A - Algiers Point ~ B - Voodoo ~ C - Angels on the Bayou

A - ALGIERS POINT

Charles Gillam is a Louisiana-born, self-taught folk artist who has created a place where art, the blues, black history and basketball all come together in one positive, joyful street corner in a poor neighborhood on the edge of the Mississippi. He collects Mississippi “spirit wood” to help build his shrine, across the river from New Orleans in a place called Algiers Point. His home and studio are on the river’s edge. Gillam has created not only a shrine to art and black history, but also a “Folk Art Zone”, a place that serves as an educational art Mecca for local kids. Although Gillam’s carvings of legendary blues artists are on display in House of Blues nightclubs across the United States, he is far more proud of what his art can do for the neighbourhood and for the local kids. As one neighbour says, “When they leave, their faces are so bright and just so happy, they felt like they have accomplished the most important thing in their life.”

B - VOODOO TEMPLE

In New Orleans, where Voodoo was first introduced to America, resides Priestess Miriam Shumani. Along with business partner Allen Villeneuve, The Priestess runs the VooDoo Spiritual Temple, a place that “helps people with their small problems or disappointments”. Attracting tourists and cultural anthropologists alike, The Voodoo Spiritual Temple is a place for learning and healing. Scattered throughout the Temple are altars devoted to expressing and invoking the loas, the spirit deities of the religion. According to the Priestess, “altars are places where people can come and leave their secrets.” In 1992, Dawn Yellowhorn came for a reading – today she designs voodoo dolls, mingling the traditions of First Nations beading and Haitian voodoo dolls to satisfy the spiritual needs of the temple.

C - ANGELS ON THE BAYOU

Along the shore of the Bayou Petite Cayoux, a reclusive bricklayer named Kenny Hill built over 100 statues and then, after 12 years of creative work in his sculpture garden, walked away, leaving his creations and his reasons for creating them, far behind. At first his Cajun neighbors didn’t quite know what to make of him or the garden. At the centre of his creation is a 50 foot-high brick and concrete tower, encrusted with icons of American history – the opening of the old west, the invention of jazz, the Flag-raising marines at Iwo Jima and soaring American eagles. Then he moved onto more spiritual themes. Using concrete, chicken wire, steel rods and cast-off house paint, Kenny Hill toiled and created and filled the garden with achingly beautiful characters, people in pain, others being lifted up or comforted by angels. His neighbors, mostly shrimp fishermen, even helped him out and pitched in when needed. Kenny Hill was a private man who shunned publicity. The only sightings most visitors had of Kenny were of his eight self-portraits found in his mysterious sculpture garden, including the one at the entrance to the garden, in which his hand is held over his bleeding heart above an inscription that reads, “It is Emty” (sic).