With extensive biographies, careful detailed analysis and research, and generous page real estate dedicated to art, artist, and process, “New Orleans: Murals, Street Art, and Graffiti Volume 1” by Kady Yellow is a thorough look at a street scene in one of the US’s most storied cities.

The author tirelessly documents with a sense of the history while drawing out stories that illustrate the present in a scholarly way. A blend of left and right brained appreciation and analysis, this first project by the young author gives a sense of environment and community as it contributes to the practices of graffiti and art in the streets.

“It became clear that New Orleans has a remarkable new story to tell, a story of its street art scene,” says the author. “In telling that story, I sought to respectfully and delicately collect the history of the art in two neighborhoods of New Orleans by way of research and interviews with the artists themselves.”

With anthropologically framed storytelling applied to a very eclectic selection of art practices and styles, Perry includes personal accounts of aspiration, pragmatic descriptions of craft, and a frank examination technique – all presented within the context of a local story informed by the international one.

Interspersed in the book are school primer features like an urban art terminology glossary, a New Orleans timeline tracing benchmarks in its graffiti/Street Art history, a street mural map, and a number of small essays and media article quotations – each providing one more perspective for examining the nature of this organic people’s art movement. If a city’s graffiti/Street Art scene can be fairly captured in a moment, this book has clearly made it a priority and has more than succeeded.

238

138

45