Anyone who is a regular reader of this blog knows that I am fascinated by the homes of artists in general, and those of New Orleans  artists in particular. To me, artists are a very special breed of people:  they are  visually motivated, driven to express their often unique, but always sensitive inner motivations, and  and all have distinct personal styles.

Artists tend to create surroundings for themselves which nurture their artistic souls as well as their highly tuned sense of the form ,color, composition and light; and this is very much the case with the studio and sanctuary of the very gifted artist, my friend, Raine Bedsole.

Located in the French Quarter, this Creole townhouse is truly a retreat where Raine goes to escape the day-to-day and to create her very personal works of art. It is a place that she finds at once peaceful and energizing. Filled with her own art as well as pieces by a wide array of other talented artists, this place is an architectural expression of the artist who created it and is inspired by it.(Notice the female figure between the two sets of french doors.)

Since it serves primarily as a studio and getaway, the Bedsole family actually lives in another house uptown, it is truly a distillation of those inspirations which live in this artist's soul. It is a place that honors both art and history, personal and universal.

Raine's father, Palmer Bedsole originally purchased the property as a vacation home to stay in when visiting New Orleans, and Raine used part of the downstairs as her studio. The house was very dear to both Raine and her father, and since he passed away two years ago, it has become even more important to her, since she feels that it is her connection to him.

On the mantle in her bedroom, Raine has created a memorial to her father where she has lovingly placed articles which remind her of him and keep him close. Old photos, things from his pockets, his college class ring, and most importantly his boots are composed by the artist's loving hands.

One central image which frequently occurs in Raine's work is an abstract female figure, sometimes on canvas or wood, and sometimes as a free-standing cut-out, as seen in the picture above.

This figure, sometimes autobiographic, always iconic, appears frequently throughout this house. I love this because it says, in a  very subtle but inviting way that the artist, her soul and her personality really inhabit this space on both a real and spiritual level.

In the picture below, Raine addresses  the blue and white tiles surrounding the fireplace with a collection of blue and white china and uses some white bowls to accentuate the her white boat  sculpture in the center of the bottom shelf. Notice the female figure on the stairway, blue and white stripes on top, yellow and white on bottom which draws it into the composition of the room and simultaneously gives an invitation to go up the stairs.

The beautiful french chair with the handpainted seat is from my shop, and in my opinion, looks wonderful in this room.

In the article in Louisiana Homes and Gardens from which these pictures were taken, Raine describes her approach to decorating this space, "There is more artwork than furniture. The art is more important to me. I have the absolute necessities, but I like them to reflect the time frame of the house."  The above photo shows Raine's gift for composition: a piece by New Orleans artist Jeff Cook is accompanied by a framed piece and one of  Raine's own boat sculptures.

This house and its tropical ancient setting are evocative of the themes prevalent in Raine's artwork: the passage of time and one's journey through it, the relics of history which survive the procession of time, the force and serenity of nature. Raine's words, "It's such an oasis, here in the middle of this crazy French Quarter. It is peaceful and quiet. The courtyard is so serene and secluded. I like the energy in the French Quarter, the unexpected nature of every day there. It's like living in a hallucination, the way history lives in the texture of the buildings."

Raine's artwork, in my opinion, is most always about a journey. Her female figures always seem like they are passing through something, either time or space or both.

Though the composition of these paintings are deceptively simple, their execution is exquisitely complex. In most cases, the artist layers or collages old photos, documents, antique letters and natural materials such as twigs or leaves onto her paintings.

This recurring female figure is to me, the definition of woman. The figure is at once strong and delicate. Timeless and in the now. Created from and a creature of nature. Mysterious and specific. On life's journey.

Approaching and approachable. A stoic creature of delicate beauty.

 

In many ways, Raine's paintings of the female figure seem like depictions of "living in a hallucination," much as she describes life in the French Quarter. Each piece is layered with color, texture and historical reference, and in most cases she uses colors and elements from nature.

I love this piece, simply entitled "Twig Figure,"  in its expression of  the mother. The female, constructed of twigs, superimposed over a composition of children's drawings and schoolwork speaks volumes  on the progression of time that every mother feels as her children grow up.

The boat is another form Raine utilizes to express the passage of time and the delicate nature of life. Here she is with some of her amazing boats.

For Raine, her boats are symbols of transcendence. She says they  reflect personal journeys.

Made of delicate materials such as twigs, paper, fragments of nature or found objects; they are meant to hover in the air rather than float on the water.

These boats are the opposite of what a boat is known to be. Delicate, ethereal,consisting of layers of materials: old text, netting, paper, they are unmistakably made for journeys of the soul, the mind, the spirit, and not through the water. These boats many of them the size of actual boats, are intended to fly through time, through history, through experiences.

These boats are symbols for transformation, and like boats of Egyptian myth, they are meant to bring the soul from this world into the next.

And now, in a life in which we have experienced Hurricane Katrina, the symbolic boat is even more powerful. Boats hanging in the air are now reminiscent of boats left hanging in trees following the flood waters' recession. Literally, we have been transformed from one way of life to the next.

For the first Prospect 1 citywide celebration of art addressing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Raine Bedsole created a piece called "Remembering Boat."

Conceived of by Raine and fabricated  by Jack Kelleher, this boat is an open steel frame which floats above the water. The words of a poem by Tony Fitzpatrick have been cut into the steel slats. The poem reads:

water has nothing to do with luck
and everything to do with chance
water is the music of consequence

the water is hungry… the water wants

 

 

Though Raine has used the boat form in her work long before the storm, her themes of the delicate nature of life and transcendence were almost prescient of things to come. Her boats, powerful at their conception, speak volumes about the ephemeral quality of life in a city where the forces of nature make even the strongest structures seem flimsy and where the water is apt to come rushing in at any time.

We are now a city living a life on the other side.  Like spiritual passengers these delicate boats, we are trancendent. We are now and forever will be "since the storm."

In addition to the Prospect 1 installation, Raine's also exhibits her work at Gallery Bienvenu, and she has an upcoming show this May, and if I were you, I wouldn't miss it.

On February 10th, The Spanish Custom House, the oldest residence on Bayou St. John will be sold at auction to the highest bidder and there is no minimum asking price. The house was constructed around 1784 and has been privately owned ever since.

Currently owned by the De Matteo family, they are auctioning it through the Neal Auction Company in hopes that "the right person gets the house-a Brad Pitt type or a historian type," according to Remi De Matteo.

This is a great opportunity for someone who is truly sensitive to the value and importance of preserving our heritage to own and restore an architectural treasure. Remi DeMatteo says, "This could truly be one of the jewels of the city.", and he is right.

Built as a residence in 1794, an inscription on a brick on a chimney in the attic attests to this fact, the house retains most of its original details. Located in an area that was at the time on the outskirts of the city, it was never actually a custom house.  It has always been lovingly maintained as a private residence.

The original owners who built the house were Santiago Llorens and his wife Marie Baudin . They surrounded their house with extensive gardens consisting of many varieties of fruit trees,and they used the surrounding property mainly to raise livestock.

Santiago and Marie constructed their home utilizing Creole building design  which was typical for the times. Thus it was constructed of four rooms, two upstairs and two on the lower level. Since it was a fact of life that New Orleans was susceptible to flooding, houses were built with the living quarters raised up to the second level with a brick basement below. The rooms on the ground floor were service rooms used for storage and plantation offices. The rooms on the second floor availed themselves of the cooling breezes since the top floor was surrounded by deep, shade-providing galleries which were accessed by tall french doors.

These wide collonaded galleries not only added beauty to the house, they were also used as outdoor rooms, with ladies sewing or reading, children playing and meals served since the sweltering climate in tropical New Orleans made being indoors quite uncomfortable during the day and early evening. In a testament to how effective Creole building techniques are, the home still doesn't have air conditioning.

This is the view of Bayou St. John from the gallery. Who could resist this?

The house was also built using long standing Creole building techniques. The ground floor is constructed of brick which has been plastered, and the second level, which is reached by means of an outdoor stairway consists of "briquette entre poteaux" or brick between posts and covered with wood siding. The galleries are supported by simple turned wooden posts which support the double pitched hipped roof.

 

In 1927, the owner at the time Helen Pitkin Schertz had made a major addition to the house which blends well with the original style. It's most outstanding feature being floor to ceiling windows and a massive pair of cast iron gates which are used as entrance doors.

The wrought iron doors as they appear today from the outside.

The property also includes an original outbuilding which was at one time slave quarters.

Go here to see some wonderful old photos set to music of this beautiful house.

http://katrinafilm.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/the-old-spanish-customs-house/

The house has been on the market since before Hurricane Katrina and its original asking price was $1.95 million. The 2nd district assessor's office values the home at $330,000, but it is truly worth a lot more.

Preservationists are hoping that this amazing piece of our New Orleans history will be embraced by someone who will treat it with the loving care it deserves.

For more information, please click here.

To read more about the sale through Neal Auction click here.

 

First of all, let me say that the greatest joy in my life are my two amazing children, Henry and Isabelle.  I am so grateful for them, and as every mother knows, they enrich my life in untold ways. They are shown here on their way to  Henry's graduation ceremony from Lusher Charter High School. And this is where my story begins.

At the young age of 19, Henry is already an accomplished artist with an outstanding body of work in the fields of sculpture, painting, film and installation art. In fact, (and I realize I'm bragging here) he won the top art award from his High School, and they created a special name for it in honor of him: The Out-Of-the Box award for Fine Arts! Here are some pictures of his metal sculptures.

For Henry's graduation, I gave him a high-tech wonderful new Apple Computer. It has all the cool graphics and film editing and music synthesizing capabilities and all kinds of other things I don't understand on it that he said would be helpful in his college career because he has chosen to pursue a major in fine arts.

 

Henry said  that this computer was just what he needed to make all his dreams come true. He also told me that he would hand me down his present Apple computer to replace my PC that was in the process of dying.

Henry said I would love working on a Mac. He said it would change my life, and boy did it!

I quickly came to realize that Macs are very different than PC's and lots of programs do not translate easily from one operating system to the other. Let me also say that I am an old dog and I was not doing too well with learning the new tricks. Most importantly, you cannot blog using Windows Live Writer on a Mac, and I couldn't find anything comparable to use on my new hand-me-down Apple computer, so blogging became quite a challenge since my PC was getting so decrepit and slow that it would time itself out before it could get a post published. It was very sad and very frustrating.

In addition, the summer following Henry's graduation   became a  very  busy one, with lots very interesting projects.

The summer went by so fast, that I barely had time to realize that I would be taking my first-born child, now all grown up, all the way across the country to college.

Which was lucky, because I didn't have time to get started on my empty-nest syndrome quite yet.

Well, the summer went by, and it became time for us to take Henry  to college in California. And since I have not been able to bring myself to get on a plane since Hurricane Katrina (it's my own personal manifestation of post-traumatic stress) I decided to drive him there.

Here's Henry on his way to College!

I left my shop in the very capable hands of the beautiful and talented Julie P and Jennifer G. who took care of everything in their own inimitable style!

 

We were very lucky because our wonderful friends Hayes and Jessica, to whom I'm eternally grateful, decided to join us and make a fun road trip out of it. And it truly was.

Here are Hayes and Jessica with Henry in Albuquerque.

It was a wonderful trip and we had so much fun riding together, watching the scenery and landscape go by, visiting some interesting places, eating,, drinking, and just enjoying the trip.

 

We saw awesome mountains.

Beautiful plant life.

Fabulous architecture.

It was great fun, but also, privately I was realizing what an enormous step we were taking. I was bringing my son all the way across the country to school. And leaving him there. I tried not to dwell on this aspect, and just enjoy our wonderful trip.

We visited Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo, Texas.

Here's Henry and Jessica posing with a big rooster somewhere in Texas.

We visited the amazing Painted Desert.

And finally, we reached San Francisco. We got to San Francisco about 5 or 6 days before Henry had to be at school so that we could enjoy being in San Francisco and visiting with our friends Robyn and Robert, our friends from New Orleans who moved to California so that Robyn could attend graduate school  at San Francisco Art Institute.

Here are Hayes, Jessica, Robert, Robyn, and Henry in San Francisco after attending the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the de Young Museum. It was an amazing show and I was so happy to have had the opportunity to see it.

Here are Hayes and Jessica and Henry clowning at the waterfront on the Embarcadero.

Henry and me on the Pier.

 

After awhile, we got Henry settled, and school started and it was finally time for me to go home. I knew it would be hard to say goodbye, and I was dreading it, when I got a call from my daughter Isabelle. "Mom, you can't come home," she said. "Hurricane Gustav is coming and we have to evacuate."

 

Grateful as I was not to have to say goodbye to Henry just yet, I was so worried about Isabelle, our cats, our friends and our beloved, battered city. None of us was prepared to have to face another hurricane.

I was so proud of Isabelle. She and some of our wonderful neighbors readied our house for any eventuality. Isabelle emptied our refrigerator, she prepared to take the cats with her and my dear friend Mary Alice, the mother of Isabelle's friend Georgianna scooped Isabelle up and took her with them to safety in Alabama. Mary Alice has my eternal gratitude for getting my child out of harm's way.

Here is Isabelle with her good friend Georgianna, before evacuating.

My wonderful  angels, Mary Alice and Tom May, who took Isabelle with them on their evacuation, and kept her safe and entertained.

Meanwhile, at my workshop Michael battened down the hatches, closing shutters and otherwise securing the building. Lesley and Kathryn got things in order, and Lesley, choosing to stay in the city, offered to look after my house and my cats, so that Isabelle would not have to put them and herself through the ordeal of a long car trip.

Here is Lesley, with her wonderful attitude, telling me not to worry about it because she had everything under control! She was so wonderful, e-mailing me and texting me about weather conditions, the city, and my cats!

I cannot even begin to describe what this meant to me, far away from home, facing the upcoming saying goodbye to Henry, dealing with  the reawakening of post trauma feelings from Katrina, being separated from Isabelle and knowing I would have to make the trip home alone because Hayes and Jessica had to fly out to help their families evacuate. And did I mention that I have severe travel anxiety?????

At any rate, we used the opportunity to enjoy more of  the Bay Area, and to move Henry in with Robyn and Robert, who opened their home to him. They are truly amazing friends.

.

We visited the Golden Gate Bridge where Henry, Robyn and Robert pose with a section of one of the cables that holds the bridge up.

We went to China Town,

we ate at The Stinking Rose,

and the Cliff House.

This is the view from our table at the Cliff House.

My extended stay in San Francisco really gave me the opportunity to see the everyday sights of the city.

And  meanwhile, the city of New Orleans escaped the devastating effects of Hurricane Gustav.

When it was finally time to say "goodbye" to Henry, I will admit that I think I cried more tears than the number of raindrops that fell during Gustav. Although I am not proud to admit this, I did not take it very well at all!

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done to leave my son in California, and make my way back home without him.

Since Hayes and Jessica had already gone home, I was left to make the trip home all by myself, not an easy feat for someone with travel anxiety, so I decided to look upon it as an adventure.

I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles the first day.

I stayed at the lovely Hilton Checkers in downtown LA.

And the next morning I drove myself to Union Station and boarded a train for home.

 

 

I loved the colors and patterns in the historic Union Station.

Here are some photos I took out of the train window as I crossed the country on my trip home.

 

I must say that the way I coped with my travel anxiety while on the train was to concentrate on the beautiful scenery that was going by.

Because of Hurricane Gustav, Amtrak was only allowing the train to go as far west as San Antonio, so my trip took another twist, since I then had to find a place to stay overnight in that city before renting a car to drive home to New Orleans. Fortunately, I was able to find a beautiful place to stay, the newly opened Grand Hyatt. 

The new hotel is beautiful and has some very interesting light fixtures, but I digress...

The next morning, the car rental man who picked me up from the hotel was kind enough to give me a little driving tour of  San Antonio so I actually  got to see the Alamo!

 

The last leg of my journey consisted of an approximately nine hour drive from San Antonio to New Orleans. I was never more ready to get home!

When I arrived home that night, the city was still pretty much evacuated, giving it an eerie feeling I hadn't experienced since the time I had come home to visit my house during the Katrina evacuation.

The next morning, when I returned the rental car downtown across the street from the convention center, more disturbing memories of post-Katrina times surfaced.

Isabelle returned home from her evacuation trip, and I was so glad to see her that I almost fainted. We went to the grocery to restock our refrigerator and did the little housekeeping things that make you feel like you're getting back into the normal routine.

But there were reminders that a storm had made its presence felt on our  city, on our lives. And it made us remember how vulnerable we really are down here.

And life seemed very different with Henry so far away.

So I went into a "Post-Traumatic-Empty-Nest-Syndrome Funk!

My lighting business was so busy since we were making all the lighting in the Lafayette Decorator Showhouse as well as for several other projects. Everyone who works with me was so wonderful helping me keep going and keeping me on track, and I am so grateful for all their help.

I tried to blog but I couldn't figure out how to do it on an Apple and my PC was not cooperating, and in my emotionally challenged condition, I just gave up.

BUT, since I never stay down for long, I am here to tell you that it has all turned out well in the end. I decided to buy myself a new computer just for picture storage and blogging and I love it!!! It's small and cute and travels well and I understand it! And my mother's heart is happy because my beloved Henry has decided to return to New Orleans and pursue his degree in Fine Art right here at Loyola University. So I'm feeling more centered, more cheerful and very inspired.

Hence, you can count on reading much more regular, interesting, stimulating  posts because I am very happily back on track!

One last note, though.

As anyone familiar with design blogging knows, the blogosphere is such a community. Not only is it a forum for writing about and discussing ideas with like-minded people, it is truly a place where good friends are made, and in my case this is more than true.

I was lucky enough this fall to have been paid a visit by the gorgeous and amazing Visual Vamp, Valorie Hart.

 

She popped into my shop and into my life on the night of Art for Art's Sake, and we immediately hit it off!

As you can easily tell from her amazing blog, Valorie has oodles of experience in the design and decorating field, and more than that, she has a natural, instinctive "eye" for the fabulous and a true writer's voice.

She lives in a chic and swanky New Orleans shotgun house which she and her wonderful husband and tango partner, Alberto have made their own.

After the first time we met for coffee, we became soul sisters,and Valorie was so very encouraging of me and helped me draw out of my slump. She insisted that I get  a PC and get my worn-out self back into the blogging world. I am so grateful to her for that and much more!!

I  have asked Valorie to be the Marketing Director for Julie Neill Designs and she graciously accepted my offer! So thank you Blogosphere for bringing such an amazing friend in to my life and stay tuned bloginistas, because I am back and will be posting regularly!