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Our Cultural Economy
Story and photography by Stephen Faure
Throughout the two days of the Three Rivers Art Festival held every fall, thousands of people stroll North Columbia Street in downtown Covington. Some come out simply to enjoy the beautiful weather and scenery, others to browse for gifts, and scores come in search of specific works by their favorite artists. Just as the crowds grow each year, so has our community’s awareness of the amazing art found right in our backyard. The names of northshore area artists roll off our tongues with ease—Tami Curtis Ellis, Jim Seitz, Wes Koon, Annie Strack, Greg Arceneaux, Arless Day, Bonita Waesche, Jim Tweedy, Carol Hallock. The interest and familiarity spans across various venues; art lovers delight in the wonderful talent found locally, from watercolor to performance art.
This resurgence of interest has created a boon in our cultural industry, causing many now to focus on making the most of the northshore’s burgeoning cultural economy. Those in the industry say they are meeting the challenge of regaining what was lost after Hurricane Katrina by making the most of new-found cultural assets. The good news is that initiatives from state government, programs at the parish and local levels, and the efforts of volunteer organizations and private business are all combining to make for a very positive cultural economic outlook.
Statewide
The Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, through the office of Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, notes that the cultural economy accounts for 144,000 jobs in Louisiana and 7.6 percent of the state’s employment base. Prior to the 2005 storms, the cultural economy was the fastest-growing sector of the state’s economy.
After hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated South Louisiana in 2005, the state put together a comprehensive plan for economic recovery, the Louisiana Rebirth Plan. Two of the main goals of the plan are to rebuild Louisiana as a top tourism destination and make Louisiana’s cultural economy the engine of economic and social rebirth. CRT’s Louisiana Division of the Arts and the State Arts Council administer grant programs and work with the legislature to pass laws supportive of the cultural community.
State Constitutional Amendment 5 was one of the legislative efforts backed by the Arts Council. The amendment, passed in the November election, eliminated a stifling inventory tax levied on unsold artworks held by galleries on a commission basis from artists. Although rarely enforced in the past, New Orleans assessors for the districts, including the French Quarter and Warehouse districts, had begun to collect the tax. Artists were forced to pay taxes on work for which they had received no income. Thanks to the efforts of the CRT and the Arts Council, this and other initiatives will hopefully speed Louisiana’s cultural rebirth.
Several programs were implemented in response to the massive storm losses of the cultural community. In December 2005, the Cultural Economy Foundation announced its Relief Grant Program aimed at aiding individual artists, cultural economy small businesses and non-profits. More than 350 applications were received before the April 3, 2006 deadline, according to the Louisiana Cultural Assets Rescue website, itself an asset created after the storms that serves as an informational clearinghouse for those in the cultural resource community.
Closer to Home
St. Tammany Parish received a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts to establish a Community Cultural Plan. The plan’s goal is to revitalize and promote cultural life in St. Tammany Parish.
“Fifteen months after Katrina, we find the cultural community still in a day-to-day survival mode,” said Suzanne Parsons Stymiest, director of the parish’s Cultural and Governmental Affairs department, last November. “This project is to identify individual and organizational long-term needs.”
The funding has allowed the parish’s Cultural and Governmental Affairs department and the St. Tammany Arts Commission to bring in Buddy Palmer, executive director of the Acadiana Arts Council in Lafayette, as a consultant, and Lori Bennett of St. Tammany as project facilitator. In the end, the study will come up with a one-year plan to attain practical goals, and a five-year plan to establish a long-range strategic plan.
The first round of meetings was held this past November. Palmer, Bennett, Stymiest and St. Tammany Parish art coordinator Dána La Fonta met with officials from city governments in the parish and business interests, as well as individual artists and non-profit organizations. The meetings were an opportunity to identify the needs of each of these members of the cultural industry and discuss how they could be met. More meetings will be scheduled, and the project is set to wrap up this June. One common theme emerged in the discussions: Although St. Tammany has suffered much loss, the parish has much to gain in its increased population in general and by the relocation to the northshore by many New Orleans artists.
St. Tammany Art Association President Cathy Deano observed that although membership is strong, they lost almost all of their volunteers. On the other hand, Lacombe artist Annie Strack, a member of the St. Bernard Art Guild, noted the southshore group had only four members who returned to the devastated parish. Strack said the majority of the Guild’s members have relocated to St. Tammany and are looking for an organization in need of their energies.
Stymiest maintains a positive outlook for St. Tammany. “Our community has always been supportive of the arts, and even moreso post-Katrina. All of the cultural events held in St. Tammany this year have attracted record crowds,” she said. “People are hungry for a sense of community and find it in what the arts have to offer.”
Three Rivers Art Festival
The Covington Three Rivers Art Festival is one of the largest northshore cultural events. Artists’ booths line the length of Columbia Street, filled with paintings, prints, sculpture, photographs, craft works and even hand-crafted furniture for sale to the public. Vendors on the street sell food and drink; area shops, art galleries and restaurants are open, as well. There are music events and demonstrations throughout the day and a children’s discovery area with more music and hands-on activities. The festival, held annually, attracted 50,000 visitors to Covington in 2005.
Referring to the 2006 festival, which marked the event’s 10th anniversary, Karen Whiteside, event coordinator, says, “It was most definitely the best one ever. Although we don’t have a hard number [for 2006] yet, it was bigger than last year; I’d say at least 60,000 people. You could hardly move on the street on Sunday.”
Interest in Three Rivers 2006 exceeded expectations. Whiteside explains that, “We added a 5k run this year and were expecting about 100 participants—we got 221. This was also the first year where we had over 40 percent new artists. Feedback from the artists indicates they had good sales, and we’ve already gotten numerous requests for applications for next year.”
Brunner Gallery
Re-opening
Covington’s renowned Brunner Gallery re-opened during the 2006 Three Rivers Art Festival, on the anniversary of their debut nine years ago. The gallery closed after the hurricane, and the staff relocated to Brunner’s Baton Rouge location in the Shaw Center for the Arts. But Susan Brunner, who co-owns the gallery with her husband, artist Rick Brunner, says that Covington was still home. “The gallery was closed, but we never left Covington. We saw clients by appointment and displayed art in alternative spaces, [such as] The Dakota restaurant and Ristorante del Porto.”
Business was steady enough, even on this limited basis, to hasten Brunner Gallery’s return to Covington. “The re-opening of the gallery is saying that the St. Tammany community wants it, and we’ve had such a positive response. People are really excited,” she adds. “The quality of life is why people come to the northshore. What is quality of life without culture?”
Working in Baton Rouge after the storm, Susan was busy keeping track of her artists, some of whom had evacuated and/or whose homes and studios were damaged. As a member of the Louisiana Arts Council post-Katrina, she was also heavily involved with the planning and implementation of the Arts Council and Cultural and Economic Foundation’s Relief Grant program. She’s proud of that work, as well as the council’s other efforts to ensure cultural economic recovery and growth.
Susan says that being a part of the state’s efforts to recover and grow our cultural economy is important to Brunner Gallery. A primary concern is helping artists return to the area and keeping the ones presently here from leaving. “When we lose one artist, we lose a little bit of our culture,” she states. “The significance of the gallery’s return is that we represent 50 to 60 local, regional and national artists.” She believes local representation of artists from other areas positively impacts the local community.
Established artists from other parts of the country who find success in the northshore market share their experiences with the community back home. Word of our area’s recovery and renewed viability gets spread around in the industry, attracting more interest from artists and buyers who have not heard of or otherwise would be hesitant to do business on the northshore.
Arless Day, a Floridian artist represented locally by Brunner Gallery, was born and raised in Baton Rouge but has worked outside of Louisiana his entire career. Day is nationally recognized for his work combining found images, original photography and painted image elements in collages depicting imagined interior and exterior scenes. He began showing his work regularly in Louisiana after being encouraged to do so by Rick Gruber, director of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, which has some of Day’s work in its collection. Day attended the Three Rivers Festival and Brunner’s re-opening. “I was impressed by the people who came into the gallery [that] weekend. They were all highly educated in the arts.”
He’s also able to spread the word about the northshore market. “I had a show in Charlotte in September and gave a talk explaining where I am with my work. A number of my pieces are connected to my Baton Rouge experiences. People are curious about Louisiana, and I am able to express things connected to my past—and to the present, having visited there after the storm.” Gallery owners and collectors elsewhere frequently ask him for news of the area’s recovery.
Happy Anniversary!
Also celebrating an anniversary during the 2006 Three Rivers Festival was Danny Saladino, who closed his Royal Street gallery, New Horizon, following Katrina and opened gallery nu on Columbia Street a year ago. It’s a perfect example of the shift in the industry from the southshore to the northshore brought by the storm.
“My wife called and said ‘Happy anniversary’—I thought I had forgotten something big,” Saladino says, admitting that a year passed by very quickly. “It’s a good feeling to go from an anxiety-ridden opening to a smile on my face in one year.”
Saladino echoes Susan Brunner’s thoughts on the relationship between culture and quality of life on the northshore. “To be in Covington is a lifestyle choice,” he says, noting the new high-quality residential buildings going up in Covington that add a downtown living atmosphere and raise its potential as a destination for people from out of town. “The growing pains are worthwhile.”
Slidell
Kim Bergeron heads the City of Slidell’s Department of Cultural & Public Affairs and echoes a positive outlook for the cultural scene on that end of the parish. Recent events held by the department, such as the Bayou Jam and the Brown Bag Concert series in October, had record audiences. November’s Arts Evening was also a great success. “People need these events now,” Bergeron emphasizes. “They’re looking for an escape—financially, physically and emotionally.” The Bayou Jam concerts will return this spring, and a presentation of Tibetan culture is scheduled for March (see sidebar).
Hammond
In the west, the city of Hammond is home to many cultural assets, including the northshore’s premier performing arts facility, the Columbia Theatre for the Performing Arts. It serves as home base for the month-long Fanfare festival of the arts held each October, as well as many productions throughout the year that provide a significant economic impact on the area. Tonya Lowentritt, the facility’s associate director of marketing says, “Annually, Fanfare serves in excess of 40,000 patrons in our community and the entire region that Southeastern Louisiana University serves. Whether a matinee or an evening production, Columbia Theatre/Fanfare events drive patrons to local establishments for pre-show dinner, cocktails, or shopping.”
Downtown Hammond merchant Marsha Adams, owner of Bayou Booksellers, offers a perfect example of cultural events driving the economy. “The Columbia Theatre and Fanfare have a direct impact on my business. It pulls people in from out of town. On the days of shows, people come in and browse. If the show is an evening performance, the patrons return at a later date to shop. The Columbia Theatre is also a great landmark to be near. It makes it easy for shoppers to locate my store.”
Southeastern Louisiana University offers many cultural events that help drive Hammond’s cultural economy. The Downtown Development District sponsors events such as Starry November Night. The Hammond Regional Art Center, located across from the Columbia Theatre, holds monthly art exhibits and sponsors children’s art education programs.
Ponchatoula
Ponchatoula is doing its part to infuse the local cultural economy, as well. The town is home to the Louisiana Furniture Gallery. The name might suggest another discount furniture outlet, but don’t let it fool you. It’s the outlet for members of the Louisiana Furnishings Industry Association, a non-profit group which was started by the state as a means to promote the secondary forest products industry. The goal is to produce value-added products from Louisiana resources, rather than ship raw timber out of state to be made into furniture and returned here for sale.
Carol Siekkinen runs the gallery, which also presents works by Louisiana artists along with the locally made furniture and crafts. It is home to recent Inside Northside cover artist Bill Hemmerling, whose work draws in customers who discover the other artists and craftspeople featured there.
The gallery sold much furniture after the storm as people bought new homes and replaced lost items. Katrina also influenced the craft works in the gallery. Woodworker P.J. Hines turns extraordinary wooden bowls, vases and sculpture from trees knocked down by the storm. Bill Boesch, who lost his home and shop to Katrina, is back, building furniture from architectural materials salvaged from storm debris. “After the storm, it felt like we were in counseling,” Siekkinen says of the gallery’s friendly atmosphere. “Displaced people were looking for comfort. They would tell us they’d like to buy some art, but they didn’t have any walls. We’d give them a cup of coffee and listen.”
Silver Lining
The northshore’s cultural scene is in a state of positive change. New people, new money and new construction are driving demand for art. Communities still recovering from Katrina’s after-effects all report record attendance at cultural events. Joey France, director of the Hammond Regional Arts Center, summed it up perfectly. “People are looking for an outlet, for positive things to do. The arts are perfect for that; they are based on dreams.”
