NOTES
The Artist's Work
Portraits from my Whiskey Dregs portrait and interview series.
St. Louis Cathedral, French Quarter, New Orleans
Here are some photos from my The Whiskey Dregs portrait and interview series. Some of these are yet to be posted but I wanted to share them in advance. I especially enjoy the how's and why's of an artists' process as well as those others who have inspired me in one way or another. I'm thankful to have found these people throughout New Orleans.
One Year in New Orleans 2016
Another year passes in New Orleans and I documented almost the whole damn thing. Here's a little bit of it.
We celebrated another year in New Orleans on July 20th. I'm a bit late. In 2016 we survived another Carnivale, enjoyed two Halloweens and made new friends. For this version of "One Year in New Orleans," I went for the straight documentation route. I considered including portraits I had made doing throughout the city but then decided that it didn't say much about my overall experience.
As you'll notice, I still have not gotten cemeteries out of my system. While there are less photos of these hallowed locations, I still couldn't help myself. I never can. Rather than creating three sequential posts, I decided to do one with a bunch of photos as an exercise to see what works together and what doesn't. It's for fun.
Considering the Dallas Shootings in a Bar with Strange Faces
In an ordinary bar in downtown Los Angeles with strangers. Photos from Santa Monica, Hollywood, Santa Clarita and the Los Angeles transit system.
Hollywood
It was the day after the Dallas shootings when eleven police officers were shot, five killed. I walked into a downtown dive bar in Los Angeles, sat on one of the barstools next to the gaming machine. I ordered a Blue Moon topped with a slice of orange and watched Maury Povich on the TV mouth revelations to astonished guests.
The room grew from a couple folks to a dozen or so, all apparently from different backgrounds. A Latin American woman juggled drink orders and come-ons from mens who were old enough to be her father. In the smattering of dialog that I picked up in that room, there was concern of the crisis in Dallas (the latest spear into the heart of America) as an old bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt ratted off his sexual conquests between here and Pasadena.
It was a hot day and I was drenched in sweat, trying to discern the streets of L.A., separating the cavernous, film reel decorated train stations between West Hollywood and the busy intersections of downtown. I was lost in a heap of thought, staring into the memory of gargantuan trees and the windless maze of train tunnels and streets that were not familiar to me.
We were all below, beneath the Mount Olympus of celebrities, recalling our misinformation of facts that too place during that dreadful week in America. Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile and those officers are closer to us in our struggle to adjust to the real facts of a crumbling society, and perched above it all, the faces of two presidential candidates with the audacity to lead a seemingly torn nation. But around me were flapping lips from different colored faces existing in harmony, drinking booze during a hot lunch hour. I knew that we were on the precipice of drastic action, a revolution on its way but when my chicken fingers and french fries arrived on a plate, nothing else mattered aside from the present moment.
