Art

I have always adored animals, even from a young age. When I was a kid I had a “big box of animals” which consisted of hundreds of plastic animal figurines. Lions and tigers, and hippos all mixed in with my farm animals, and my very impressive ape collection. However, it was the pink rhino that was my favorite. I would hunt and search through the box looking for him and when I found him it was like finding treasure. A treasure, because he wasn’t just an ordinary plastic animal figurine.

Besides raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, flowers are a few of my favorite things; dubbed, by yours truly, as nature’s labor of love. When the dog bites or the bee stings, it is flowers that we use to pull us up out of the dumps and help us to “get it together Mary”, another saying dubbed by yours truly.

The best part about growing up in small town rural Louisiana was plotting to leave as soon as I could. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great childhood. I had my cousins as my best friends, my Maw Maw Toni’s home cooking, I went to private school, took art lessons, slept late, and didn’t have a care in the world. Life was perfect, except that it was there in that small town. I would sit in my bedroom and wonder what the rest of the world was like. I would imagine joining African safaris in the summer. In the winter, I envisioned myself surrounded by snow—anywhere.

New Orleans’ multi-faceted culture is celebrated and world-renowned, yet the city’s live stage arts and other festivities certainly merit more recognition as well.

Besides festivals and spur-of-the-moment street parades and other celebrations – likely to pop-up right before your eyes – the city’s theatre and live performance community is vibrant and very much a part of everything New Orleans.

For example, there’s the long-standing tradition of strolling the Arts District in your best dress-whites the first Saturday in August on White Linen Night.