​In early February New Orleans hosted the 2025 superbowl. What words come to mind when you think of a host? My first thought is that of a party host. I imagine someone inviting me into their space and they'll probably offer food, drink and music. Even if they are catering and not cooking for the event, I assume that the host will be the person responsible for and in control of what is offered. The next image I picture related to the word host is the word parasite. A parasite relates a bit differently to its host than a party goer is expected to behave towards their host. There is obviously a give and a take in both dynamics. While some parasites manage a symbiotic, harmless relationship to their hosts, most parasites exist at the expense of their hosts, depleting their essential life forces for their own existence. ​

   

    If you were to ask the majority of the middle and working class how their experience was this weekend they would say 'drained'. I know this because I am one of them and we exchanged weary knowing nods all weekend. Now, in many respects we are used to being drained, there is even a pleasure that comes with the exhaustion after an incredibly busy work day. But this particular pleasure exhaustion exists because through out the course of whatever we provided for others we also gain nourishment for ourselves to get through another day. In our context this obviously means dollars. The superbowl was hyped and sold to us as a great boon for our economy and sure to bring in plenty of dollars. We saw the crowds, we saw the spectacle, who saw the dollars? 

    Jackson Square, in the center of the French Quarter, is where I do business drawing portraits and selling paintings. I relate to this space as a vortex, like a living medieval square, where people come from all over and bring their along their hopes and fears and curiosity and hangovers. They all get mixed up with one another, with tarot readers, the catholic church, the church choir, the brass bands, the cops, the shop keepers, the lucky dog sellers, the street bums, the magicians, the shoe shine guys, everyone swirling around, trying to find a dollar to get through another day. For anyone walking into this it is obviously chaos, but for those of us who inhabit this space regularly it is more of an ecosystem. We have our internal riffs, but generally we manage to stay in check and create a space that on the best days is full of live music, art, top shelf people watching and beautiful random interactions between strangers that otherwise, simply don't happen. 

     America is an extremely alienated place. With an infrastructure designed around car travel and post-industrial building methods we have ended up with something somehow both homogenous and discomforting. I can't think of anyone I've met that feels particularly endeared to our miles and miles of repeating strip malls, gas stations and suburban sprawl. There has long been a joke that New Orleans isn't really America, but rather, the northern most caribbean town. This is because New Orleans has managed to exist and offer itself in all it's chaotic beauty despite every ceos wet dream of molding it into the perfect bite size, dollar shaped tourism package.  If you visited New orleans for the 2025 superbowl you did not see New orleans- you experienced a facsimile of the city. You got a sneak peak of what this place would be if corporate powers could somehow put your soul in a bottle and hire a focus group to sell it back to you.  

     So while we all stood around dazed as foot ball fans whooped it up, everyone munching free chips and soda (because we are even cheaper these days than bread and circuses) we basically watched the super rich exchange money back and forth. The small silver lining I personally experienced in all this was the compassion and absolute generosity of locals, of other middle and working class people. The off shift waiter who I spoke with at a bar and bought me a drink to commiserate. My fellow artists on Jackson Square who shared their resources when they themselves were limited. The shop keeper who came out to check on me and offer me a piece of chocolate after the Jesus freaks set up shop on top of us and screamed at us through amplified megaphones for hours. 

At the end of the day I would describe my experience of the superbowl is what I imagine it would be like to be a street artist in a low district during the hunger games (but- with the addition of the jesus freaks screaming directly in your face.) It felt like having a neighbor take over your house to throw a party and not really consulting or compensating you. To expect that the people that make this city run on it's ground level be able to live, to have access to affordable housing, health care, drinkable water and transportation doesn't seem like some pie in the sky idealism. Working the super bowl certainly wasn't worth the free bag of pizza flavored cheetos and I don't think any of us need a cheetos sponsored Tarot reader to divine that. 

 
October was my first real day back on Jackson Square in about 6 months. The above photos are: 
Top left-  Oct 2020 top right- April 2020 and bottom two- January 2020. 

​You can see pretty clearly how we went from this bustling open air market into an utterly empty public square. In all honesty, I still am not sure if or when my job is coming back, but it is something I have worked so hard toward and been so grateful for I am not going to give it up easily. I feel like I have spent the past 17 years pushing a ball, sometimes it would keep rolling, but often it would roll a bit and still to a stop. (The ball is me trying to make a living off of my art.) I would go and get another job and paint in the spare moments in between.

Finally in 2018 I literally won a lottery to get the Jackson Square permit and since then the ball was just rolling and rolling and I felt I had finally 'made it'. (oddly this also coincided with my complete severence in belief in the 'american dream' -because for all my hard work and persistence, what ultimately got me where I was trying to get was luck.) 
​
The past 6 months have been very strange, to have disconnected my painting practice from my income & sustinence. I talked to another painter yesterday, and we agreed we were able to work longer and more carefully on pieces.I am excited for the work that is growing slowly and will find a way to keep that process happening even if I do return to the pace of sales as before. There is something very special about intentional slowness in our society that has championed busyness as a sign of ones self worth.

Being out on the square was particularly odd, because it felt inherently changed and yet so very much the same. I am trying to hold onto some hope that this 'sameness' is more superficial and illusory. Because we *need* to change, in some very deep and fundamental ways, and I'm honestly terrified for us, that if we don't do it of our own accord it's going to happen some other way that could be very chaotic and frightening. 

I've put street portraits on indefinet hold since they require a lot of energy of presence and really just going out there right now takes a lot of energy. I hope we can face ourselves and move into a future that is unpredictable. 

I semi-impulsively signed up for a local two day painting workshop with Susan Hotard. I admire her paint handling- there is obvious care and intent in how she handles light and there is a sense of joy, almost care-freeness in her loose brush work. I had some apprehensions about attending the workshop- primarily $, time, and what the parking situation would be since the studio is in the city and I am devoid of paralell parking skills. Somehow all these things worked out well- a collector bought work online which basically covered the workshop for me and when I called to  ask what the parking situation looked like Susan told me I could call her and she would come and park for me herself! 
As it turned out there was plenty of space on the side roads. The workshop spanned two days, 8 hours a day. The time flew by. We had 2 different models, Susan did demos for us and talked a lot about her process. 
In contexts like these I find myself eager to follow instructions, I am aware that I can only get as much out as I put in (attention wise) and know I am not there to paint how I normally would. It is really interesting to take an experience that is common and regular for us and see it through someone elses eyes and how it takes on foreign qualities.
Also it is really heart warming to be in a room where people give a fuck about the same thing as you. Hearing people sigh about mid tones or get really excited about the highlight on a forehead is refreshing for me. Over time this is something I have come to love more and more about classical painting approaches, I am glad to not be working in a vaccuum where it's up to me to discover everything for the first time.  (Although- in another aspect- that is inevitable.)
My main take aways were:
-The use in making 'posters' -Basically reducing all shadows down to clear blocks out areas in the begining of a painting. And then keeping those light and shadow areas clearly distinguished.
A phrase susan said a number of times: 'It's easier to tame a wild horse than to bring a dead one back to life' 
(Which is painting means- go a bit wild and messy and chaotic at first, with passion, it's more possible to rein that in than to be overly cautious in the start and then try to liven it up toward the end.)