The Young Leadership Council is currently working on its latest community art project:

The project will place 200 (!) streetcar‐shaped custom creations developed by local artists and sponsored by businesses throughout NOLA as part of YLC’s ongoing mission to inspire hope throughout the city. The streetcars will soon be placed around the city, and they will grace NOLA until early 2009 when they will be sold at auction. Proceeds from the sale of the streetcars will go to a yet‐undetermined public project.

The streetcars, designed by Steve Ulness of Mardi Gras Decorators, are to be approximately 6’ by 2’ and made of fiberglass. Here’s a picture of one “naked” at the recent unveiling:

Unlike YLC’s Festival of Fins project, the only requirement for the artists of A Streetcar Named Inspire is that design themes answer the question, “What inspires you about New Orleans?” I get a wee misty eyed just thinking about what we’ll see in these pieces.

Here’s a sample of what we will see:

This is the sketch of Dennis Procopio’s streetcar, entitled “Hands Across the Water.” Here’s some of what he has to say about his design:

Looking at the stark white model streetcar, which is about 6′ long, I thought immediately of a casket. Somewhere in my mind I decided I’d incorporate a face and the insinuation of a body on the top along with the hands, perhaps to allude to a wake. But I left that idea open.

The next idea was that I would cover the windows and doors with plywood. As I already work on plywood this wasn’t hard to come up with. I realized that this would officially begin to make the piece a hurricane Katrina statement, so I decided that somewhere I would include the spray-painted “X” that we all came home to discover on all of our homes. This governmental graffiti is one of the more poignant symbols now associated with this disaster, as it tells who searched the house and the date of the search, the number of dead bodies, the number of dead animals, and any other information such as “dog seen under house.” In fact, plywood, garage doors, brick walls, discarded refrigerators . . . these all became community bulletins boards for the survivors. . . .

I decided that to cover ALL of the pieces of plywood with text and search-party X’s would be too much. I opted instead to do portraits. No one in particular, just faces of people you might see here. This would insinuate people sitting as passengers in the car, only there would be something slightly creepy about having them painted on wood to represent would-be passengers. Then the idea of Fayum Portraits popped into my head. In Egypt, signifying Greco-Roman influence, Fayum portraits were the faces of the deceased painted onto wooden panels which would be affixed to the sarcophagi. . . .

I then had the idea to have a water-line. One of the other creepy things about the neighborhoods we gutted houses in were the water-lines. These were mud-colored racing stripes running horizontally across the faces of all the houses showing where the water level had been. There were usually at least three distinct lines. . . one at or above the door jamb, one just under it and one just under that. For design reasons I decided to make actually water rather than the line where the water would have been. This solved a problem about color. Anything below this line would be a sort of aqua green, above it a darkish blue.

Procopio’s piece has a lot more symbolism in it than described here. And the other 199 artists also have their own stories to tell of what inspires them about NOLA.

Things are just getting geared up for this project, and I am very excited to start seeing the works popping up around town. And like with the Fore!kids Fleur de Lis project, Pete, Captain Sarcastic and I will be hitting the streets to get pictures of every last one of the pieces! As I learn of placements or other stories behind the pieces, I will post them. So stayed tuned. And keep your eyes on the look-out for these inspirational and uniquely-NOLA pieces of art.

If you are interested in being a part of the design process or in sponsoring a streetcar, please contact one of the project leaders, Amy Catalanotto, Michael Atwater or Jude Boudreaux, at streetcars@youngleadershipcouncil.com and tell them Nola sent you!