Jamie Chiarello is an extremely talented New Orleans artist who was selling her art in the French Quarter when I met her in 2004. I'm horrified to learn that she and other permit-holding artists were forced to remove their art from the fence near Jackson Square or face arrest and/or confiscation of the artwork. This treatment inflicted upon Jamie and other artists during French Quarter Festival on Saturday, April 13, 2013 should not be tolerated by Mayor Landrieu and his administration, the citizens of New Orleans, or anyone who attended French Quarter Fest. I sincerely hope the community will support Jamie and other artists by voicing concerns to The Supreme Court Clerk and whoever else is responsible for this unnecessary abuse of power.
Below, I am quoting, in its entirety, the description provided by an extremely talented New Orleans artist, Jamie Chiarello
More frustration for New Orleans 'creative class' (that is supposed to be experiencing some kind of renaissance in the form of studio lofts priced for lawyers & poor city communications?):
I'm an artist with a Royal street/Pirates Ally zone B license. We pay the city $175.25 a year for our first come first serve fence space. I've been doing this since 2004, for 9 years. Every French Quarter Fest our legally agreed upon space is sold off to 'Louisiana state' artists for a juried art show. We have never complained about this brush off from the city or organizers & have always moved down to the the Supreme Court fence at Royal/St Louis for sat & sun of the fest.
Yesterday I got out there at 7 am to set up. French Quarter Fest is one of my peak times of year, as I have collectors that will come and find me in this spot to browse new paintings. For 8 years this is one of the most pleasant times of year and there has never been ANY problem whatsoever. Around 9 Am yesterday 'they' sent some hothead from the security team for the courts. They said the fence is State property & 'someone' suddenly didn't want us there...we were legally allowed to sell art, but not display it. (? Yeah..) We told them we needed more information & that the authority issuing this order needed to come explain themselves, since this is our livelihood & we're not just going home.
An hour or so later they sent the 'good cop' a nicer guy from the same Security team. he said his higher up is a guy named Tommy (head of security) but he couldn't come because he's in lafayette. Awhile after this they got NOPD involved & forced us to removed our art from the fence under threat of arrest & confiscation of our art work.
The compromise on our party was to 'display' our work on the ground (where it got dirty & would potentially impede the walkway) but we were allowed to 'stack them' so patrons could shuffle through artwork piled on the ground...because the supreme court did not want artowrk displayed on its fence (while there is a stage 20 feet away on the courthouse steps for frenchquarter fest.) When we mentioned that our permitted zone had been sold out from under us we got the typical city speech, a shrug that they know nothing about it & some other official somewhere else needs to figure it out.
In Summary, this is the city harrassing local artists during french quarter fest.
I am not even setting up today to avoid the hassle. I'm sure a survey of the million people in town for the festival would be in favor of local artists displaying their work during a local festival.
Why are we being threatened with arrest while trying to make a living selling art? Particularly since we actually pay the city to display?
Apparently the root of the problem is John Tarlton Olivier, supreme court clerk of court, who we were told issued the order & was in Baton Rouge yesterday, so could not personally come to distrupt the livelihoods of artists. I will be writing to him, here is his info if you would like to too:
John Tarlton Olivier (11/85)
Spouse: Terry
Mailing/Physical Address
400 Royal Street
Suite 4200
New Orleans, LA 70130-8102
(504) 310-2300
Chief Deputy - Rachel B. Edelman
Email: jolivier@lasc.org
Website: www.lasc.org
More to come...
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