I have been very busy lately hunting down streetcars for Young Leadership Council‘s Streetcar Named Inspire project.  In addition to snapping pics of streetcars all around New Orleans, we have also been interviewing artists and blogging about all things NOLA streetcars.  Go here to read all about it!

So what have I been up to? I’ve been busy with a teething Sun (three teeth in one day!), buying patio furniture I just love (peanut shaped teak bench, coffee table and two chairs), making plans to visit with Katie and Pete at Parasol’s this afternoon (after attending SoMo‘s daughter’s birthday party).  Oh, and hunting streetcar art; click here to check out the awesome pieces I’ve been seeing pop up around town for YLC’s Streetcar Named Inspire project.

Pete and I attended the Sponsor Party for YLC’s A Streetcar Named Inspire last night.  We were there in an “official capacity” for our StreetcarArt.com site.  We interviewed artists, previewed the sketches, and meet the YLC folks involved.  To read the official account of the evening, click here.

We also drank a little wine and enjoyed such tunes as “Moon River” and “What a Wonderful World” played by a three piece jazz ensemble.  It was hosted at the Capital One bank—the old Hibernia bank—you know, the one with all the beautiful marble and gigantic chandeliers.  I had no idea the bank lets out the actually bank for functions.  It was weird but cool.  I am a sucker for the sound of my heels clicking on marble.

It is always a treat now for me to be able to steal away to an adult function without a baby attached to my hip.  I missed the little bug, but I truly enjoyed myself.  Oh, and the art did not disappoint.  We here in NOLA are in for quite the treat when these streetcars start popping up.

I’ve been sick with this sore throat thing all week–missing work, sleeping a lot.  So there’s really been nothing for me to write about.  Even though this week was CS’s birthday (and Sun started to say “dadadada” on his birthday) and Valentine’s Day (we were in bed by 9pm, but that was because we were both sick).

Tonight NOLA hosts the NBA All-Star game, and I will leave downtown before the traffic gets too bad.  Tomorrow, we will be celebrating CS’s birthday in style–at Pascal’s Manale.  Ah, something to look foward to posting!

And in closing, Pete and I have set up a new website, StreetcarArt.com, to showcase the YLC’s A Streetcar Named Inspire art project. We’ll have pictures as the streetcars are installed around town and hopefully will be getting more previews and artists’ comments to post. I’ll keep posting here about this project, but since we hope to have lots of pics and artists’ sketches and comments, we’ve decided to collect all of it neatly in its own site.  So go visit StreetcarArt.com.

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!