As always, it was great to see how many people from different walks of life felt connected to the K-Does. Still, both Ernie and Antoinette were such dynamic figures, and seeing the remnants of their life without them in made it seem like they were just another old couple. The upstairs apartment was dingy with an unpainted ceiling, and the closet was piled with bags of clothes that were out of date years if not decades ago.

Thankfully, the K-Does could never be completely ordinary; Betty wasn’t selling costumes, but despite that limit, a lot of sequins were walking out of the door. But Antoinette made such a powerful final statement as she laid in state in a glass-topped coffin in her Empress of the Universe gown complete with scepter, and anything less regal and dynamic than that is inevitably a little diminishing.

Recently, The Times-Picayune’s Doug MacCash recorded a video that considered the questions posed by the “READ” graffiti that has popped up recently around town. The open-ended nature of graffiti is part of what makes it so provocative and controversial. Is a mark on a wall a private expression, a threat to others, or something else entirely? What does a stenciled angry cat or pope mean when it shows up on a wall? Does it mean anything, or is it a form of urban surrealism, throwing a visual non-sequitur into an otherwise-defined environment?

One of the things I find most engaging about graffiti is its designed impermanence. The artist/tagger – I don’t assume all graffiti-makers are artists – has to know the work won’t last, and that they’re a temporary part of an environment. Earlier this summer, someone pasted up what looked like a Charles Burns portrait of Elton John on a Tchoupitoulas warehouse, and its stark, graphic look and logo – “icon” – gave a banal urban space a note of whimsy and low-grade mystery. Before a month was out, it had been scraped off. When Banksy came to town after Hurricane Gustav, much of his work was gone within the month, painted over by property owners, marred by other graffiti artists, and perhaps painted over by Fred Radke (though Radke may have been framed in the partially successful paint-over of the piece across Clio Street from the Big Top). Some, however, remain.

My current favorite is already in danger. Someone has pasted up pages with the lyrics to Big Star’s “Thirteen” on a Tchoupitoulas Street warehouse a few blocks Uptown from the convention center. The poster-maker ran together part of the first verse and part of the second, but the series of signs is a charming mystery. Why Big Star in 2009? Why “Thirteen” – hardly a song charged with some sort of subterranean buzz? In fact, the song’s evocation of youth and young love seems even sweeter posted on a wall as a series of signs you can sing along to. But even the signs come with an additional mystery. Next to them is a stenciled woman. Was she put there by the same person? Or did someone see the Big Star lyrics and think that a more mature, grim presence might add some needed gravity? Whatever the case, a long white wall that was once a banal part of an industrial roadway is now alive with possibilities, and it’s only made more interesting by the realization that those possibilities won’t be there forever. You’ve got to see them before rain or do-gooders wash them away.

It’s clear – no event can exist in New Orleans without an accompanying poster. I just received notice of the Project 30-90 poster, and really – can just call them merch and be done with it? Eliminate all pretensions to art or higher purpose and just acknowledge that this is something other than a T-shirt people can buy? As posters go, I’ve seen better and seen a lot worse, but the one thing greener than an environmentally friendly poster is no poster at all. No carbon footprint is better than a light one.

The debate over the proposed sculptures for Armstrong Park interests me more than the art does. What I can figure out is how beautifying the park is supposed to bring life back to it. Who goes to a park to look at the sculptures, and how long can that take? Wouldn’t it be better to open the park so that people can use it? And bring Rampart back to life – and not as  Ye Olde New Orleans – so that the park is an integrated part of the city. Clearly, treating it as a stand-alone, culturally significant place that you’re supposed to want to go to hasn’t worked. When has, “Do this. It’s good for you” ever worked? 

… speaking of the art, I’m conceptually amused at the transformation of Indian feathers into stone, but it’s hard to get around how lumpish that piece looks.