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38
Artis
Spectrum
Book Art Project: "Jazz Beats"
by Donna L. Clovis 12 x 12 inch, Matisse-like
cut-outs celebrating New Orleans Culture and
Revitalization.
NEW ORLEANS IS A CITY OF JAZZ.
Much of its music is tied to its culture, history, and
geography. New Orleans was crucial to the combining of
jazz's unique sounds, a combination of French, Caribbean,
Spanish, and West African beats. Brass bands played
throughout the year. The majority of New Orleans musicians
stayed local, playing in small clubs as their only means of
income. But now, the future of jazz bands, bars, parades,
Mardi Gras, and jazz funerals looked bleak with the recent
hurricane damage and flooding from Katrina.
Donations of clothes, medicine, and money from others
poured within the catastrophic areas of the hurricane. Musicians
throughout
t
he world raised money through concerts. Artist
Donna L. Clovis created a book art project of jazz and dance
images made of cut-outs of papyrus each day of the catastrophic
reporting of the hurricane for thirty days. The purpose of the
book art was to capture the love of New Orleans, its culture, its
people, and the city and somehow interpret the spirit of jazz in
an artistic form.
The art called, "Jazz Beats," is a dedication to the influence
of New Orleans upon all American culture. The work was
donated to the city of New Orlean's French Quarter, a way of
replacing some of the precious art that was lost.
Despite the severe damage to the city, Mayor C. Ray Nagin
recently opened the French quarter as a beginning of the city's
revitalization. If you think of New Orleans like the theme of
the jazz funeral, know that New Orleans will rebound and rise
again. The jazz funeral responds to the concept of tragedy with
a joyful cry of triumph and revitalization, a powerful message to
its everlasting culture and future.
A Dedication
to New Orleans Jazz
By Donna L. Clovis