Just 15 miles downriver from New Orleans, Poydras, LA in St. Bernard Parish hosts two art exhibitions in conjunction with Prospect.3 that consider Louisiana’s relationship to water, political history, and the petrochemical industry. With just enough distance to put you in a typically beautiful Louisiana landscape and not quite enough to zap your whole day with car travel time, visiting these exhibitions may just be the perfect way to spend your Sunday morning.
Joining “Crevasse 22” a sculptural exhibition that opened in late October, The Creative Alliance of New Orleans (CANO) and the Torres-Burns Foundation are set to open the “River House,” a new arts space, which will serve as an indoor gallery located between the site of the 1922 Mississippi River levee break and a bayou created by consequent flooding.
The first exhibition at the new space opens on December 20th, 2014 with a holiday brunch from 12:00pm until 2:00pm at 8122 Saro Lane. The visual arts exhibition, a grouping of landscapes and waterscapes by local and regional artists, is a companion to CANO’s “Crevasse 22,” a temporary sculpture exhibition on the same property.
The exhibition, “Land-Scapes: Photography, Drawings, and Paintings,” will include works by New Orleans Artists, including Errol Baron, Ron Bechet, Henry Butler, Sandra Russell Clark, Tina Freeman, Gabrielle Gaspard, Gary Cecchine, Jillian Gibson, William Guion, Simon Gunning, Diego Larguia, Robert MacDonald, Robert Perrin, Sandra Buring Pulitzer, Rudolf Karl Radlinger, Richard Sexton, and Jane Randolph Wipple.
The exhibition is designed to reflect the underlying environmental theme of the Crevasse 22 Sculpture Exhibition, exploring both natural and man-made destruction of land and water, regrowth, and resilient beauty. CANO hopes the exhibitions will underscore awareness of the environmental threats and the natural beauty of our region and St. Bernard Parish.
“Many people think of St. Bernard Parish as the highway that runs through it, unaware of the natural beauty of the land beyond the highway that includes bayous, graceful oak trees, and abundant bird life and fisheries that support a unique cultural legacy spawned by the Islenos people who came from the Canary Islands to settle the area in the 18th century,” said Jeanne Nathan, Executive Director of CANO, who curated and produced the exhibitions.
The Torres-Burns Foundation sponsored the exhibitions on land owned by Sidney Torres and Roberta Burns that surrounds a bayou created by the natural crevasse of 1922 and hosts oak alleys and cattails as well as a few curious pelicans.
The sculptures, photographs and paintings also interpret the dangers of flooding, the impending dangers from the loss of wetlands, and the importance of treasuring and protecting the region’s natural resources.
The Crevasse 22 and Land-Scapes shows comprise one of three Prospect 3+ sites at which CANO is presenting the work of New Orleans artists during Prospect 3. Works are also on view at the Myrtle Banks Building at 1307 O.C. Haley Boulevard, and the St. Maurice Church in the Lower 9th Ward.