The scent of spring flowers suspends reality … but only for a short while. I stumbled on a rare treat at the farm stand yesterday – lilacs. For a southern gal they’re a tease, everything I want in a flower in their sweet strong scent, soft purple color, and bouffant blossoms, yet they don’t growContinue reading “Lilacs: A Memory”
Author Archives:
The Collector
During the summer of 2005, George Rodrigue and I joined his collectors Chris and Don Sanders in Europe for the Venice Biennale and Art Basel. Although we attended in the past, this was our first visit with the ‘in-crowd,’ and our group consisted of major gallery owners and big time art collectors, certainly well beyondContinue reading “The Collector”
A Gallery of His Own (A Woolf Inspires a Wolfe)
“Be truthful one would say, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting.”* From day one, from his return to Louisiana from art school in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, George Rodrigue wanted one thing: to make a living as an artist. However, he never imagined that selling his art would be up to him.Continue reading “A Gallery of His Own (A Woolf Inspires a Wolfe)”
The Jazz Fest Poster: Part 2
With this post, George and I remember Mrs. Frances Fernandez, long-time President and Board member of the New Orleans Jazz Club, who dedicated her life to the appreciation of New Orleans’s jazz musicians. We also remember Bill Hemmerling, a beloved local artist who painted the 2005 poster for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.Continue reading “The Jazz Fest Poster: Part 2”
The Land of Enchantment
Ever since losing our mother, Mignon, my sister and I take a week in the spring just for us. We should have done it years ago, with her, but now instead we travel together with her diaries and her memory, painting our fingernails purple and normalizing our eccentricities, making them near trendy, because crazy seemsContinue reading “The Land of Enchantment”
The Jazz Fest Poster: Part 1
In 1994 when first approached by ProCreations, the poster company for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, George Rodrigue hesitated. “It has to be my rules,” he said: “I want to paint Louis Armstrong, and I want to paint him without the Blue Dog.” Up until this time Jazz Fest posters included only musiciansContinue reading “The Jazz Fest Poster: Part 1”
For New Orleans
I’m sitting on our back porch drinking a fabulous glass of rose wine shipped to us today from Georis Winery, a tiny establishment down the street from our house in Carmel, otherwise known as la-la land. The bottle arrived this afternoon in a box with our club membership, and I couldn’t resist. From my vantageContinue reading “For New Orleans”
Fairs and Festivals, Ducks Unlimited and the New Orleans Jazz Club
If you ask George Rodrigue what made his art famous in Louisiana, his answer might surprise you. It’s not the Blue Dog, Absolut Vodka ads, or Jazz Fest. Rather, it’s the small town festival posters. Throughout the 1980s George created posters for dozens of festivals throughout the state. He sold thousands of these inexpensive offsetContinue reading “Fairs and Festivals, Ducks Unlimited and the New Orleans Jazz Club”
Musical Memories: A Stream of Consciousness
Stories about music lead to obscure references to Rodrigue paintings As we all know, music inspires nostalgia. I have no photograph of it, but in perhaps my earliest memory I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my dad, newly home from flying, singing along to Neil Diamond and roaring, “Hey, hey, hey, baContinue reading “Musical Memories: A Stream of Consciousness”
Musicians: A Series of Paintings
It’s spring in Louisiana, and that means seventy-degree weather, festivals, and live music. This weekend New Orleans hosts the French Quarter Festival, an annual free music festival throughout the oldest part of the city, and popular with both tourists and locals. Through the windows of our third floor bedroom in the Faubourg Marigny, we listenedContinue reading “Musicians: A Series of Paintings”