Sound and Vision Saturday

Plenty of delights for all of your senses this Saturday. After you pick up your free t-shirt for helping with the Highland neighborhood clean-up, fill the rest of the day with art.

Steven Soffer's Sound and Vision Show opens with a reception at 1 pm at Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, 3201 Centenary Blvd.

Also there's all day long Lead Belly Blues Festival at Festival Plaza in downtown Shreveport. Wrap up your night with Katfish and Kocktails at 6 pm at artspace.

Birthing New Music

The folks in Shreveport's Blanc et Noir Marching Society know a good thing when they hear it. They are terrific supporters of The Red and Black Brass Band from Grambling.

This week's show (February 25, 2009) on American Routes features young musicians in brass bands who are taking Louisiana's roots music into the 21st century.

Mardi Gras may be over for now but there's always next year. By joining Blanc et Noir Marching Society in Shreveport you can help this new/old form of marching band music continue to grow. Imagine that. Shreveport is a part of the vibrant Louisiana music scene and not just the Other Side.


Thank you Talbot Hopkins for the cool video of The Red and Black Brass Band in the 2009 Krewe of Highland parade.

minicine?

Creatives who understand the power of the Internet comprehend the next level of social marketing for their work.

The organizers of Monday's upcoming event at minicine? in downtown have a sweet grasp on this power. Locally they've got coverage on their own website and on Trudeau's. The event is and has been touring all over the US and Canada. To follow the progress check out its blog Channeling an invocation of spectral bodies and queer spirits.

We Googled some of the artists involved and discovered this Vanesssa Renwick and Elliot Montague and Aay Preston-Myint.

Give the Gift of Local Art

Ralph and Alice started the market earlier this year. It was even featured on Trudeau's blog and can be found on the listed on the Shreveport Bossier Fun guide.

P.S. The sold out Christmas in the Sky is Saturday also. Many times art from local artists can be found there but that money goes to SRAC. The money you spend at the market goes directly to the artist.

P.P.S. Where would you be more likely to find the next Clementine Hunter, M.C. "Five Cent" Jones or Howard Finster? Downtown. Open air. Bring cash. Make deals. Go home happy and warm and fuzzy and do a winter dance around the cheerful glow of your newly acquired piece of art.

SB Magazine Photo Gallery

Back in October we encouraged folks to enter the annual SB Magazine Photo Contest. It's in their December 08 issue now on the stands (the Haynesville Shale's on the cover). They've put more photos on their website.

December on the Red

We love the drawing! It warms us down to our freezing crawfish pincers when we see SB Land art.

December on the Red started in October and wraps up in January when the Toy Train Extravaganza closes its run at Sci-Port. Get ready for tasty holiday treats like Christmas in the Sky and the Sugar Plum Fairy Luncheon. If you missed Rockets over the Red you'll want to dive to Oil City this weekend for the Christmas on Caddo Fireworks Festival. Eggnog for everyone...if your not driving you can even make it a frozen eggnog daquiri from Tony's Discount Beverage on Line Avenue.

Bossier City Best for Kids?

Business Week says Bossier City is the best place to raise you kids in Louisiana. We quote it "is across the Red River from Shreveport." And that is why we had to draw this cartoon.

Welcome to Shreveport

We get all giddy inside when people on our screens, movie, television or computer, say the word "Shreveport." Rob Senska and Mindy Bledsoe say it bunches in their new web series, Welcome to Shreveport. The show is about a couple trying to break into the entertainment industry. Tune in and see how many SB Land sites you recognize.

Highland Jazz and Blues Festival

November 15 is the date for this year's Highland Jazz and Blues Festival. Like Trudeau recommends bring a blanket or chair.

The one day Saturday fest is packed with live music and local visual artists vending their wares.

South Highlands Walk

Longleaf Forest Song

I.
October falls to the ground
Red is a leaf is a dress
Flimsy. Cheap. Tight.
Wear ‘til someone tears it off
On Halloween costume backless
But tonight modest leather Birkenstocks

II.
The forest primeval?
Longleaf’s a road in the city
Home of the happy dog
It is the click of the clip on leash

III.
Scarlet leaved tree wish I knew your name
This far South most turn brown or not at all
Sun muscles out one blazing farewell
Time to circle back to the gold van
Before spiders fall out of trees
Waving thin crotchety legs
To work down tire swing chains

Kathryn Usher
October 28, 2008

Centenary College's Bruce Allen to Perform Live

If the idea of locally grown produce isn't enough to make you load up the station wagon and head down to the Shreveport Fall Farmers' Market Saturday morning how about some performance art (sorta...work with us we're getting our creative on...)? Who needs Martha Stewart when you've got Bruce Allen to show you how to slice and dice your jack-o-lantern? Allen chairs the art department at Centenary College.

You can make your entire Saturday about fair trade and sustainability if you shop the fall market and then swing by the The Greater Gift Market in Highland.

Scribble This

Big culture comes to town this weekend with the annual arrival of The Red River Revel. How scary is it to be an artist-vendor selling your work while folks walk by shouting out critiques?

Why not just offer the lookers a marker and let them just scrabble all over your work? That's what Bette Kauffman's done with her Waterline interactive photo exhibit in artspace. It hangs until October 18.


P.S. We confess. We're the ones who tagged "700 Billion Dollar Bailout Socialism Works in America For the Rich Not For the Middle Class or the Poor or New Orleans Save U.S.!!"

Support Your Local Artists

Two of the best people Hurricane Katrina blew up from the Gulf Coast are Su Stella and Curt Harville. The artists now have a live work space in Highland where they do blacksmithing, cold and hot glass work, metal work, painting, and more.

This fall they will be vending, teaching and demonstrating their different disciplines at venues as varied as the Barnwell Memorial Garden and Art Center, LSUS Pioner Heritage Center Pioneer Day and the Highland Jazz and Blues Fest at Columbia Park.

You can purchase their jewelry in the artspace giftshop in downtown (by the way, artspace will be hopping Friday night with the opening of the Clyde Connell retrospective).

For more information on art events with Su and Curt
228-263-2333 Su 318-525-2164 Curt
OurFireflyRanch@hotmail.com
Visit their online store at etsy.

Picture of the Day

Absodogly
Originally uploaded by trudeau.

Thank you to Talbot from Trudeau for letting us use Absodogly as our Picture of the Day .

We know your household is buzzing with prep for the Clyde Connell Show at artspace in September.

Buy Art This Saturday

What are you doing with all your Haynesville Shale money? You should be collecting the art of the local artists. One of the coolest things about living in Houston were all the folks collecting work by artists in that area. And also nifty were the stories the local media did on the collectors and the artists they collected. Here's a recent story about a San Antonio law firm and its collection of affordable art from that area.

This Saturday you have a chance to see some of the funkiest art being produced in our region. It's the third month for the Art-La-Tex Art/Show Market. The name has been evolving but the location is the same. Already this local effort has been covered by Red River Radio and Louisiana Road Trips Magazine.

Grass roots artists' markets like this one started by Ralph Cody can be found all over the world. Melbourne's Rose St. Artists' Market. Austin has a market. In New Orleans you'll find Bywater Art Market.

Saturday August 9 (and every second Saturday of the month)
10 AM – 6 PM
600 Common Street
Free to artists and the public. Artists need to bring their own displays.
Ralph Cody 318 458-5064 or re_cdy@yahoo.com

Plain Folk Houses - Backside

RRBJ intended to make it to BOTB 2008 but just a few steps away from The Shell the light diverted us. We filled our digital camera with images of the backside of a block of houses. Difficult to fathom a campus of the leisure class, with the time, money, and energy to pursue higher forms of education, is just across the street from where these were taken.

It is ironic that some of the papers of Jack London, with his need to escape extreme poverty, are housed at Centenary College. From the rear, these homes radiated decay. You'd never know this was the 100 block of Wilkinson, just across the street from the college's gravel parking lot #15.

Jon Schleuss has supah-dupah coverage on BOTB 2008 at the KSCL Blog.
We'd planned on posting this a couple of days ago but the RRBJ offices have been suffering with a Comcast Internet outage.

Creative Class

One of the ways we amuse ourselves around the RRBJ offices is to click through sites like Gothamist and Austinist. We got all tingly when we stumbled across the above post featuring the picture of Lee Eddy.

Too bad this child had to leave Shreveport to pursue her dreams. We need our Lees to be able to live, work and play in SB Land. Perhaps it's time to start a telethon for the funds to maintain a thrive-a-licious creative class over here by da Red River.

Creative class is a term mentioned in Phillip A. Rozeman's letter published in The Shreveport Times. Here's the link to that letter. Don't know why we're putting it up. The Times will dead the link in a couple of weeks and you'll get an error message. Maybe the place to start with the creative class push is to get The Times to keep their links active.

Hope Your Family Doesn't Drive You Crazy in This Merry Season

Even Movie Blog Boy is doing the family thing today. Trudeau has an idea for a fun family project. Since RRBJ ate Christmas dinner yesterday, we'll brunch it today, complete with Noma's jam on our instant waffles.

Community + Centenary College

Students in Centenary College's Art 295: Introduction to Community-Based Arts probably experienced one of the most hands on classes of their academic careers. Instructor Leia Lewis and her class actively engaged the community of Highland from the start of the creation of the The Highland Spirit House Project.

Early in the semester KSCL interviewed Lewis and Dr. Mat Schwarzman about community based arts projects.

The local project drew much of its inspiration from New Orleans artist John Scott. Scott was awarded a MacArthur Genius Award in 1992. He spent his life transforming metal and wood into visual stories about black culture in New Orleans. One of his grandest works is the huge public sculpture Spirit House. It was funded through the Percent for Art Program. For more examples of Scott's work click here.

A celebration of all the hard work done by students and community members was held Sunday at Meadows Museum. It will be interesting to watch the progress of this community and college collaboration.

Glass Jewelry

Su Stella's a talented Highland artist who will be selling her work at the Highland Jazz and Blues Festival this Saturday. She is also a part of the Shreveport Regional Art Council's Deck the Halls show. Su shares a home and studio with blacksmith Curt Harville.

Trudeau has the latest on the Saturday's doings and memories from last year's festival on his faces blog. Stephanie Netherton's covered this year's festival in today's Shreveport Times in a nice article with the reminder to tote some chairs or blankets so you'll have a place to sit.