Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 - (Page 40)

WHITE PELICAN by Laurent Verdin, Sr. courtesy of an anonymous lender IN THE 19TH CENTURY, decoys were one of many tools employed by inhabitants of remote, marshy Southeast Louisiana. With few if any roads in the area, transportation and communication depended on the intricate web of water that defined the landscape: bayous; tidal marshes, lakes, and ponds; distributaries and canals. Individuals lived off the land, adapting their activities to the changing seasons. Hunting for game, catching finfish and shellfish, trapping furbearing mammals, and tending small garden plots provided dietary variety — and, in some cases, also provided foodstuffs to sell in the markets in and around New Orleans. In many ways, the patterns of these rural lives recalled those of earlier generations of Native Americans. Some carvers, like Laurent Verdin, Sr., of Houma, could in fact claim Native American ancestry. Others, like Mitchel Lafrance, came from African American or AfroCreole wetlands communities. Still others, like Clovis “Cadice” Vizier, settled among the Cajuns whose forebears made their way to Louisiana after being expelled from Nova Scotia in the mid-18th century. And in St. Bernard Parish, carvers like Domingo Campo belonged to the Isleño community, established during Louisiana’s Spanish colonial era by immigrants from the Canary Islands. Not all Southeast Louisiana carvers were isolated rural folk. A number of mid-20th-century decoy makers, like Jim Mossmeier, were New Orleans businessmen with a passion for woodworking and an appreciation for hunting with selffabricated decoys. Some carvers, especially in communities downriver from New Orleans, produced decoys as a sideline, making their primary living as farmers or skilled craftsmen: carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers. But whether the decoys came from the banks of the Mississippi River; the bayous Terrebonne, Lafourche, Gauche, or BY 1960 DECORATIVE DECOYS HAD ECLIPSED FUNCTIONAL DECOYS ACROSS SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA. THE PURPOSE OF A DECOY WAS NO LONGER TO ATTRACT BIRDS WITHIN GUNSHOT RANGE, BUT TO EXEMPLIFY THE ARTIST’S DEXTERITY IN CARVING AND PAINTING. 40 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2008-09

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008 Contents Friends Editor's Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Prospect.1 New Orleans The Historic New Orleans Collection The Enduring Performance of Michael P. Smith Jazz Notes Louisiana Foodways Birds of a Feather: Windfowl Carvings in Southeast Louisiana Louisiana Association of Museums Louisiana Architecture O. Winston Link in Louisiana The Ogden Museum of Southern Art The Colfax Massacre Louisiana State Museum Unlocking the History of Greek Key Architecture Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.