'Left of Black': Episode #27 featuring NOLA Artist Bruce Davenport, Jr.

Left of Black #27
w/ Bruce Davenport, Jr.
March 21, 2011

In a special episode of Left of Black, featuring a live audience, host Mark Anthony Neal talks with New Orleans artist Bruce Davenport, Jr. about surviving Hurricane Katrina, the cultural significance of New Orleans’ high school marching bands, and using his sketches to keep New Orleans’ culture vibrant.

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→Born and raised in New Orleans’ Lafitte housing projects, artist Bruce Davenport, Jr. lives and works in the now-infamous Lower Ninth Ward, devoting his time to meticulous graphic reenactments of the local musical culture of junior high and high school marching bands, those that were decimated by the levees breech and those that survive. His current exhibition “All I Need is 1 Pen” at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University was curated by Diego Cortez.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of African & African American Studies at Duke University and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Trailer: 'The Whole Gritty City'

from thewholegrittycity.com

"Once that band gives you that down beat...just for that brief two or three minutes you forget every problem you had. You have no cares in the world...Yeah it must be nice to live like that with no cares in the world" - Wilbert Rawlins Jr.

Living in a city traumatized by a flood and besieged by street violence, there's a deep longing to have "no cares in the world". But New Orleans is also the birth place of jazz: a community that to this day draws on a deeply rooted musical culture. For thousands of kids in the city's marching bands music is an escape, a refuge and a lifeline.

The Whole Gritty City is a documentary feature film currently in post production, and planned to be released early in 2012. It tells the story of three New Orleans marching bands as they push to prepare for Mardi Gras parades, and three band directors battling for their students' lives and souls. It shows lives stopped in their tracks by the violence of the streets, and the power of music to lift and sustain the survivors.

Bruce Davenport Exhibition Opens @ John Hope Franklin Center

March 17 - May 14, 2011

Bruce Davenport Jr. -- All I Need Is 1 Pen
-- An exhibition of Works on Paper --

Exhibition Curator, Diego Cortez

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Thursday, March 17, 12:00 - 1:00 PM, John Hope Franklin Center

Artist Bruce Davenport Jr. interviewed by professor Mark Anthony Neal on Left of Black, Franklin Center, Room 240

Thursday, March 17, 5:30 - 7:00 PM, John Hope Franklin Center

Opening reception for All I Need Is 1 Pen, an exhibition of works on paper by New Orleans artist, Bruce Davenport Jr.

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On view at the Franklin Center Gallery will be the exhibition All I Need Is 1 Pen, a show comprised of works on paper by Bruce Davenport Jr. as well as a short video from the upcoming Richard Barber film The Whole Gritty City, which documents both the marching band culture of New Orleans and Davenport Jr.'s artistic work in response to that culture. Davenport Jr.'s work is on the cusp between folk art and contemporary art and seems to undermine the terminology of both worlds.

Bruce Davenport Jr., son of a preacher and community activist, was born in New Orleans in 1972, grew up at the 6th Ward Lafitte Projects, and currently lives in the now infamous Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. Throughout his schooling he was involved with the junior high and high school marching band cultures which are a major force in Mardi Gras and the overall musical culture of New Orleans. Following Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation to the city and its schools, about half of which remain closed today, Davenport Jr. decided to document the past glory of this unique culture in his drawings. Davenport Jr.'s work has been featured in many exhibitions in the U.S., including at the C.A.C., New Orleans, Dieu Donne Gallery, NYC, Lambent Foundation, NYC, Martin Luther King Jr. Library, New Orleans, Prospect 1.5 and Prospect.2 (Dan Cameron, Curator), New Orleans, AS IF Gallery, NYC and Ballroom Marfa, TX. His work has been collected by major collectors throughout the world. He has donated his works to many of the schools and libraries in New Orleans.

Bruce Davenport Jr. is represented by AS IF Gallery in New York (www.asifgallery.com). Diego Cortez is an independent curator based in New York. More information can be found at www.lostobject.org.