New Orleans are serious about their costumes

In New Orleans, costuming is a year-round activity. There's Mardi Gras, of course, Halloween and multiple opportunities to assume a new persona in between.

I got a flier last week from the Ogden Museum, which is holding a seven-week Mardi Gras costume fashion workshop led by Parsons School of Design graduate Veronica Cho.

The class will cover creating your own dress form, historical costumes and costumes made from recycled materials.

The cost is only $250 for museum members; $275 for non-members.

Another amazing night at the Ogden

This blur is a Mardi Gras Indian dancing at one of our local institutions of fine art. The Ogden Museum of Southern Art features music on Thursday nights and last week it was 101 Drummers, featuring Big Chief Monk Boudreaux.

Craziness at the museum

I could only find a tiny place to stand on the stairway ascending to the third level, which is why these pictures are out of focus.

During French colonial days, escaped slaves mixed up with the local Indians and this is the crazy concoction that resulted - vibrantly colored feathers and beads and frenzied dances to a never ending Afro-American beat. It's hard to describe, but difficult to forget.

The museum crowd went wild.

I saw a facebook friend at a recent book signing. She and I met on Mardi Gras Super Sunday, St. Joseph's Day, standing at the gate where all the tribes gather in Taylor Park in Central City. I took 200 photos; she took 300 and we could have taken even more.

The Ogden Museum is a shrine to Southern Art

By & By String Band

I've written about the Ogden before, but it surely merits another post. It's the best cultural bargain in town.

For my piddly $50 membership fee, I get to attend the weekly After Hours performances and wander around the museum enjoying the latest exhibitions, almost all of which are interesting.

In addition to the regular art exhibits, there are frequent panel discussions with authors and artists, films and other special events.

Tonight, I was fascinated by the gorgeous, humongous ceramic pots crafted by Mark Hewitt, a resident of North Carolina. The entire fifth floor is populated with his 4-foot, earthen pots, arranged in rows like a giant chess board. I had the urge to wrap my arms around one in its bulbous beauty. Hewitt says about them: "While delightfully big-assed, they are also profoundly big-hearted."

A floor below, are two rooms of glass blown by Richard Ritter, another North Carolinian, who adopted a technique created in Egypt and perfected in Italy. I can't even imagine how he decorates those gorgeous shapes with such intricate floral designs. Only in the Ogden would those fragile, priceless pieces be sitting on a shelf where some bimbo could bump them off, but they're fine.

Two photography exhibits, Partial to Home, by Birney Imes, a Mississippi photographer, and Southern Portraits featuring several different photographers, provide some insight into the Southern culture. Some are poignant, others funny, but all intriguing.

Meanwhile, the By and By String Band was captivating the crowd with Appalachian old-time country music, which sprang from the streets of the French Quarter in 2008. Lead vocalist Kiyoko McCrae could easily have originated in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The band's fine string music echoed beautifully throughout the atrium.

In December, I was lost in a musical haze listening to Roland Guerin play. During the mid-show interview, he explained how was given the opportunity to study music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, but chose instead to attend Southern University in Baton Rouge. There he learned from Alvin Batiste and later joined Batiste's Jazztronauts.

"That's the reason he got that thing," Guerin said about taking up music in the South. When you hear it played elsewhere, "it's like the food - you taste it, but there's something missing."

Thursday evenings at the Ogden

Before I moved here, my friend Janet gave me the lowdown on things to do. You must join the Ogden Museum of Southern Art for their Thursday evening After Hours music series, she said.

What a special place the Ogden is! A small museum - one might call it boutique - toured in an hour or less, is always an uplifting experience. Combining traditional with contemporary and Outsider art, the Ogden offers a rare perspective on what it means to be a Southern artist, or even a Southerner, for that matter.

The museum in Goldring Hall on Camp Street is very vertical, with sculpture on the rooftop, overlooking interconnecting highways and the Mississippi Bridge. You can start your visit there, taking in the sunset, as the lights come up, while sipping a glass of wine or local Abita Springs beer.

I find the art exhibits to be intensely personal. One was a series of black & white photo portraits of well known Southern writers in their work settings.

A second, decades of poignant photos of acclaimed writer/editor Willie Morris by his son, accompanied by handwritten letters, offering kindly advice and encouragement, both professional and personal.

A third exhibit called "Terra Incognita' captures the beauty of the swamps, which have been greatly affected by The Storm. Did anyone realize Eudora Welty was also a magnificent photojournalist, as well as novelist?

I recall the music best. The Barrel House Mamas - three gorgeous young women from Warren Wilson college in North Carolina, who drove all day to get here, harmonized and played their own compositions on strings and flute. I was introduced to a New Orleans favorite, Luther Kent who gave a rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In" as I've never heard it. And Judith Owen, swinging her mane of long, thick hair, while accompanying herself on piano, was surrounded by an unusual number of admiring, middle-aged men, listening breathlessly. There have been other performers, but those are the most memorable.

The music echoes up through the glass and stone building, allowing you to continue viewing art while listening, should you choose. Or to sit on stools right in front of the performers in the most intimate connection. An interview session and Q&A usually provides insight into the inspiration for their music.

There was once a museum like the Ogden downtown Chicago called the Terra. It could not survive so close to the Art Institute right across Michigan Avenue. It was not big enough or grand enough because BIG is what Chicago is about. The Terra simply had the most wonderful collection of mostly Impressionist art that could be seen in about an hour. It ultimately moved to Evanston, just north of Chicago. But I don't think the Terra ever had the soul of the Ogden, which has taken on a whole new mission post-Katrina.