When the Audubon Nature Institute’s Riverfront Park opened this spring, it became possible to saunter along the mighty Mississippi, all the way from deep in the Bywater to the Riverwalk mall. If you haven’t yet strolled this picturesque promenade, you certainly should.
As you amble along the area adjacent to the French Quarter, be sure to cast your eyes downward to the countless broken gray rocks along the river’s edge. There, a mysterious artist has provided an affable addition to the scenery.
The jagged jumble of stones, known as rip rap, is meant to keep the river edge from washing away. Risking a twisted ankle or skinned knee, the artist has used a few dozen of the jagged stones as canvases, where they’ve painted faces, skulls, stars and other shapes.
In a Facebook video, the artist behind the ‘Spirit Stones of Nouvelle Orleans’ described the two faces in the top left as ‘an alien and a native.’
STAFF PHOTO BY DOUG MACCASH
Good-natured graffiti
The colors of the faces and skulls are soft, not garish; the brushwork blunt yet neat. The images are so simplified that some are unrecognizable.
The fragmentary, mineralogical mural has some of the audacious outlaw vibe of graffiti. But it’s clearly the good-natured sort of graffiti, meant as an embellishment, not a violation.
On one hand, the faces and skulls are strange and out of place. Yet they seem to belong there among the tourists and buskers and passing freighters, just like the mad music of the Steamboat Natchez pipe organ.
In a Facebook video, the artist behind ‘The Spirit Stones of Nouvelle Orleans’ said that he doesn’t invent the faces and skulls that he paints on the rocks along the Mississippi River bank at the edge of the French Quarter, he discovers them.
STAFF PHOTO BY DOUG MACCASH
The faces are already there
A sign posted among the rip rap paintings reads “The Spirit Stones of Nouvelle Orleans.” It is signed Phoen9X. A Google search of “The Spirit Stones of Nouvelle Orleans” leads to a Facebook video attributed to someone known as Hood Critic. In those videos, the artist describes his methods.
“Those faces that I bring out in the stones are already there,” explains the artist, whose own face is never seen. As they speak, the artist points to a rock with a jagged edge that could be a human profile, with a dark patch that could be an eye.
Above those natural features, they’ve added “hair, headgear and a plume,” as if the face in the rock were wearing a costume. The artist explains that it’s unnecessary to paint everything. Sometimes, they allow the raw stone surface to come through.
“I might leave the rest of the stone as it was when I first met it,” the artist said. “You might say ‘He’s not finished yet,’ but actually I am.”
For the rip rap artist, studying the rough mosaic of river rocks is like looking for pictures in the clouds.
“The face is already there; I just came along to highlight it. I gave it a little makeup. I like to consider myself the rock’s makeup artist.”
The artist promises there will be more painted rocks to come.
Hood Critic has not yet responded to a direct message sent via Facebook.
‘The Spirit Stones of Nouvelle Orleans’ are like a fragmented mural composed of faces, skulls and other images, painted on the rocks along the Mississippi river bank at the edge of the French Quarter by a mysterious artist, known only by pseudonyms.
STAFF PHOTO BY DOUG MACCASH
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