(via NEA Arts Magazine) )
We had an artist who came in one day crying-- I mean, literally crying-- that he had selected a house that was crumbling, and he was going to make a skin of it with latex and take that skin and reconstruct it as the skeleton of this house, the skin of this house. He went back to the [site] after he’d gotten all the materials. There was a big sign on it, saying, 'No trespassing. House will be torn down within 10 days.' So he came to us and said, 'What'll we do?'
So we had to convince the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it was artwork. We would get a phone call at the end of every 10 days saying, 'Is it still art?' And we'd say, 'It's still art,' until it was finished. And then that skin went to Socrates Sculpture Park up in New York and was exhibited all of the summer of 2006, then came back here and was part of the first Prospect New Orleans Biennale. The house is now long gone, but it lives in memory in this skin.
[The artist] had gone to school here and came back after the storm….He borrowed a bike and just rode up and down all the streets until he found this one house that he wanted to turn into a work of art. And it turned out to be a beautiful piece of work."
—Mary Len Costa, Interim Director, Art Council of New Orleans
