program that includes studio residencies
and four [art shop] components under one
roof in the middle of New Orleans’s city
center,” she says.
Louisiana ArtWorks provides New
Orleans with an opportunity to maintain
a craft heritage that has evolved over the
years. As Glidden notes, while there is
a significant contingent of glass and metal
artists in New Orleans, ceramic artists
are a bit less prevalent. But in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, New Orleans
was actually a major pottery-making cen-
ter. Newcomb Pottery, whose hallmark
motifs celebrated the life and landscape of
Louisiana and the Gulf South, was pro-
duced by students of Newcomb College,
the first women’s college in the South (now
part of Tulane University). Today, how-
ever, craft artists tend to be more inter-
ested in Newcomb Pottery’s history than
its aesthetics, says Sally Main, curator
of the Newcomb Art Gallery. “These are
obviously pieces of their time and period,”
she says. “I’m not sure there are a lot of
contemporary artists who are doing mag-
nolia designs, for instance.”
If there’s one art form where tradition
still rules, it’s the labor-intensive making
of Mardi Gras costumes. Darryl Montana,
Big Chief of the Yellow Pocahontas Mardi
Gras Indian tribe, spends an average
of 5,000 hours each year working on his
hand-sewn feathered and beaded suits.
That’s in addition to the work of about 10
assistants. Montana teaches at Xavier
University’s summer Mardi Gras Indian
Above: Carol Robinson
Gallery displays an
eclectic mix of two- and
three-dimensional art,
includingjoan Kay’s
fabric
Katrina
in front
of the stairs, Roddy
Caper’s blown glass
vase in the window and
James Tisdale’s ceramic
sculpture in corner.
Right:Joy Glidden,
director of Lousiana
Artworks, stands in
the 93,000-square-tbot
facility. This building
in the Warehouse Dis-
trict has provided mul-
titudes of artists with
studio space and shops
for metal, glass, ceram-
ics and printmaking.
076
ainerican craft
apr/may09
