New Orleans Art Market

Our last illustration was from the same shop.  Yes, you can buy a piano on Magazine Street.

The New Orleans Art Market is held on the last Saturday of every month in the Carrollton Park at the end of the St. Charles streetcar line.  Today, of course, is the last Saturday in September and we rode our bicycles to where Carrolton Avenue becomes South Carrollton Avenue, at the intersection with South Claiborne.  It's all very confusing unless you look at a map.  Carrollton Ave. has an excellent bike lane and it is well shaded and you can race the streetcar to the next stop.

The art market is quite extensive.  There were probably 150 artists exhibiting their work.  This isn't museum quality work but much of it is more satisfying than the things you'll find in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in the CBD.  While artists from all over Louisiana and southern Mississippi are invited to participate, locals predominate.

Noteworthy is how much of the art is locally proud.  New Orleanians love their city and they don't seem to be able to get enough of things that express their pride in place.  You can see it in the flags and banners hung outside homes and on the bumpers of cars.  You see tattoos of fleurs-de lis on every city block and it is safe to assume these stand for love of the Crescent City rather than alliance to the Bourbon monarchy.

I work with four women and they all wear fleur-de-lis earrings, a bauble as common as pennies on the sidewalk.  The buckles on my Puritan shoes have fleurs-de-lis on them.  I bought them in Boston to remind me every time I looked down that I would soon be living somewhere else, somewhere far away and more grand.