At the Uptown Gallery

On January 12th I played a nice little gig with newly-arrived-in-town bassist Rob Kohler (a killer player who's on the faculty at the Stanford University jazz camp, among his many other accomplishments). The bass-tenor-sax duo format can be challenging. Each player has to cover so much, you feel like a one-legged man at an ass- kicking contest. But with Rob on board it was deeply satisfying. But I'm really here to tout my wife Darlene's show opening, which was the event we were playing at (yes, I got the gig by sleeping with the artist). Darlene has really been coming into her own as an artist in New Orleans. The spiritual and artistic vibe in the city has been a real inspiration to her, sending her work off into all kinds of interesting tangents and processes. She's produced quite a few pieces inspired by the pantheon of Voodoo Lwas, and another series with an egg-in-nest motif. Concurrent to these themes, she's been tinkering around with actual physical eggs, using the methods of her Ukrainian ancestors to create decorated "Pysanki" eggs with voodooistic themes. What I've come to think of as "Ukrainian-Creole" art. The show at the Uptown Gallery (which is up until February 6th, the day after Mardi Gras) is called "Natural Abstractions; Gifts of Spirits." A number of the prints were created using photographs of the interior of cut logs from trees felled by Katrina in our old 13th ward neighborhood. Darlene uses altered versions of the photographs to etch plates from which the limited edition prints are hand-pulled. Works by Darlene Bigus Doheny are showing at the Uptown Gallery, 139 Broadway, right where Broadway meets the levee. http://www.uptowngallerynola.com/ http://www.darlenebigusdoheny.com/