Category Archives: new orleans

oilpocalypse graffiti

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if you’ve been following my blog, then you know i’ve been posting a lot of t-shirt designs from mostly local designers in response to the bp gulf oil disaster. i started doing so originally because i was trying to come up with my own design, and was inspired by the work of some of my peers and also thought it was a great way to raise funds for various grassroots organizations involved in the response. (i only feature designers who are donating a portion of the proceeds to some responding organization.)

well i still haven’t managed to come up with a design i’m happy with (though i did make a rudimentary stencil for the back of my sierra club “clean it up” t-shirt so i could wear it to the protest in the french quarter two weekends ago, which you can view here), but other folks continue to churn out the t-shirts… and i will get back to featuring some more of them in a bit.

i’d like to switch gears just a little, while remaining on the design continuum, and feature some of the excellent and interesting graffiti that’s been sprouting up in response to the disaster. of course i’ve noticed some locally here in new orleans, but thanks to flickr, i’ve seen pieces from all over the gulf south and around the country.

this was the first i saw posted, and it’s by an artist named priest. he is often confused with – and obviously inspired by – banksy. priest is from alabama. i really like this one a lot. it expresses the anger we are all feeling down here, and is well-executed. take a look at that link to priest’s flickr and you’ll see he has a few others on the oil disaster theme… and i’m sure there are more to come.

this one just really hits the mark, by an artist called BonusSaves from kalamazoo, michigan. it’s quite brilliant – a northern gannett coated in oil. i love the concept.

this one, too, is very effective… and a really beautiful depiction of a sea turtle, swimming amidst the oil. this one is from key west, florida, and the photo is dated may 25th. i have no idea who the artist is. but it’s a gorgeous piece. props to the unknown artist. (and thanks to todd sanders for snapping the great pic!)

another one from florida, the wynwood art district in miami. again, don’t know who the artist is, but a nice piece. thanks to photographer justin helmick for snapping the shot on this very effective image.

this one is from down on grand isle larose, louisiana. it was painted before one of president obama’s visits down to grand isle recently. again, don’t know the artist but the artists are tattoo artists eric guidry and bobby pitre. this picture definitely speaks a multitude of words. this shot was not found on flickr but instead via the mainstream news online.

there are so many more, and i’m sure lots more coming as this disaster rages on with no end in sight. check out this gallery i made on flickr that includes many of the above plus others. and definitely leave me a message here if you’ve seen/snapped others wherever you are.

oilpocalypse t-shirt response pt. 3

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as the oilpocalypse rages on, i continue to be overwhelmed with anger, heartbreak, sadness and a feeling of helplessness as to what to do. i spend a considerable amount of time every day reading and reposting many online articles and first-hand accounts to my facebook and twitter streams, and i keep trying to hash out some designs for an eventual t-shirt or protest poster or something. but my census job keeps me so busy i don’t really have time to do much else.

tomorrow i will attend my first actual protest at 1pm in jackson square in the french quarter, which i hope will gather thousands to voice our collective outrage and sorrow. (i thought there was supposed to be one on thursday, but i scooted downtown at noon to find nothing going on anywhere – so i guess that one got canceled or something. sunday’s protest has been getting a lot of play in the media, though, so i think it will be big.)

since i still haven’t managed to come up with my own design that i like enough to want to print onto t-shirts, i’ll continue to spotlight those from my new orleans peers, particularly those who are donating a portion or all of the proceeds to organizations working on the response to the oil disaster.

(if you missed the first two posts, you can read them here and here.)

first, i can’t believe i forgot to mention this one earlier, from defend new orleans. the design pre-dates the oil disaster and was always intended to raise awareness of our diminishing wetlands, but now takes on a much more urgent message in regards to the oil disaster. 100% of the proceeds goes to the coalition to restore coastal louisiana and the gulf restoration network, two grassroots organizations that have been very effective and dedicated to preserving the coast and wetlands.

this second one is another design from my pal chris over at skip n’ whistle. their website is currently getting an overhaul, so no online ordering, but he says you can call the shop and order on the phone (504-862-5909) or just stop on in to 8123 Oak Street. i’m not sure where the proceeds are going for this one, but his other anti-bp shirt was benefiting the humane society, so perhaps it’s the same for this one.

this one is from my friend phillip whitmore of inexplicable confetti. according to his etsy shop, $5 from each sale goes to benefit the audubon society and their efforts to save the coast.

i’ve seen a LOT of these around town lately, and it took me a while to figure out who was making them. apparently it’s po-boy apparel. i don’t know anything about these folks, but this shirt sure is popular! according to their website, $2 of each shirt sold will go the “save the coast” coastal sustainablility program of the lake pontchartrain basin foundation (saveourlake.org).

and lastly, for now, from the good folks over at save nola, comes this “save our coast” design. according to their site, net proceeds from the purchase of this item will go to the coalition for coastal restoration. the design comes on this army green colored shirt as well as white t’s, in both men’s and women’s styles. i’ve seen a few of these around town already, too, and i’ve always appreciated that save nola was founded by locals to help out local organizations working to better new orleans and the region.

oh, and just as an update concerning fleurty girl’s rescue me t’s i mentioned in an earlier post, she recently tweeted the following: “so far raised $14,892 for @audubonzoo‘s louisiana marine mammal & sea turtle rescue program with our rescue me shirts!” that’s pretty fucking amazing! apparently she’s now offering some other accessories with the design on it too, so stop into her retail shop on oak street to get you some.

ok, i think that’s it for now. i know there are more – i keep seeing new ones all the time – and i’ll keep sharing them as i find them. i’m sure there will be some interesting ones at the protest tomorrow. now to get back to thinking about my own design…

bayou boogaloo!

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i love the bayou boogaloo. for all the years i was away in kentucky post-federal-flood, i was so sad i could never seem to make it here during memorial day weekend (too soon after jazzfest) so i could partake – either as a vendor or just a mid-citizen – in the boogaloo. i mean, come on – a music festival in my own neighborhood! (well i guess an argument could be made that jazzfest is also a music festival in my own neighborhood, but the boogaloo is more of a community, grassroots event, and even closer to where i live than the fairgrounds.) last year, i was FINALLY able to participate as a vendor, and it was glorious. so much fun, so many sales (thanks everyone!), and so great to see so many of my mid-city neighbors!

this year, i have been looking forward to the boogaloo for months. the new orleans craft mafia is again, like last year, offering a free t-shirt recycling workshop adjacent to the kid’s tent, in the “eco” area of the festival. (see the festival map below.) we’ll be out there both saturday and sunday – saturday from noon til 5pm, and sunday from 1-4pm – teaching people how to make tote bags, halter tops and other fun stuff out of old t-shirts, with a minimal amount of sewing. we have a good stash of donated t-shirts already, but we’re still accepting donations – just bring ’em on out to the fest and throw ’em in our bin. if you don’t have any t-shirts to work with, don’t worry – we got ya covered. oh, and at the end of the weekend, we’ll have a little fashion show at 5pm on sunday for you to strut your stuff with your new creations, too!

so yeah. i’ve been looking forward to it. but at the same time, freaking out… because a) i had a really successful jazzfest show at jen’s and sold a lot of t-shirts and signs – which is good, yay for money and sales, but also has left me with not as many of the signs and t-shirts i would like to have to sell at the boogaloo; and b) i started this census job that has been kicking my ass! it’s been a long time since i had any kind of “real” job (meaning worked a job outside of my own house), and it’s been a hard adjustment getting used to both that aspect as well as the strange start/stop nature of census work. for example, on any given day, i: have a daily meeting at 9am for a half hour; might go out to make rounds on a new block i’ve been assigned in the morning for a couple of hours; come home for lunch; spend an hour or so going over all the paperwork from the morning to make sure i have it all correct; go back out to a different block for 2nd or 3rd or 4th rounds, trying to find folks who weren’t home the first time; come home again to cool off and do paperwork; go back out in the early evening trying to catch folks coming home from work who i’m having a particularly hard time trying to find; come home, eat dinner, and maybe even go back out again after dinner before dark, for the pesky hard-to-find folks. and then spend more time on paperwork when i’m home. (and then collapse!)

and all of that only got me like 6-7 hours of actual on-the-clock work. but i’ve been working since 8:45am! so it’s been a big adjustment, to say the least. and has left me little time to think about things like ordering t-shirts to print (much less finding time to actually print them), cutting/sanding/painting wood for signs, and making clocks. and, to top it all off, though i did well at jazzfest at jen’s, it’s the only good market/sale i’ve had in months, so i’ve been begging/borrowing/stealing to pay my bills and am deeply in debt… and we’ve only gotten one paycheck so far from the census. so i didn’t even have the money to invest in buying t-shirts to print, or paint to make signs, etc. (much less the booth fee for vending at the boogaloo.)

so this all came to a head on saturday night, as fae and i were hanging out at home and i was surfing the internet, trying to find some wholesale outlet that actually had the style/color of t-shirts i wanted to order (all my usual outlets were sold out of at least one size and most of them several sizes) so i could order them in time for them to actually arrive in enough time to be able to print them… and i realized, what am i doing? i don’t even have the money to pay for these. nor do i have the money to pay for my booth. and even if i could scrape that up, there’s no guarantee that i’d make it back… just because i sold a lot of 70119 t-shirts last year at the boogaloo doesn’t mean i will this year. sales at markets has SUCKED overall so far in 2010, so why would the boogaloo be any different?

and, as an aside, i have been wracking my brain trying to come up with an oil disaster related design, which i thought might be the biggest seller due to the timing, but i haven’t even been able to find the time to work on coming up with that. (and even if i did, i’d be donating the proceeds to the gulf restoration network, so it wouldn’t be something i’d be making money off of. which i still really want to do, but, it was just one more piece of the puzzle that wasn’t coming together for me.)

so. all of a sudden, it came to me. i can’t do the boogaloo. i can’t afford it, i don’t have inventory, and i don’t have time to think about it. and the second i started thinking about not doing it, i instantly felt relief. i immediately posted something on my facebook page, and thought i was done with it. i slept better and the next few days i didn’t think anything about it. it was actually really nice. sad, but also stress-relieving.

and then yesterday, my friend rachelle offered to share her booth with me, which was so sweet. i thought about refusing, but then i figured if i don’t really need to spend any time making stuff and i just take what i’ve got and make as much fit as i can in part of rachelle’s booth, around her stuff, then it doesn’t have to be stressful and maybe i’ll still make a little money anyways. and i always have fun hanging out with rachelle at markets – we almost always set up next to each other. so thanks, rachelle.

so now i am once again doing the bayou boogaloo. and of course, i am going to try to make a few signs this week, maybe a few 70119 clocks. but i’ll only have a literal handful of t-shirts, and a weird assortment of clocks and signs and cufflinks… and that’s it. not a big effort. but at least i’ll be there.

hope to see y’all there!

oilpocalypse t-shirt response part 2

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ok, so here’s another oilpocalypse t-shirt roundup. at this point, 21 days into the crisis, lots of folks are hopping on the t-shirt-as-response bandwagon. of course, not everyone is donating proceeds to responding organizations, so do your due diligence when shopping.

first of all, i wanted to update that it appears dirty coast’s make wetlands not oil shirt is back up on the site, ready for your orders. once again, proceeds from this shirt will go to support the united commercial fishermans association. as soon as my first census paycheck is deposited into my account, i’ll be buying one of these.

second, my pal chris reams over at skip n’ whistle on oak street (uptown) finalized his shirt design only yesterday, with proceeds going to benefit the humane society.

back of shirt

front of shirt

and lastly, for now anyways, my favorite bp-response t-shirt i’ve seen anywhere does not come from a local t-shirt maker. it comes from west coast designers us versus them. it’s two-sided and is called “lube job,” which i love. i had just been brainstorming on ideas for a stencil and/or t-shirt and had the thought of doing a “fuck you, bp” design with the flower logo in shades of grey/black… but it looks like us versus them had the idea first – and no doubt executed it far better than i could. might just have to get me one of these, too. they say they are donating 50% of the proceeds to the clean-up effort and mention a few organizations in this rant on their site. it’s a little vague, but i trust that they will get the $ to some deserving organizations. it’s a great shirt. i can’t decide if i like it on white better (for contrast) or on black (for more of a tone-on-tone effect, and reinforcing the blackness of the oil itself). anyways, pre-ordering is now available – just click the pics above.

i’m sure there will be many many more shirts coming down the pike, but generally speaking, i’m mostly only interested in the local ones… unless it’s as fabulous as the one above. i’ll keep looking and letting you know when i find good stuff.

the oilpocalypse

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no, it’s not a “spill” or a “leak” when we’re at 4 million gallons of oil spewed into the gulf and counting…

ever since the deepwater horizon oil rig blew up on april 20th, and then sank on the 22nd, i’ve been trying not to spend too much time thinking about all the ways in which louisiana, the gulf coast, and the life of every person and creature contained therein is now screwed. jazz fest was a good distraction, but now that it’s over and the crisis only gets worse and worse, it’s hard to put it to the back of my mind anymore. also, it smells bad in new orleans whenever we get southerly winds. when that happens, every time you walk out of your house (and sometimes even inside your house), you are reminded again about this clusterfuck of a disaster.

i won’t go into all the latest updates or any more of a rant, cuz there are many others who are far more eloquent and have much more of a grasp of the details and scope of this disaster. if you want news, you can check nola.com’s coverage which is pretty decent. there’s no shortage of coverage in the news online, on tv/radio or in print. details are ever-changing about the status of the effort to contain the oil and where the slick in the gulf has spread. i am not a news reporter, so i will not attempt to cover that kind of territory.

i am, however, an artist and intermittent t-shirt designer. so what i would like to pass along is some of the early response from my more successful peers, all of whom are donating proceeds of their oilpocalypse-inspired designs to organizations helping with the disaster response.

the first shirt i saw was from shultzilla, called “built to spill” and featuring a play on the “drill baby drill” stupidity of certain boneheads on the far-right end of the political spectrum. i think it’s clever but it doesn’t resonate graphically with me personally, though i appreciate the visual and word play involved. he says he’s donating proceeds to some local organization involved in the response, but he hasn’t figured out which one yet. (he’s taking suggestions.)

the second one i saw was fleurty girl’s “rescue me” sea turtle shirt (above). the graphic is cute while still making its point very effectively; she printed them using soy inks, so as not to utilize any petroleum products; and she’s donating 100% of the profits to the Audubon Institute’s Louisiana Marine Mammal & Sea Turtle Rescue Program (LMMSTRP). i follow her on twitter, where i read that she got 500 pre-orders for the shirt almost immediately after putting up the web link, and she’s already sold 1000 of them, adding up to a $10,000 donation (so far) to LMMSTRP, which is frigging amazing. all in just a few days this week. i have to be honest – i haven’t always been the biggest fan of fleurty girl’s designs, graphically, but as a business she won me over during the whole “who dat” controversy and i was genuinely glad for her that it ended up being the best thing that could have happened to her business. and now this. this is pretty amazing, to have raised so much money so fast for such a great cause. it’s a wonderful example of how one person – or one very small business – can make a huge difference. and, well, validates the power of design via the t-shirt. i tip my squeegee to you and your entire team, lauren thom. keep up the good work!

but then thursday, i saw blake haney of dirty coast tweeting their new design. that day, it looked like this:

i LOVED the appropriation of the familiar tobasco hot sauce label logo to read “fiasco” (which several bloggers and tweeps have been using as their icons in the past few days). and i loved that it was a take-off of dirty coast‘s own make wetlands not war design that was popular post-katrina. (i always wanted to get one of the prints of this design to frame for my walls.) but then friday, as i was starting to write this blog entry, when i went to pull up all the reference pages including theirs, this is what i found:

so i guess something made them change it between thursday and friday. i still like it, though, despite the loss of the “fiasco” cleverness. and since i never got one of the “make wetlands not war” shirts, i’m happy to pick up one of these. this oil disaster isn’t going to go away anytime soon, and i’ve long been a critic of the oil industry and our continued drilling off the coast of louisiana (and elsewhere), so it won’t go out of fashion. dirty coast is donating proceeds of this design to the united commercial fisherman’s association, too, which makes me feel even better about indulging in a t-shirt purchase. (update: as of sunday afternoon, none of the now three variations i’ve seen of this design are available on the dirty coast website. i have an email into blake to find out what’s going on over there, but haven’t heard back. will update again when i know what the status is.)

i started writing this post on friday. yesterday, i decided to head down to the rally in lafayette square put on by the sierra club in response to the oil disaster. i heard about it via facebook but worried that the word hadn’t really gotten out about it. also, it was scheduled for a saturday, which in this town is never good for a protest/demonstration/rally. we woke up late yesterday after a big night of movie-watching (iron man 2) on friday night, so i didn’t actually arrive until about an hour into the event, which was scheduled for 12pm – 2pm.

these gals were standing out on st. charles across from gallier hall, getting motorists to honk in support. a handful of various environmental non-profits were set up, getting folks to sign petitions and handing out literature to educate people about what their organizations were doing in response to the disaster. there was a stage set up on the st. charles side, but i missed most of the music and all of the speakers. eventually, mardi gras indian big chief monk boudreaux did come on stage for a set.

i’m not really sure how much of a crowd was there earlier in the proceedings, but by the time i got there, it was dwindling. i’d say a hundred at the most. aside from the non-profit tables, there was this huge banner laid out on the ground and folks were asked to sign it with their thoughts on the disaster. the banner read “this is your crude awakening.” i didn’t really catch what they were going to do with the banner, or which group was sponsoring it. but i liked the idea, nonetheless.

i stuck around for about 45 minutes, long enough to hear the opening number by the big chief and to get my free “clean it up” t-shirt from the sierra club, after signing their petition.

simple. to the point. and i like the color. now if i can just get my noggin to thinking so i can come up with my own t-shirt design about all this. i feel like i’d rather go in a more positive direction, like the “save the coast,” “defend the coast,” or “save the wetlands,” but all i keep thinking is something along the lines of “when are we ever going to learn?” i’m mad and sad – heartbroken, really – at the same time, so i’m not really sure how to capture that in a t-shirt. but i’ll keep thinking.

unitasker blues…

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oh my god, i’m SO not good at multitasking. my girlfriend calls me a unitasker – and she’s right. my brain just works that way. when i have something i’m working on, i like finishing it entirely before i move on to the next. and more often than not, i have a hard time switching gears to do something else if the previous thing isn’t done. so i will own it – i’m a unitasker, yep.

this is relevant only to explain just how scattered i feel right now. i think i mentioned in previous posts that i got hired for a temporary job enumerating for the census. (that means i go door to door trying to count/get info on all the folks who didn’t turn in their census form by april 1st.) it pays really well, and i made it through the first week of training last week just fine. (it was kinda boring to have the training manual read verbatim to me, but that’s how the gov’t does it and i was happy to take their $17.50/hr to sit there and listen.) this week has been sort of on-the-job training in the field, as we’ve all been sent out to tackle our first assignments. strangely enough, i’m finding i actually kinda like the work. it’s a little like being a detective sometimes, and since they started me off in my own neighborhood, it’s been nice getting to meet and get to know some of my neighbors. also contrary to my expectations, i’ve learned i’m pretty good at this. i guess my ever-so-brief stint as a paralegal/investigator for the death penalty defense law firm a decade ago taught me a few handy skills after all.

so yeah, i like the census work ok but the hours have slowed down as the week has gone on, because the higher-ups want us all to finish our first assignments completely before giving us any more. quality control, i guess. many of us, including me, have just one or two locations in our assigned areas to complete (can’t find the folks that live there home, keep going back at all hours of the day/evening trying to find them but so far no luck), which ends up meaning that on a day like today, i only get to log in the 10-15 minutes it takes me to knock on each door and have no one answer. i’ll be lucky if i clock in 2 hours of work today, sadly, unless i get lucky later in the day and find them. (that ain’t gonna pay the bills!)

in the absence of census work today, though, i’m finally getting the time to start listening to all the cds that have been piling up on my desk for my music column that was due, of course, several days ago. so far, lots of interesting stuff, including the new kelis album, deluka (which sorta sounds like a uk version of von iva to me), and this really great queer ragtime/vaudeville artist named sabrina chap (who sounds just like ani difranco vocally on several cuts, but her music is more diverse). i hope i can get through the whole stack today and decide what i’ll be featuring, and maybe even start writing.

meanwhile, fae’s son charles is in town for a week visiting – he just arrived yesterday. they are out running errands right now, but, you know, i’m trying to make time to hang out and do stuff with them, too, while he’s here.

and have i mentioned? i have to finish watching about a dozen lesbian/feminist films so i can then sit down and program the film fest for michfest this summer. by the end of may. ugh.

sadly, my crafty life seems a bit on hold at the moment until i get better at managing my work flow and extraneous projects. i did really well at jen’s jazz fest art show, selling lots of t-shirts, several signs and one clock. better than last year, even, which makes me really happy and grateful (thanks again jen!). but it leaves me in a bit of a dilemma, feeling like i don’t really have a very good amount of stock to be heading into the bayou boogaloo on the 22nd-23rd, which is my next and only market i have scheduled before the crippling heat of summer hits us. so i have to find time to strategize about that: make some more clocks and signs, print some more t-shirts, maybe even come up with a new design or two? it’s just one of my biggest opportunities all year to sell a lot of crafty wares, so i’d hate to miss out. but how to find the time?

also, while i’m talking about the bayou boogaloo… some of you will remember that last year the new orleans craft mafia did a wildly successful t-shirt recycling/reconstructing workshop out at the boogaloo. we were mobbed with people excited to learn how to make tote bags, halter tops and skirts out of their old t-shirts, and we got a lot of great press from it, too. plus it was a lot of fun! so how could we not do it again this year? therefore, of course, we are. we’ll be out there selling our eco-friendly and recycled wares, and then also doing two days of free workshops – 12pm-5pm on saturday the 22nd and 1pm-4pm on sunday. we’re looking for volunteers who’d like to help us cut and sew and direct traffic, and we’re also looking for your old t-shirt donations! (now i’m not talking stained and holes-worn-through old t-shirts, but rather stuff you’re not wearing anymore that’s still in nice wearable shape that you’d like to get out of your house and perhaps onto someone else as a skirt or halter or bag!) t-shirt donations can be dropped off early to unique products (2038 magazine street) or whole foods uptown during biz hours or just bring it to the boogaloo – we’ll have a donation box out. spread the word!

so see – what’s a unitasker to do? i really need to be working on ALL these things at the same time, but wow is that hard for me. it’s a major accomplishment that i’ve even managed to update this blog today while doing something else – even if it is just listening to cds. (don’t even get me started on all the various blog posts i want to be writing, on topics ranging from the last few episodes of treme, which i finally found online to watch, to the new police chief in nola, and the goddamn oilpocalypse happening out in the gulf and currently washing up on louisiana’s shores.)

i guess i’ll just keep trucking along, doing the best i can. it’s all i can do.