Nola Nik

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Examples from the show

A few self portraits by my students.

one of the walls of work

3rd Grade

8th Grade

3rd grade

1rst grade

2nd grade

1rst grade

kindergarten

8th grade

5th grade

4th grade

Thursday, June 18, 2009

You're Invited

This is what I have been up to these last few months while teaching art at Esperanza:

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Bye, Mabel

From Billy:

Our sweet golden dog Mabel has passed on.

From the streets of the Irish Channel, she had a wild love of people, her old boyfriend Max, her sidekick Ruth-Anne, and, most of all, her savior Nikki who cajoled me into keeping her upon returning home with a tiny puppy following a argument in which I had been in the wrong. I didn’t put up much resistance.

The night Nikki found her, she had been walking the streets with a pack of feral dogs that roamed the Irish Channel terrorizing cats and children. Nikki thought she was a Chihuahua but she was just a baby street dog. We never could sort out her breed but her odd yodels suggested some sort of African bushdog and her staggering speed, a whippet.

Anyone who has ever come to our house has been jumped on and kissed by Mabel in her effort to show a little love, and get a little back in return.

Her health failed very suddenly and out of the blue last evening when she was walking with Nikki and Ruthie through the tony, live oak and mansion lined streets of the Garden District, a handful of blocks from where Nikki had found her.

A good run for a scrappy Irish Channel kid.

We were lucky to have found her. And vice versa.

Good girl, Mabel.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Where I Have Been

...Teaching at Esperanza Charter School, full time. I will be there until the end of June teaching K-8 as much art as possible until I leave. The picture above is one leftover from when the building housed Crossman Elementary, from the old Crossman website.

I eat, sleep, teach, eat, sleep, teach.

I'll be posting more regularly again when summer comes along....

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Random Parade on Jackson Avenue

Yay! Random Parade! We were replacing a window pane knocked out by Gustav (a little late in the game, I know) and look what passed on by! I guess it was a parade sponsored by a church down the way and was called a "March for Christ". Most of these were taken from the balcony so please excuse the wires.

And HELLO! The McDonough 35 Marching Band comes along! Note the wee child:

A wee marching child

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Pussyfooting in Muses 2009

The Pussyfooters march in the most popular parade every Mardi Gras, the Muses Parade. It is a krewe of women and is my personal favorite. Billy was my "Pussy Handler", making sure that the crowds were back from the route so we could dance on by, and keeping people from touching us. He also watered us as as we made our way along the very long route.

Riding my bike to the beginning of the route at Jefferson and Magazine

Nikki the Pussyfooter and Liz the Camel Toe Lady Stepper,
ignoring the super cold (so, so, cold when you are just in a corset)
night and filling the time during the very long delay of the start of
Muses due to a Chaos parade float losing an axle on the route ahead.

We had to stop at Gallier Hall in order to perform an in-
place hip-hop dance for the judges. I think they liked us....

Finally finished, at the end of the route in the warehouse district.

Some of the near 80 Pussyfooters flock for a photo

Mardi Gras 2009

I finally have gotten around to posting my Mardi Gras pictures! I am pretty freaked out by clowns, so I faced the fear and made clown costumes for Billy and me. The first set of pictures are of friends, the following set is of some of my favorite St. Anne parade costumers.