Go see Prospect 1 Before it's Too Late

I, too, am guilty of not taking advantage of all the cultural opportunities available to me. On account of not applying myself. Preferring what's comfortable to what's enriching and provoking. Prospect 1 has been free all this time, and still, until today, I never made it out! And worst of all, I'm a blogger! (Wait, please don't take that out of context.) I could have been advertising the city through detailed blog posts, luring the northeasterners down here faster than the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

Instead, I behaved just like everybody else, and waited until the last minute when the guilt began to set in, I mean how could I just hang out on facebook when history was being made right before my eyes, what am I gonna tell my grandchildren? "So, like, grandma, the first international biennial art exhibition ever held in the United States happened right in New Orleans, in your town, that you loved and rooted for, and you were too lazy to go check it out? That's some ignorant shit, grandma." What am I going to say back? "Times were different then. We had the internet. We had alcohol." So, I crammed, like English class in college. And every other binge we undertake to redeem all those wasted hours we bumbled around, incapable of making "better lifestyle choices."

So, today! I went to the CAC, the Louisiana Mint, the Colton School, Brad Pitt's Make it Right houses, and K.K. Projects' latest installations. Some of those sites aren't even technically part of Prospect One, but hey, art is art.

I enjoyed some of what I saw. I didn't so much dislike anything as I did shrug it off "well that's kinda dumb" and walk on. But there were a few works that naturally piqued my interest. They don't let you take pictures, but I managed to sneak this one. (Hence its hasty composition.)



At the CAC:  Cuban mixed-media artist Luis Cruz Azaceta put together this installation piece "Museum Plans," consisting of Katrina-inspired vessels assembled on a wooden board. I'm not sure whether the objects were all "found objects" from the storm, but they certainly look so: kitsch hurled from your grandma's basement (if we had basements...) to slime around the stuff of everyday.  Nearly each duct-taped bundle is composite of two or more unrelated items:  a child's badminton racquet stuffed in an empty wine bottle like a flower in a vase; a bicycle wheel balanced on a brick, with an empty plastic water bottle wedged in between the axle and spokes; a birdhouse attached to a liter soda bottle.  A Kentwood water jug with paper stuffed in its neck conjures the idea of a message in a bottle, a cry for help from across a distance of water. Each object functions as a holding space, meaning that remnants can be artifacts of devastation, containing the memory of loss.

I was moved by "Window and Ladder--Too Late for Help," by Argentine artist Leandro Elrich.  You can find it in the Lower 9th Ward on Deslonde Street, in a field next to the new Common Ground Relief center. It's just a block from Brad Pitt's Make it Right Foundation modern shotguns, and less than a football field away from the Industrial Canal levee, the one that broke a tidal wave through the neighborhood.


Its metal ladder is firmly fixed in the ground, apparently rooted by an "underground hidden metal structure." It leads up to a window in a lost puzzle piece of fiberglass brick wall, which appears to be dangling in mid-air, but is somehow held up by the ladder. Like viewers of a play, we are only given the minimum needed to conjure up setting. The piece is so powerful because of its ambivalence. A ladder leading up to an open window can be a symbol of upward mobility, vision, and escape; but the subtitle, "Too Late for Help," takes away that hopefulness and replaces it with regret.

In St. Roch neighborhood, on N. Villere St. between Arts St. and Music St., Kirsha Kaechele's shotguns are decorated anew...since the last time I wandered along the block. There's a house that's been turned into a safe, with a giant combination lock (think Duck Tales) instead of a door, and "fundred dollar bills" lining the walls. Chris Rose recently wrote about it. We decorated our own:



That's Linda the dog, at the top. Likeness sketched by Dave Schlussman.

Prospect 1 ends this Sunday, so get ya asses movin'...

Though Mardi Gras remains the best free show there is...