Blue Dog Today: An Interview with George Rodrigue

Every few weeks I devote a blog to the Blue Dog Story, from its loup-garou beginning in 1984, and on to Tiffany, Absolut and Xerox, Blue Dog Man, Sculptures, Red Dog, and Silkscreens. I last wrote about the Abstract Paintings of 2001-2003, and I’m a bit lost as to how to move forward.

To assess something, to re-cap it, that thing has to have passed, along with enough time following it to study the phenomenon in a context. I’m just not sure we’re there yet.

By 2003 George Rodrigue was devoted to the series Bodies, a contemporary expression of Jolie Blonde. This consumed him for more than two years until August 2005, when Katrina hit, disrupting (as it did for thousands) not only his external world, but also his internal creative one. In fact, that weekend of August 29, we (the entire gallery staff) were in Houston for a Bodies exhibition.

It was months before George returned to his easel, and once he did, his main artistic focus for the next two years was Blue Dog Relief, a series of silkscreen prints benefiting the arts, education, and humanitarian needs of South Louisiana (an in-depth blog better saved, I feel, for late summer).

By 2007, although he was painting again, it wasn’t with his pre-Katrina focus. George likes to paint in large blocks of time ---- three to four months at his Carmel studio easel, and we just couldn’t make it happen. (This year, for the first time since before the storm, he’ll spend four near-consecutive months in his studio, an artistic immersion I look forward to sharing with you this summer).

A flurry of museums and other venues contacted George for exhibitions just following Katrina, and so for three years beginning early 2007 we mounted large scale retrospective shows at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens Museum in Memphis, Tennessee (150 works, 2007), the New Orleans Museum of Art (260 works, 2008), and both the Acadiana Center for the Arts and the University Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana (150 works, 2009), plus smaller exhibitions at several Louisiana State Museum venues, the Coral Springs Museum of Art in Coral Springs, Florida, and Amuse Bouche Winery in Napa, California.

After eighteen years in the same location, we moved our Carmel gallery in January 2009 to a new space, doubling its size, and in August 2009 we purchased a two hundred year old building in the French Quarter where we’ll move the New Orleans gallery in the coming weeks.

Throughout all of this, George painted intermittently at his easel, designed and built a 28-foot public sculpture (nearly a year in the making) for Metairie, Louisiana (a suburb of New Orleans), and spent six months on a project for the National World War II Museum.

Come to think of it, it’s no wonder I’m unable to pinpoint a trend in George’s paintings of the past few years. So, I asked him to do it:

George, Help. What are your thoughts today with the Blue Dog paintings?

“I can’t think about today without looking back at my art career of forty years. It all boils down to that first decision. There I was in art school in Los Angeles facing choices about art, art teachers, art schools, art business, commercial art business, advertising business --- all paths I could have gone down. Yet I chose to be a painter, an artist that basically has to sell his paintings to make a living.

The first thing I realized after seeing the Warhol exhibit and seeing what my teachers were doing at different galleries, was that an artist has to have a lot of guts and do things and take chances that might not make sense to the art world at the time. There was a risk factor that was very prevalent in everything I saw.

Warhol risked painting Soup Cans and Brillo Boxes and called it art. At the same time, most of my art teachers in California were painting hard edge and ‘feel’ paintings (pure color), a direct reaction to non-easel paintings, such as Jackson Pollock and his drips, or other popular trends like painting on the floor, taping off canvases, and creating big flat areas of color.

I saw these reactions and trends before my eyes in L.A. Somebody had to have the guts and foresight to do something different, because art history is based on new forms of expression.”

And you returned to South Louisiana, over New York, with these things in mind--

“My decision to leave the contemporary art field and move back to Louisiana, painting something from the past with contemporary eyes, to me, took guts --- rather than painting the abstract expressionism going on at the ‘academic’ or what some called the ‘high art’ level, such as it was, in my state (certainly at the universities), or for that matter, permeating the country.

So I painted Cajuns and became comfortable with it.”

And the Blue Dog?

“That also took guts, in a big way. I took a giant leap into the future. I can’t tell you how many people told me I was crazy, I was stupid, I would ruin my art career. Why would I paint this when my Cajun paintings were selling and I made a good living?

Once the public got to know the Blue Dog, the next round of comments was, ‘Yeah, but this will only last three or four years. What are you going to do next?’”

That was twenty-five years ago.

“The only thing I knew I was going to do next was to make it better and do something that no artist has ever done to this degree --- pick one particular object and grow with it. Don’t get me wrong, there were others…. Jasper Johns with his targets, Robert Indiana with love and numbers, and the list goes on, but their art didn’t develop through changes within that one image over twenty-five years.

To my mind, maybe the closest is Chuck Close and his portraits. They developed slowly in a way that the individual shapes and colors that make a total face have changed and progressed, so that his faces of today look different than his faces of ten years ago.”

So where is the Blue Dog today?

"Today I think the Blue Dog is probably a comment on, well, the Blue Dog. The art looks back at itself and in doing so creates a future. The dog looks at itself to find a new direction. It’s hard to explain in words (laughing) --- it's much easier on canvas!

I still don’t know, really, what I’m going to paint when I sit at my easel. I’m still on a path looking back at the imagery and also moving forward, translating both my past and my new ideas into a different, exciting future.

At the moment I’m excited about scale – specifically large scale. I’ve painted large paintings publicly before, but due to space problems, these only were displayed in museums or special exhibits. In two weeks I’ll have a gallery space that can exhibit these large pieces. Something else truly happens when scale becomes a part of your concept. I just don’t feel like sitting down and painting something 16x20 inches anymore. I’d rather tackle 8x10 feet.”

So the new gallery space influences your work?

“That, and the reactions of the people walking by and peeping in the windows. I get excited to see the public excited! They’ve expressed awe over these large expressions on big walls, many canvases with massive antique frames that strangely compliment these giant graphics, these swaths of bold color, with the theme of the Blue Dog.

I’m as excited as I’ve ever been with my art and career, and for me it’s a new beginning.”

George Rodrigue, speaking about his work, March 2010

(and pictured at his easel March 8th)

I've watched George experience these creative surges before, and let me tell you, it will be an interesting year. I hope you'll follow along with me for updates in words and pictures-

Wendy

The Name ‘Rodrigue’ with Pronunciation and a Bit of History

The name 'Rodrigue' is a common one in Cajun country. However, outside the southern part of his home state, George Rodrigue endures miss-pronunciations and miss-spellings on a regular basis.

Most of the time, people say or spell the name ‘Rodriguez.’ A close second is ‘Rodrique’ (with a ‘q’ in place of the ‘g’). And bar none, the most popular miss-pronunciation is ‘Rod-ree-gay.’

People like George’s mother (adamantly ‘French’ as opposed to ‘Cajun’) pronounce the name ‘Row (as in ‘row your boat’)-dreeg.’ And George, Cajun through and through, pronounces his name ‘Rod-reeg.’

The name, I’m told, originated in Portugal and began as ‘Rodrigues’ (pronounced ‘Row-dreegsh,’ rolling the first ‘R’). It probably changed (although no one knows for sure) in the mid seventeenth century when Jeanne Rodrigues (born in Portugal) met and married Anne LeRoy (born in Paris, France), altering the name by dropping the ‘s’ to sound more French in the Acadian community of Beauport, Canada, where they made their home. (pictured, 1983 poster from a painting of Evangeline)

By the time of the Grand Dérangement* of 1755, the name ‘Rodrigue’ was around for a good one hundred years. George’s Aunt Bertha spent much of her adult life (long before the internet) researching the Rodrigue genealogy. The Courregé side (her father’s name, and George’s mother’s maiden name) was easy, because they knew that their father came to New Iberia, Louisiana directly from France. His thirteen children used this heritage to call themselves the more elegant ‘French,’ as opposed to what they perceived as the more primitive and ignorant ‘Cajun.’ (pictured, a 1980 poster from a painting of former Louisiana Governor and U.S. Senator Huey Long)

George’s mother, Marie Courregé, was more Rodrigue than Courregé, ironically, especially once she married. Her mother was a Rodrigue, meaning that George’s parents were first cousins. (pronounced ‘Cour-a-zhay’ in Louisiana, although in France it’s closer to ‘Cour-rezh’)

According to Bertha, four Rodrigue brothers entered New Orleans in 1755. She suspected but could not confirm that they came from Canada. The brothers settled in the southeastern part of the state, in Lafourche Parish, specifically in and around the town of Chackbay, Louisiana. Today the town holds an annual Rodrigue reunion, attracting 3,000 – 4,000 people. (pictured, 1991 poster from a painting of Clay 'Baby' Meaux)

In 1972 George received a letter from a Canadian professor asking about the Rodrigue name. He had read about George in an art magazine, as a painter of Cajun folk life. It turns out that this man held the rest of the puzzle, having traced the Rodrigue name (or Rodrigues before the move) from Portugal to Beauport, Canada. He knew of four Rodrigue brothers leaving Canada in 1755, but knew no further. George put him in touch with Bertha, and they connected the dots.

George Rodrigue is proud of his name and his Cajun heritage. He named his sons, André Rodrigue and Jacques Rodrigue, after their Canadian ancestors. (pictured, André, Jacques, and George Rodrigue, with our nephew William)

George uses his name as both a symbol and an interesting graphic element. This is especially true of his Louisiana commemorative posters, when he breaks up the plain but necessary border text with a large and bold signature.

With the Blue Dog Series, specifically the original silkscreens, in numerous cases George incorporates his name as a design element, sometimes so strong that it competes with the Blue Dog for attention.

Finally, I apologize to those of you who are less than thrilled with this rather dry blog entry (and I do promise to make it up to you). However, the second most asked question we receive (following “Where did the Blue Dog come from?”) is “How do you pronounce your name?”

And so there you have it, the name 'Rodrigue' (pronounced ‘Rod-reeg’), with a bit of genealogical lagniappe thrown in.

Wendy

*For more on the Acadian exile of 1755, visit A History of Evangeline in Rodrigue Paintings. For more on the French people in Louisiana see The Aioli Dinner and a Cajun Artist. For more on George’s parents and childhood see the story How Baby George Became an Artist. For more on Aunt Bertha the Old Maid, as she was known to the family, see the story Tombs in the Life and Art of George Rodrigue.

**This blog is not meant to be a definitive source of history on the name Rodrigue. Rather my priorities centered on pronunciation and George’s use of his name within his work. For detailed research on the name Rodrigue, visit http://www.genealogie.org/famille/Rodrigue/

Chef Paul Prudhomme and the Great Cajun Omelet

If George Rodrigue has a counterpart in the cooking world, it’s Paul Prudhomme. They grew up in the relatively close Cajun towns of New Iberia and Opelousas, Louisiana. As young boys both pursued their passions as career goals, determined to hone their talents and define their lives with innovative, bold, and personal contributions to the art of painting and the art of food. (For more on Rodrigue's childhood see the story How Baby George Became an Artist)

Although they did not meet as children, the two have been friends for thirty years, supporting each other’s talents and efforts at festivals and fund-raisers, gallery exhibitions and restaurant grand openings, and during disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.

I first met Chef Paul in the summer of 1991 at the Rodrigue Gallery of New Orleans in the French Quarter, when he came by for a photo shoot with George. I’d only worked for the gallery a few weeks, and I was a bit anxious about meeting the famous chef. I offered him a cup of coffee, freshly brewed in the back, and he said with a smile,

“Coffee with chicory, Dahlin’.”

Rather than admit I’d brewed Community Coffee’s French Roast (perfectly acceptable), I ran down the street to Royal Blend. When they had no coffee with chicory I ran even faster in my patent leather stiletto pumps, pale white stockings, and apple green Frankenstein-shouldered linen dress (gotta love the early ‘90s) all the way down Pirate’s Alley, across Jackson Square to Café du Monde, where I stood in line at the outside pick-up window on that August afternoon, along with a dozen other crazies, waiting for a small cup of steaming hot coffee. By the time I got back, I’d perspired a new pattern to my dress and sported a new hair-do, oddly wet and frizzed simultaneously, just in time to take my picture with Chef Paul. (Since it’s my blog, I’ll spare myself the added humiliation and not insert the photo.)

I next saw Chef (as he’s known around here) at the grand opening celebration of Rodrigue Studio (then called Galerie Blue Dog) in Carmel, California in the fall of 1991. He brought Louisiana food and a team of people to the tiny seaside town and helped us open the gallery with style and generosity, feeding and entertaining thousands of visitors that weekend. I remember people calling us for months afterwards asking about reservations, thinking that the gallery was a Paul Prudhomme restaurant!

Several months later we met up again at “New Orleans By the Bay,” a Louisiana festival in Mountain View, California. George exhibited artwork at the event and provided some entertainment alongside Paul while he cooked. He set up an easel and painted all afternoon while visiting with Chef and the crowd about all things Louisiana. It was a beautiful California-sunshine day, and the two had a great time cutting up and telling Cajun jokes for their audience. The Neville Brothers (live and in person) played in the background, and I realized that day that even though I lived in California full time at this point, Louisiana and its joie de vivre was home and in my heart. (pictured, I Hear the Blues, I See the Blues, I Sing the Blues, 1992, size 48x84 inches, acrylic on canvas, painted outside in Mountain View, California during New Orleans By The Bay).

George and Chef Paul have an interesting history together beyond the few examples mentioned here. George painted his portrait a number of times. The most famous was to commemorate the opening of K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in New York City (now closed) in 1989.

The painting features Rodrigue’s typical style, with Chef cut out and pasted onto the Louisiana oak tree, but here George adds ‘the big apple,' also locked in the tree and framing Paul's head. Although barely discernible in a photograph, a redfish appears in the tree alongside the apple and Chef, in reference to Prudhomme’s most famous dish, “blackened redfish.” Paul's feet echo the roots of the tree, indicating an inseparable bond between the Louisiana land and the Louisiana chef.

The painting was made famous when photographer Annie Leibovitz used it as the backdrop for her portrait of Prudhomme, widely circulated as a magazine ad for American Express.

George also painted Chef in a large genre piece called The Great Cajun Omelet (1984, size 48x65, oil on canvas). (pictured, Chef Paul with The Great Cajun Omelet and Ronald Reagan: An American Hero)

The celebration is said to have originated in the south of France when Napoleon and his army enjoyed a large omelet made from every egg in the town. A tradition was born, and every Easter afterward the omelet became a celebration to feed the poor of Bessiers, France.

Since 1984 the town of Abbeville, Louisiana has paid homage to this French tradition with an omelet made of five thousand eggs and distributed free at the festival. Although many chefs have participated over the years, it was Paul Prudhomme who first took on the challenge.

I’ve learned over the years that Chef enjoys challenges of all sizes. I remember asking for my sweet potato pecan pie ‘ala mode’ on a visit to K-Paul’s in the French Quarter, only to be told,

“We don't have any ice cream; we don’t have a freezer.”

Needless to say, everything is fresh. As a result, following Hurricane Katrina K-Paul’s was one of the first restaurants to re-open in the city. Cleaning out the freezers was a daunting, disgusting, and laborious task after weeks without electricity in 100 degree heat. In the case of several classic New Orleans restaurants, the buildings did not flood, however the second floor freezers crashed through to the first floor and basically totaled the buildings.

George and I feel as comfortable at K-Paul’s as we do in our own kitchen. They abandoned the family-style seating and no-reservations policy years ago, in favor of small tables and white table cloths and, frankly, a packed house, booked weeks in advance. We see Chef there on nearly every visit, as he welcomes his guests and claps his hands along to the strolling Cajun band. The restaurant is full of paintings including not only George's portraits of Chef, but also a Blue Dog sporting a star on its cheek, a traditional reward at K-Paul's for finishing one's meal.

George and I also are fortunate because Chef Paul lives across the street from us in the Faubourg Marigny. He caters parties at our house and drops by for a visit every now and then. George enjoys hanging out with him in his test kitchen (also across the street), where he’s always working on some new spice or special dish and eager to share. He has a real gift for taste, and I’ve seen him sample a sauce and relay every ingredient just from his palate.

As I understand it, Chef Paul took his mother’s recipes and improved on them to create many of his most famous dishes. He worked as head chef for years for Ella Brennan at Commander’s Palace, perhaps the most beloved of all New Orleans restaurants, until he branched off on his own to open K-Paul’s.

When I think of Chef I'm reminded not only of his outstanding, home grown, and innovative cuisine, but also of a regular guy --- down-to earth and full of kindness. He fed thousands of people out of his warehouse following Hurricane Katrina, without credit, press attention, or fanfare. And most personal, I recall a night five years ago when George was out of town and I was frightened. I called an ambulance for my mother, and as they carried her out, Chef Paul, who had wheeled himself over after hearing the siren, held open our front door (my mother's pain subsided long enough for her to be star struck and take his hand) and then waved to us from the street corner as he watched us pull away.

(pictured, George Rodrigue and Chef Paul Prudhomme on the street outside K-Paul's, September 2005, just a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina)

Occasionally Paul and George drive in Chef’s small pick-up truck to the casino in Belle Chasse, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River, where they play poker (and where a quarter’s considered a big raise). They hang out with the locals and pass a good time --- something relaxing and easy to these country-Cajun men (Chef Paul turns seventy this July), still boys after all these years. (pictured, Paul Prudhomme, Pete Fountain, George Rodrigue, 2008)

They’ve talked at length about doing a book together filled with paintings, recipes, photographs, and stories, and they seemed focused on it for a time. But then Katrina hit and everyone changed direction. It still may happen. I’ll keep you posted-

Wendy

*the paintings featured in this blog (with the exception of I Hear the Blues...) are all owned by Chef Paul Prudhomme and hang on public view in his restaurant, K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen in the New Orleans French Quarter.

Lectures, Painting Demos, and Events

As much as I enjoy touring with George and speaking alongside him about his work, it’s often a real kick without him. I remember my first solo school visit. Although I’d spoken with many children in the galleries over the years, it wasn’t until after George and I were married in 1997 that folks acknowledged me as an acceptable second place choice if he were unavailable to lecture on his art. I learned quickly that children make the best audience (because, when focused, they ask the best questions), and so I ventured as often as possible to any school that would have me.

The first was an elementary school in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I pulled into the parking lot, really having no idea where to go, and spied blue balloons attached to a sign, “Welcome Mrs. Wendy,” marking my parking space. From there my feet followed Blue Dog paw prints into the school, past walls of children’s renditions of Blue Dogs in colorful and imaginative settings and materials, and continued into the library, where several hundred kids awaited me, in chairs, or cross-legged on the floor, and peaking around stacks of books.

I didn’t bring a slide show, worried that it would be too much like ‘school,’ and besides, I wanted the lights up. I was a bit nervous, and I wanted to see their faces.

An art discussion, however, doesn’t mean much without visuals. I brought a few original paintings from our home --- an Oak Tree, a painting of Cajuns, and a Blue Dog, as well as a collection of Rodrigue books for their library.

The more I spoke, the more comfortable I became, encouraged by the wide eyes and obvious interest in the room. (As Aunt Wendy there is no statement I fear worse than, “I’m bored.”)

It was time for questions, and the hands shot up. I motioned to a small girl on the front row.

“He’s really your husband?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he like?”

I lost control fast: How old is he? Young enough. How old are you? Old enough. Do you have a dog? No, but we have a cat, Diana. Do you have kids? George has two boys. Do they paint? They painted in school, like you, but not so much anymore. Is he funny? He likes Cajun jokes. Does he laugh? All the time, like Snagglepuss. What do you mean? Kee hee hee.

George the celebrity overtook George the artist and try as I might, I couldn’t steer it back.

I spoke to the wall: Tell me about the artwork hanging in the hall.

"But what kind of car does he drive?"

"How big is your house?"

"Do you know Britney Spears?"

Over the years I do think I’ve gotten a better handle on things, however the kids still throw me for a loop on occasion (at the Rodrigue exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art, their intuitiveness and ability to see astonished me).

Teachers are a different story. We (the entire Rodrigue group) have come a long way in this area, especially since we established the George Rodrigue Foundation of the Arts, a venue for both students and educators, with scholarships, lesson plans, school events and more.

In the spring of 2008 I spoke in George’s place to more than 800 art teachers at the National Arts Education Association Convention. I stood on a stage in the auditorium of the New Orleans Convention Center with giant screens behind me, spotlights in my face, and prompters at my feet. I had neither a written speech nor notes (having found out that morning I’d be speaking); I did have George's slide presentation, but I insisted they turn up the lights. I was scared to death.

Yet once again the more I spoke about George, the more I wanted to share. The fifty-minute lecture turned into ninety minutes, as the teachers asked questions (art questions, fortunately), sent me on tangents, and firmly, comfortably, solidified my smile, as I gushed with pride about my husband.

As a result, the New Orleans Museum of Art had its biggest day of the Rodrigue show, and to my surprise I gained a respectable reputation as George’s understudy.

In addition to children and educators, George and I spend a lot of time presenting his work on the road for both book tours and non-profit events. Usually he paints while I speak, with him interjecting on occasion just to set me straight (or throw me off!). It’s a fun ‘performance,’ an opportunity for George’s fans to not only hear about his career and history but also, most exciting, watch him at work.

For these events he paints quickly, using large brushes and paint right out of the tube, finishing within forty minutes or so. The audience sees a blank canvas become the product of his impulsive but concentrated approach, a finished painting to their eyes (but ironically a mess to George’s, who never fails to completely repaint the entire work over several days in his studio).

We are most creative with these events during our Rodrigue Client Weekends, held every other year since 2002. The first was in Carmel, California, where we introduced one hundred guests to George’s Hurricanes at our home. He hung these mostly round, swirling canvases throughout the rooms, as well as the outside of the house, creating a colorful entrance and environment for these special guests. He created a painting in front of them and took their questions in his newly-built studio.

In 2004 and 2007 (Katrina threw us off a bit), we entertained George’s collectors with three-day riverboat cruises on the Mississippi River, including a visit with Governor Kathleen Blanco at the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge, an afternoon with Hadley Castille and the Sharecroppers Band at Houmas House Plantation, Costume balls, and more.

In 2008 we focused on the exhibition, Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Forty Years of Cajuns, Blue Dogs, and Beyond Katrina at the New Orleans Museum of Art, including private museum tours with George, as well as our own Mardi Gras parade and ball in the French Quarter. (pictured, George and Jacques Rodrigue with special guest "The Blue Lady;" a Rodrigue's New Orleans Second Line parade in the French Quarter)

These event weekends, limited to two hundred guests, give people an opportunity at receptions, dinners, and lectures to visit with George about his art. They watch him at his easel and learn first-hand about his current projects. They also meet people from around the world, all brought together in that wondrous city, New Orleans, by their interest in this Louisiana artist.

This year, March 19-21, we have a different angle, the Grand Opening of the new Rodrigue Gallery of New Orleans. In August 2009 George Rodrigue purchased a four-story, two hundred year old building, where he will move his gallery in the coming weeks and open with a celebration during “Rodrigue’s New Orleans.” For the first time ever he has an unrented space all his own, an historic location adjacent to St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter, an interior he gutted and re-designed specifically for his art. There is room enough to showcase artwork spanning his entire career, as well as oversize pieces (some as large as fourteen feet across) and works from his private collection.

In addition to the gallery’s Grand Opening, the weekend includes a reception-in-blue at the recently re-opened Blue Room at the historic Roosevelt Hotel; a 1940s party at the National WWII Museum’s Stage Door Canteen (featuring the museum’s recent $350 million renovation and Rodrigue’s historical painting of President Eisenhower and boat builder Andrew Higgins); a Mardi Gras party at the new Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World on the Mississippi River; George’s painting demonstration and lecture; and a visit to the 28-foot steel, aluminum, and chrome Blue Dog sculpture, recently installed on Veterans Boulevard in Metairie, Louisiana (a suburb of New Orleans).

Most important, George Rodrigue is in attendance for all of it, taking this opportunity to visit with his collectors --- something he did near daily for years on the road and now reserves for this special weekend.

Within each of these venues --- school visits, lecture series, book tours, painting demos, and event weekends (and this blog, for that matter) --- George and I strive for a connection with his fans, something that encourages them (you) to look at his art in a new way. We enjoy the fellowship and interaction that comes with these events and more than anything, we hope people will find a personal connection to the artwork, something beyond George’s intent, something inward and poignant in their own lives.

Wendy

For information on this year’s Rodrigue’s New Orleans (March 19-21) visit www.bluedogevent.com

Clinton, Bush, and Obama: Portraits (or not)

In 1994 some connected friends with the Democratic Party invited George Rodrigue to meet President Bill Clinton. George invited me along and, truth be told, I was more excited about meeting Hillary. My mom worked at a printing company at the time, and she and her friend Bronwen Ross created personalized note cards for the First Lady, which I brought along as a gift.

(This picture kills me, but kills George worse. We finally removed it from our wall because so many people thought I was Chelsea).

A few weeks later back at the gallery in Carmel, I received a call from Mrs. Clinton’s personal assistant requesting my address, and within a few days I opened a hand-written note of thanks from Hillary herself. I was shocked and impressed, and she became my first big time female roll model. (Unlike many of my classmates, I never latched onto Jackie Kennedy).

Her letter surprised me not only because she’s the First Lady, but also because the Washington D.C. trip was nothing short of a fiasco. The Democratic National Party asked George to provide prints appropriate as official state gifts from the Clinton White House. He created a special lithograph of his Washington Blue Dog for this purpose, and he carried these prints to the President on this trip.

However, at the last minute Clinton stopped the presentation. He thought George Rodrigue was connected (if not the instigator) to the Blue Dog Democrats, the conservative side of the Democratic Party, and apparently a thorn in the side of any sitting Democratic President.

The truth is that the term is derived from the old “Yellow Dog Democrats” in Louisiana’s political history. Although a number of the Louisiana legislators collect George’s work and hang it in their offices, he is unaffiliated in anyway whatsoever with the Blue Dog Democrats or any other political group (keep in mind his long history of Republican Presidential portraits). In fact, when the Blue Dog Democrats tried using his artwork for buttons and other paraphernalia, he was quick to stop them. We do our best to discourage the connection in the press, however it’s tough, because they made the association years ago and still assume that George’s paintings provide a mascot of sorts for the group.

I cannot emphasize enough how careful George is not to align himself politically with any party. He is honored when asked to paint a Louisiana Governor or a President of the United States of any party, but he refuses the request until after the person is elected to office.

Several years passed and at some point President Clinton came to understand George’s history as a painter of Presidential and Governors portraits of both parties, as well as his neutral political status. The air cleared further with George’s Union Station exhibition in the summer of 1996 teasingly titled “Blue Dog for President.” (for more on this exhibition, as well as images, see the blog Blue Dog Man, 1996-1999)

In December of 1996, the Democratic National Party commissioned George to create the official 53rd Presidential Inaugural Portrait and poster, featuring President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, and called “Walking Into the 21st Century.” In a further gesture of understanding, the President himself requested that his portrait include the Blue Dog.

(For Rodrigue's history with portraiture, see the blog Portraits: The Kingfish and Uncle Earl)

Honored by the request, George accepted, but his frustration mounted as the deadline tightened and the persons-in-charge dictated his direction. It was challenging in those days, remember, because it was just before any helpful computer programs. He sent photographs of his daily progress overnight to the White House. (I specifically recall problems with Clinton’s face, which they repeatedly complained was ‘too red’ in the painting).

At last all groups reached an agreement on the final work, but it was so late that we attended the Inauguration with only a handful of silkscreen prints for the President, rather than the several thousand initially ordered (and delivered later). Our Washington visit was exciting, because not only did we attend the Inauguration with practically front row seats (man, was it cold…), but also we met in the Oval Office with President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and our old friend Leon Panetta, who we knew from Carmel.

I remember thinking while standing there in the most revered room in the country with the most powerful men in the country, that I should be more intimidated by the whole thing. I should have shaken or perspired or something. But actually I was calm, partly brought on by seeing Leon, but even more so because I hoped to see Hillary. I wore a special Blue Dog pin that George made for me, and I intended to give it to her.

(Perhaps this is a good spot for a personal (albeit borrowed) message to Hillary: "Thank God men die younger than us. It's the only break we get."*)

When I learned she was unavailable, I gave the pin to President Clinton and asked him to give her my regards. (Hillary was already a Blue Dog fan, pictured here with Mr. Boutte at Mulate's in New Orleans)

In 2001 George heard from the Republican Party again, this time a commission from a Houston-based supporter for a silkscreen commemorating George W. Bush.

Honored once more to create a work for a sitting President, this particular piece held special significance due to George’s earlier portrait from 1989 of Bush’s father and grandchildren, as well as the positive memories surrounding that experience.

Most exciting, the Bush piece lead to a trio of works in 2008, specifically the artwork for the North American Summit held in New Orleans. This resulted in a presentation with President Bush, Canada’s Prime Minister Harper, and Mexico’s President Caldron, an event I missed because it fell during my annual sister-trip with Heather, something not even Presidents can change, because "without her I don't make sense."** (George, to my amusement, insisted I share with you the reason for my absence, lest you think I wasn’t included…)

(pictured, President George W. Bush, George Rodrigue, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Mexico’s President Felipe Caldron)

So what about President Obama? No one has contacted George to paint the President since he entered office. One state’s Democratic Party officials requested that he paint Obama during the campaign. However, as I mentioned above, George has a strict policy against painting anyone who’s running for office, and so he declined. If he were to accept such a commission (promoting a candidate with his art), he fears he might offend his collectors.

I can’t imagine why.

Wendy

*From the movie Something's Gotta Give, 2003

**Rose speaking about her sister Maggie in the movie In Her Shoes, 2005

The Traiteur

With nearly 60,000 visitors in two months at the George Rodrigue exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2008, we received hundreds of letters, all positive, mostly from people who prior to NOMA knew little about the scope of George’s career. As a result, they were surprised at how much they enjoyed the show. There was one exception, however: an angry email from a woman who accused George of promoting voodoo and black magic through his art. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the loup-garou and early Blue Dog paintings that bothered her, “a good Christian woman,” but rather the painting Doc Moses, Cajun Traiteur (1974, 48x36, oil on canvas)

Ever sensitive to an offense, I thought about her words as I played docent to thousands of area school children. I looked for signs of damage in their faces as I told them about the Cajun faith healers and shared this form of mysticism with their young minds. Would they refuse a dose of bad tasting medicine next time they have the flu? Would they lay their hands on a friend’s bad cut, rather than go for help? I recalled playing ‘light as a feather’ as a kid, but I don’t recall any adults levitating their friends.

And then I thought that maybe it’s like Santa Claus or positive thinking or even Jesus to some (or for that matter, maybe it’s like voodoo!), and it allows us that suspension of those things we can touch and see in favor of those things we just know, or those things that we want to understand, like where we come from in birth and where we go in death, why we suffer, and what our dreams mean, or how to explain a déjà vu. Maybe Doc Moses is okay because, like ghosts and heaven and reincarnation, we want to believe and, if we really do believe, then it’s real.

"At the birth of Christ, the cry resounded through the ancient world, ‘Great Pan is dead.’ The animal mind was about to be subdued. Christ’s mission was to prepare the way for floral consciousness." (Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume, p. 325)

A traiteur is a Cajun folk doctor with a special, inherited gift for healing one ailment. In George’s painting, Doc Moses heals earaches. He pours a ring of salt around the patient and touches his ears. Amazingly, only the healer must believe. The patient’s skepticism does not affect the cure.

George also knew of a woman in New Iberia famous for treating warts. She concentrated on one wart a day and could even work over the telephone if you described to her the exact location of the growth. However, the power did not work across water, and so if you lived on the other side of the Bayou Teche, you had to cross the bridge (or take a pirogue) to the opposite bank to make your call.

George’s cousin Catherine tried healing sprains after finding Tant Git’s prayer book, which doubled as her healer’s manual. Magitte, George’s mother’s oldest sister, was born in 1880 and inherited the book from her father. But somehow the power never passed to Catherine. Ironically, she became a nurse, healing in more conventional ways, a practice she gave up because her kind heart cannot bear to see suffering. (pictured, Catherine and Susan)

Catherine reminds me of Snow White, with the birds twittering around her head and the animals playing at her feet. During one visit to her home in New Iberia, a noise startled me in her powder room. When I pulled back the shower curtain, I found baby bunnies in the bathtub. (pictured Susan, Uncle Clifton, John Edward, Uncle Emile (from the Aioli Dinner), and Catherine)

Today Catherine and her husband Victor own Victor’s Cafeteria in downtown New Iberia, and the idea that she’s a ‘healer’ is long gone (although no doubt her delicious crawfish pies and pralines have cured a few ailments). She and her sisters Susan and Cheryl, along with their brother John Edward are the closest thing George has to siblings (for more on this, see the blogs How Baby George Became an Artist and Tombs in the Life and Art of George Rodrigue).

And indeed George does complain about Catherine as though she is his sister, most notably regarding the sign at Victor’s Cafeteria that says “Detective Robicheaux eats here,” based on author James Lee Burke’s famous character. George of course thinks the sign should tout a different local celebrity! (pictured, me, Cheryl, Dana (married to John Edward), Susan, Catherine)

(pictured, Catherine, George's mother Marie, George, Jacques at Victor's Cafeteria for Marie's 90th Birthday party, 1995)

I’ve never met a traiteur nor witnessed a healing. George saw it many times. His Tant Git, to heal a sprain, licked her thumb and traced three small crosses with it on the injury while whispering secret words from her prayer book.

One day John Edward, Catherine’s older brother, asked Tant Git (pictured below, 1955) about the process and how she heals. At ten years old, he was convinced that he should be the next family traiteur. (light as a feather…)

She agreed to share her secret, as long as he promised to tell no one. Meanwhile, John Edward had a secret of his own: he planned on a healing demonstration at school for show-n-tell. Magitte showed him the ritual and said the secret words out loud. John Edward, not speaking French, didn’t realize that Tant Git fooled him, as he repeated to his class three times in French: ‘dog poo, pig poo’….. But his teacher, who understood French, was horrified!

George has painted several traiteurs over the years. If you follow this blog, you might remember Evergreen Lake as a Native American model for the healer from the story Rosalea Murphy, the Pink Adobe, and Paintings of Evergreen Lake. He hasn’t addressed the subject on canvas in quite sometime, but he’s been known to entertain at dinner parties, particularly over injuries, with three little crosses and the magic words…

Caca Chien, Caca Cochon, Caca Chien, Caca Cochon, Caca Chien, Caca Cochon….

Sounds like voodoo to me-

Wendy

Mignon’s Flowers

We are six weeks into 2010 and already it’s touted, certainly around New Orleans, as the year in which dreams come true. We’ve been celebrating since New Year’s Eve, and today, Lundi Gras, is no exception as the Kings of Rex and Zulu land at the riverfront amidst fireworks, live music, and record-breaking crowds.

George and I attended a friend’s annual Lundi Gras party at Commander’s Palace this afternoon, where we donned gold paper crowns, listened to Dixieland jazz, and dined on turtle soup and bread pudding soufflé. It was decadent and joyous, and the famous restaurant echoed with song and laughter. But unknown to anyone around me, I was thinking of neither Carnival nor Super Bowl revelry, but rather of a party far more important in my world: a birthday party.

Mignon McClanahan Wolfe, my mom, was born seventy years ago today. She grew up in New Orleans, lived in Sumter, South Carolina, Dover, Delaware, the Orient and Europe, moved to the beaches of north Florida’s gulf coast for twenty-five years, followed another dream to Highlands, North Carolina, and returned finally, in 2003, to a jewel box Acadian house in Abita Springs, Louisiana.

Her parents named her ‘Felix’ because they wanted a boy, and the day she turned eighteen (and received a draft notice) she changed it to ‘Mignon.’ “I’m named after a French actress,” she used to say.

She was a Chemistry major at LSU when her pony tail flipped over her head onto her bunsen burner and caught her hair on fire. And she gained fame as the first student ever to use the lab shower, when her experiment exploded, disintegrating her clothes before her classmates and burning the skin under her watch nearly down to the bone (prompting her switch to the ‘safe’ major of Fine Arts, despite the fact that she had never picked up a paint brush).

She was the kind of person who named her clothes ‘The Mermaid Outfit,’ ‘The Marilyn Dress,’ or the ‘Renaissance Blouse.’ Her tooled leather belts said “Mignon” amidst roses and bluebonnets; her jazz class leotards were turquoise and purple with matching frilly skirts; and she prided herself on the way her ‘heart-shaped behind’ looked in her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. She wore flowers in her hair, bows on her sandals, and rhinestones on her fingernails. I wanted to be exactly like her.

She was single from the time I was six years old, and her dating life was a regular part of the drama around our house. There was Captain Napp the pilot (oh how I wanted her to marry him!), Russ the psychiatrist, Tom who owned a magnificent sailboat, Bob the Lt. Colonel, Mike who drove the monster truck (and carried a step stool in the back just for her), Pete the brown-noser (always trying to win over me and my sister with gifts of prom dresses and such), and I guess that’s a long enough list, lest I tarnish her reputation. (pictured, Key to My Heart by Mignon Wolfe)

She listened to Don Williams, Charlie Rich, and Donna Summer as she brushed her long hair, and once dressed, she sat at the piano, playing as she awaited her date:

Starry Starry Night

Paint your palette blue and grey

Look out on a summer’s day

With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.*

Once I reached dating age, we’d meet afterwards for late night horror movies in her bedroom, sharing the details of our dates on commercials during The Fly (as we squirmed in chorus, “Help me, Help me….”), Night of the Living Dead, or The Raven. We laughed ourselves silly despite the plotlines, as she reminisced about the rather repulsive (but beloved) Morgus the Magnificent, while convinced that our current hostess Elvira would pop out of her low-cut black gown at any moment.

She wanted to be tall and thin, but instead she was five feet, four inches and struggled with her weight all of her life. Rarely was she as disappointed in me as when I slouched. At five feet, ten inches in the tenth grade, I fought with my mother about what I saw as an awkward, freakish height. Yet somehow she convinced me to parade around our house in her heels, with a book and glass balanced atop my head.

She was immensely clever and generous in all things. She couldn’t type or sew, but somehow she managed to pluck out my school papers on a typewriter from a board over her bathroom sink (lest the typing wake me and my sister if she sat all night at the dining room table), and my Girl Scout patches magically appeared on my sash within a day after I earned them.

When I called her crying from school one day because a wounded bird lay beneath a bush at my bus stop, she canceled appointments and left work to race home. I found the bird later that day nestled in a towel in the corner of her bathtub, where it remained for several weeks until it felt well enough to fly out our window.

And when she went into the hospital with pain in her hip, she took me aside before her x-ray and told me that if she didn’t make it, I should find Chesley Adler (who she knew from Chesley’s father’s jewelry store, where my mother worked) and tell her that her jewelry designs are beautiful and that my mother believes in her talent and potential.

….and so I did.

(pictured, Spring Bouquet an oil painting by Mignon Wolfe, followed by George Rodrigue's tribute to her, Mignon's Flowers, a mixed media and silkscreen based on her painting)

Here’s the confusing thing: if I couldn’t even share this invisible birthday girl with our table of party-goers today, then why share with you? I guess because I owe it to her. And because I should have written about her when she could read it. And because I’m vain (I mean, who do I think I am, Rick Bragg?). And because the therapy and psychics and meditation just made me hope for closure. And because I should have taken her to Ireland and Egypt. And because I thought it was all routine, and because I didn’t question the doctors. And because I mocked her belief in fairies and angels and UFO’s. And because I rolled my eyes behind her back over something stupid that last week. And because as my sweet sister managed to choke out and yet state succinctly on the day of our mother’s funeral:

“You know, Wendy, Mom was really neat.”

And because you too are invisible, and there’s a chance that some of you, maybe all of you, who read this in a room as quiet as the one in which I write now (blissfully filled with only the soft sound of my husband, now the same age as my mother when she…, breathing in and out as he sleeps beside me), knows exactly how I feel.**

“But I could have told you Vincent

This world was never meant for one as

Beautiful as you.”*

In 2010, the year that dreams come true, my dream is the impossible one. And yet…

There is a painting I found among my mother’s things that I’d never seen before. It’s only two hands, painted in blue. It hangs in my closet, and sometimes I place my hands on hers and I think she’s there.

Happy Birthday, Mom. God I miss you.

Wendy

** "What’s the matter with you? I mean, you think you’re the only one to ever shed a tear” (Loretta speaking to Ronnie, Moonstruck, 1987)

*Lyrics from the song Vincent, by Don McLean