut Art campaign.

(pictured, Absolut Rodrigue, 1993; related post "Blue Dog:  Out of Control, 1993-1995")

In addition to numerous group shows, Rodrigue’s museum presence includes solo exhibitions in New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, and Pensacola.  In 2012 the Amarillo Museum of Art hosts a blockbuster Rodrigue exhibition, followed by Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna Art Museum and the National Steinbeck Center (Salinas, California) in 2013.

Following more than $3 million raised for humanitarian and arts organizations in the wake of September 11^th, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Rodrigue established in 2009 the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, encouraging the use of art within all school curriculums and funding scholarships, classroom art supplies, and a variety of art educational programs.

In 2006 Rodrigue received the Lifetime Achievement Arts Award from the State of Louisiana Governor’s Office, soon after appointed the state’s official Artist Laureate; and in 2009 the University of Louisiana at Lafayette presented him with an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts.  In 2011 the Center for Louisiana Studies awarded him with the James William Rivers Prize, established “to honor persons who have contributed or rendered, recently or over the course of their careers, outstanding scholarly study, work, or teaching about the culture, history, ….and art of Louisiana or about its people.”  Also in 2011 the National Boy Scouts of America presented the artist with their highest honor, the Distinguished Eagle Award.

Today Rodrigue divides his time between New Orleans and Carmel, California.  For more by George Rodrigue, visit his website:  www.georgerodrigue.com

Wendy

-Also this week, I hope you enjoy Judy Cooper, New Orleans Photographer, a new story for Gambit

*This essay also appears on the website KnowLA: the Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture and within the upcoming book The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana, a project edited by Michael Sartisky, Ph.D., President/Executive Director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and J. Richard Gruber, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, scheduled for publication in April 2012 in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Louisiana’s statehood

Suggested Reading:

The Art of George Rodrigue.  Ginger Danto (Introduction), Michael Lewis (Preface).  Published by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003

Blue Dog Man.  George Rodrigue, David McAninch.  Published by Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 1999

The Cajuns of George Rodrigue.  Paintings and Text by George Rodrigue.  Published by Oxmoor House, Birmingham, Alabama, 1976

George Rodrigue Prints:  A Catalogue Raisonne 1970-2007.  E. John Bullard (Foreword), Wendy Wolfe Rodrigue (Introduction).  Published by Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2008

The Working Artist

Note:  Throughout this post I sprinkled images by Louisiana artists.  Some I interviewed and some not, but all are included in the book The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana.*  As I wrote, I thought of the text and images as two separate statements, not necessarily related.  In other words, unless specifically noted, all artist statements, whether quoted or in general, are anonymous.

Recently I interviewed artists and photographers for essays within an upcoming book* featuring two hundred years of art in Louisiana.  Although my participation is minor within this ambitious project published by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, I take this assignment seriously, and I feel responsible for small slices of each legacy. 

(pictured, Velma and the Diamond Ring, Francis X. Pavy, 2008; be sure and click photos throughout to enlarge-)

If you ask most non-artists, the artist’s life is an envied one, provided there's food on the table.  People often equate the creation of art with leisure, as though meeting a deadline and pleasing a boss (or agent) doesn’t count if one uses talent and personal expression to get there.

What’s more, people often judge artists based on their ability to hold out in the name of art, to resist commercialization, mass production and, in this contemporary world of video and conceptual art, traditional mediums such as modeled clay and paint on canvas.

“My agent is pushing me towards video,” explained one artist.  “But it takes so much time, and I don’t know if I have it in me.”

In between his words, I heard his fear as well.  I paint a picture over a few days and sell it for $5,000, half of which goes to my agent.  After months of work, I’ll have a video that no one will buy.

(pictured, Popular Ladies Social Aid and Pleasure Club, Judy Cooper, 2007)

Artists have bills to pay like everybody else.  They also have egos and families and goals.  They walk a line between pleasing themselves (the popular mantra) and pleasing the public (the unpopular one).  They enjoy public recognition and making money, but they aren’t supposed to admit it. 

(“I don’t go after that sort of thing,” replied one artist when I asked her about awards, honors and museum exhibitions).

I heard artists explain away commissioned portraits, wedding photography, and product design, all with carefully worded and practiced lingo in an effort to dissolve my tiresome (and tacky – after all, I should know better) question, along with the age-old stereotypes.  

(pictured, A Faster Breed, a painting for the Xerox Collection, George Rodrigue, 2000)

Consistently I heard overlapping stories – the same frustrations regarding exhibition deadlines, out-of-date websites, and limited studio and/or gallery space.  Nearly everyone mentioned the problems of offering something affordable to the public without compromising their artistic integrity.

(pictured, Louisiana:  The Pelican State, Miranda Lake, 2011)

I was surprised and somewhat relieved to learn of other similarities as well, namely the widespread and accepted computer use, along with a steady interest in printmaking as an art form.  A few artists mentioned the convenience of the computer and the affordability of the prints, but nearly everyone talked of the computer as a tool, as a way to improve and edit their photographs, design compositions for their paintings or prints, and experiment with end-results before picking up their paintbrush. 

(George Rodrigue designed his painting Victory on Bayou St. John, 2009, above, using the computer, detailed here)

In addition, nearly everyone within the arts overlaps in their interests, creating a strange inability to define work versus hobby.  Painters take photographs; photographers play music; sculptors make movies; and so forth.

I noted also the solitude of these telephone interviews.  In each case, the artist sat within their studio, putting down the brush or camera to answer my questions.  I knew as we spoke that I interrupted their work, their creative train of thought, and I wondered if, in doing so, I inadvertently altered their next stroke. 

(pictured, Pink Bunny, Hunt Slonem, 2011)

But then I thought of George at his easel, whether quiet and in the middle of the night (as he prefers), or chaotic with interruptions in the afternoon (as he expects).  Either way, he moves in his own purposeful direction, influenced by life and people, but not by trends or the ideas of others.  Is it work?  I guess that depends on how one defines work.

If you’re one of the lucky few, you make money by doing that thing you enjoy the most, whether tending bar, running a computer company, or creating art.  This isn’t the sort of thing one eyes with retirement* in mind. George would say that it’s not working; rather, it’s living.

(pictured, Eudora Welty, Philip Gould, 1992)

In the end, whether the rest of us call it work or not, no one’s going to do it for them.  The artist lives a lonely, or at least an alone, if not solitary, life.  Every artist talks about new ideas and avoids complacency, all personal versions of George’s mantra, “I have to keep the work exciting for me.” 

Wendy

*George’s mother died at age 103 still waiting for him to get a real job…. “with the telephone company,” she used to say.  Read the story here-

--Over the next several months, I’ll publish versions of these essays on-line with Gambit.  This week, for example, I posted a story, linked here, about Lafayette photographer Philip Gould, coinciding with his exhibition, “Louisiana Landscape and Grass Roots” (LeMieux Galleries through 12/30/11) and his recent collaboration with historian Carl Brasseaux, Acadiana:  Louisiana’s Historic Cajun Country, a book published by LSU Press, 2011

--The Bicentennial History of Art in Louisiana is a project edited by Michael Sartisky, Ph.D., President/Executive Director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and J. Richard Gruber, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, scheduled for publication in April 2012 in celebration of the 200^th anniversary of Louisiana’s statehood.  In addition, all essays appear on the website KnowLA:  the Digital Encyclopedia of Louisiana History and Culture

The Family Table

In 1950 George Rodrigue drew and colored a turkey for his parents.  On the back he wrote in a surprisingly elegant child’s script:

For Mother and Dad on Thanksgiving:

1.     Visits to chapel. 9

2.     Prayers in school. 40

3.     Decades of rosary. 27

George Rodrigue

2^nd Grade

To fit the tiny picture in a frame (or possibly for some other reason), George’s mother folded back the question mark so that it could not be seen, leaving only a turkey staring at a partially hidden and therefore barely discernible ax.

I asked George about the picture.  His Isn’t it obvious? expression amused me, as I thought about a six year old boy relating to a doomed and confused turkey, while already questioning the Catholic rote.

“I remember sitting on the porch in my grandmother’s cane chair, rocking in a trance, clicking the rosary beads and mumbling incoherently, as I mimicked Tante ‘Git.  If she, the oldest of eleven children, felt this process important, then it must be.”

(pictured, Marie Courrege Rodrigue, seated left, with her brothers and sisters, New Iberia, 1955)

Years later, George Rodrigue remains respectful of both the religion and the tradition.  This past weekend at the Catholic funeral of his cousin Donald LaBauve in New Iberia, Louisiana, I whispered during the sermon,

“What do you think of this? The words!  The meanings!  What does this have to do with Donald?”

George shook his head, his eyes watering.

“Nothing.  He’s on a tangent.” 

...as the priest explained God’s power to heal the sick and raise the dead.

Donald LaBauve, pictured above, lived to be ninety years old.  As George’s Boy Scout troop leader, he was a father figure to the young artist.  George Rodrigue, Sr. became ill in 1958 and, according to George, “was never the same.”  One of fourteen children, George's father died in 1967, just months following the Thanksgiving photograph below.

As George and I sit down to dinner today with his boys Andre and Jacques, my sister Heather and her family, our dad, and several dear friends, I view this 1960s family scene as an enormous and poignant irony.  George views it with a nostalgic melancholy, of days gone by but not necessarily missed.

-click photo to enlarge-

An only child, a young man in his early twenties, recently returned from Los Angeles and art school, sits at a table with his aging parents, a father ill and drifting away, and a mother consumed with her husband's care. 

Somewhere in New Iberia, at the time of this photograph, are hundreds of relatives, twenty-three aunts and uncles, plus their spouses, children and grandchildren, none of which George recalls ever sharing a meal, at their table or at his parents’. 

“It was a different time,” he explained.  “And there were just too many of them.”

So today, on this celebration of Thanksgiving, we are thankful for family, for being together for not only the turkey, rice dressing and pecan pie, but more so the laughter, conversation and love that come with it.  George and I wish you the same, raising our glasses to you and yours with “A Toast to Cajun Food.”

Wendy

-For more on George Rodrigue, Sr. and Marie Courrege Rodrigue, see the posts “The Artist’s Father” and “The Artist’s Mother”

-I hope you also enjoy “Dancing the Shrimp,” a story of family, seafood, and Louisiana history in this week’s Gambit’s Blog of New Orleans-

Blue Wendy

This weekend George Rodrigue and I attended an event where the religious leader prayed for and encouraged our suffering.  We left watching carefully, unprepared at a gala for this powerful lesson, for the bus that might run us down in the street, safeguarding our empathy with broken bones or worse.

“Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils but are normal ingredients of life,” wrote Cardinal Avery Dulles, just prior to his death in 2008.  “As I become increasingly paralyzed and unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute persons in the Gospels…”

(Pictured, Rodrigue painted Father Dulles in 1990, one of ten portraits for the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Flora Levy Lecture Series)

Many doctrines welcome life’s hardships, because they tune us in to the suffering of others, and they make us better people.

“Only the healer, not the healer’s subject, must believe,” explains George Rodrigue, as he describes his aunt, a traiteur, as in the 1974 painting of Doc Moses above.  “It’s the same for everyone,” he continues.  “We each have the ability to make a difference, but it’s our belief and compassion that make it so.”

To be clear, as a rule George admires doctors and dismisses faith healers; however, he holds a life-long fascination with the power of the mind and the mystery of the universe.  Years ago while dating, we split for several months.  Upon reconciling, our first conversation involved hours on black holes, The Big Bang Theory, and déjà vu, as though his cosmic thoughts swirled for months and somehow reunited us. 

“Give me a few hours to get into the zone, to really believe,” explained George recently, “and I could be someone else.  I could be so funny that no one would recognize me.  I could be Lewis Grizzard.”

“I don’t have any out-of-body experiences,” wrote Grizzard.  “I had indeed seen a bright, beautiful light and had followed it, but it turned out to be a Kmart tire sale.”

Give me a few hours, I thought, and I could slip into insanity.  It seems easy, almost like stepping off a mountain or, lest my sister worry, from a sidewalk into the grass, into freedom --- from cynicism, from suffering, from responsibilities, from guilt (both mine and others in all cases).

“Nothing in life is fair,” our mom used to say, followed closely by “I’m sorry girls, but Christmas will be grim this year.”

Heather and I, however, rolled our eyes, because Christmas was never grim.  Whether new or used rollerskates, the pompoms (for the skate-toes) were handmade and hot pink (in my case), and the latest or last year’s Kermit or Miss Piggy, the perfect stuffed companion (in my sister’s).

I think often on scenes from my childhood.  I recall once sharing a joke from school with my mother and baby sister at the dinner table.  Ethiopian jokes were popular at Longwood Elementary School in Shalimar, Florida in the mid-1970s, and I laughed with a mouthful of pot roast, repeating the latest trendy mockery of a starving people.

My mother, who laughs with joy in my memories, wasn’t smiling that day.

“There is nothing funny about another person’s pain,” she said.

But they can’t hear me, Mama; they’re in Africa!

“It doesn’t matter whether they hear you or not, Wendy Anne.” 

....and I knew, by the sound of my middle name, that this lesson was very important.

I recall too, as the holidays approach, one Christmas with relatives in New Orleans.  I was ten or so and opened my new skates as though surprised, only to hear my cousin’s shriek, as she discovered her new stereo, records, an arcade-size Pac Man video game and more.

“Come see, Wendy,” she shouted, full of love.  “I’ll share it all!”

But I ran upstairs and buried my face in the guestroom pillow, ashamed of my jealousy and yet helpless to stop it.  I remember the feelings like they were yesterday, not wanting to hurt my mother, who gave us the world.  I explained through my tears, as she apologized and stroked my hair, how much I loved my skates and how I never liked Pac Man anyway.

I thought of this, for some reason, last Saturday night when George woke me at 3:00 a.m., pleading that I rub his legs and shoulders --- “full of tension,” he explained, following the LSU vs. Alabama game.  Annoyed and half-asleep, I scratched his back for maybe two minutes before dozing off, all the while dumbfounded over the physical and mental trauma following a winning football game watched from a sofa.

Within an hour, I awoke again, this time to the sound of a 2009 season Saints play-off game, “the perfect thing,” he explained, “to calm my nerves.”

I almost insisted that he turn off the television, explained how ridiculous this is in the middle of the night, and reminded him that we faced a full day and had to be up in two hours.  Instead, however, I marveled quietly at this man and my life.

Oddly enough and unknown to me, he pondered along the same lines, yet in his unpredictable, unique way.  Realizing I watched him, he noted out of the blue, as the Saints kicked the winning field goal against the Minnesota Vikings,

“What people don’t realize is that all of that funny stuff you write is really me!”

Well, now you know-

Wendy

-This self-indulgent dribble is for Jack, who encourages me-


-Also this week, Marie Laveau, Storyville and more in "Reading New Orleans," a new post for Gambit-

-Please join me on facebook for more paintings, photographs and discussion-