WHERE BAYOUS FUSELIER AND TECHE MEET

This week, a writer friend from Florida arrived after delivering boxes containing journals covering her lifetime to the archives of Sophie Newcomb in New Orleans, Louisiana and wanted to revisit a few sights in Teche country she'd missed after she left here eighteen years ago. We took her to one of our favorite places for lunch at the Little Big Cup and to NuNu Art & Culture Collective in Arnaudville, Louisiana. The latter center was conceived by native-born George Marks, an artist and sculptor, who returned to his roots in this small Cajun community twelve years ago. Marks, who helped revive a dying community and who has made a home for displaced artists after Hurricane Katrina, recently received the Jillian Johnson Award for Entrepreneurship in the Creative Economy and is credited with spearheading a cultural and economic rebirth in Arnaudville. He was recently highlighted in an article by Walter Pierce in ABiz, an alternative newspaper featuring news and analysis on commerce in South Louisiana.

When we arrived at NuNu's, we were greeted by a member of the quilting circle working in one of the rooms of the Art and Culture Collective, and she postponed returning to her sewing until she had pointed out a few of the artists' creations — paintings, jewelry, wood carvings, soaps, textiles, books
by Louisiana writers and other pieces of artistic work. My writer friend, Jo Ann Lordahl, was attracted to a huge painting by Marks, and we had our picture taken beside his work shown in this blog.

We spent an hour in the Collective, and I enjoyed talking with Debbie Richard, a retired speech teacher who hangs out in NuNu's and is a "closet writer." I'd seen a sign that read Prairie des Femmes, or Prairie of the Women, as I entered the art center and was intrigued by Debbie's description of a triangular prairie between Bayou Fuselier and the headwaters of Bayou Vermilion. She said that it was a place to which women had fled from storms, hurricanes, war, and other disasters and that there were stories about this unincorporated community with which she wasn't familiar.

When I returned home, I did a bit of research and found that a woman named Ashlee Michot lives near Prairie des Femmes and has written two books about the area, Journals and Portraits of A Place. She has also published several books about Louisiana yard shrines and Marian grottos. Many days she spends time in the countryside around Point Blue where she says she first heard French spoken. A retired school teacher, she photographs rural scenes, writes music, works with medicinal herbs and does amateur archaeology in fields around her home. I was told that my friend, the poet Darrell Bourque, knows Ashlee, and I intend to learn more about her and any stories she has heard about Prairie des Femmes when we meet with the Bourques in February.

As usual, I enjoyed touring a South Louisiana habitat as much as the tourist, and after eating some Cajun fare on the deck of The Little Big Cup, we walked through Tom's Fiddle & Bow Shop where owner Tom Pierce often has bluegrass jam sessions. We denied having any musical ability, although I have a yen to learn how to play the banjo, and we escaped before Pierce could sign us up for fiddle lessons.

A growing number of Cajun and Creole artists, poets, musicians, and chefs have set up shop in Arnaudville, some of whom have built homes in this haven that almost died out in the 1980's, but which is now recognized by Gaye Hamilton, manager of Louisiana Cultural Districts of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, as a town where "placemaking has been done right."
 

ALONG THE TECHE

Buttercup

Last week, we traveled to Arnaudville, searching for the cottages being renovated for use by artists and writers, who can apply and receive grants to complete their work in a bayou habitat, and found seven vari-colored cabins still under reconstruction hugging the Bayou Teche. When we turned to pass back along the street for another glimpse of the residences, we spied a beautiful, spreading sea of Ranunculus (buttercups) lining the bayou and stopped to photograph the bright yellow flowers. Ranunculus means “little frog” because the flowers inhabit the same waters as the frogs that are so abundant in south Louisiana.

Live oak along Bayou Teche

We were following Bayou Teche, the stream that Harnett Kane called “the most richly storied of the interior waters,” which snakes through 125 miles of south Louisiana. As it was once highly navigable, communities like Arnaudville sprang up along its banks. Four in ten people in this small community of less than 2000 speak Cajun French, and if you listen closely, you can hear the uncorrupted dialect of the Acadians who settled south Louisiana. The eight-mile stretch from Arnaudville to Leonville is known as the “Teche’s River Road” and is a journey into the heart of Acadiana. Arnaudville is the home of Bayou Teche Brewing, a company that makes a brew called “LA-31 Boucanee” made with cherry wood smoked wheat and is also the site of NuNu Arts and Culture Collective where artists from throughout Louisiana gather to showcase their art.

Scene of Teche at Arnaudville

In Arnaudville, we often have lunch or dinner at “The Little Big Cup,” a restaurant that serves some of the best cuisine in south Louisiana and features a “groaning board” on Saturdays and Sundays. We had been introduced to the town through Darrell and Karen Bourque. Darrell, a former poet laureate of Louisiana, once came up the bayou on a barge and climbed the steps leading to the deck of The Little Big Cup to deliver a reading from his book about the Cajun settlement of Louisiana entitled Megan’s Guitar. Poetry readings are not uncommon at this site.

Our recent visit to Arnaudville included brunch with the Bourques, and we sat on the deck of The Little Big Cup overlooking the bayou on a halcyon February day, talking about future glass work I’d like Karen (a consummate glass artist) to do for the cover of a new book of poetry and about Darrell’s chapbook, Where I Waited, to be published in the spring of this year by Yellow Flag Press whose editor is J. Bruce Fuller. Darrell’s work will focus on the paintings of Bill Gingles of Shreveport and I think it’s some of his best work. Just to titillate

Bayou Teche at Arnaudville

readers, I’m including one that I particularly liked entitled “Here and Here” that Darrell wrote and dedicated to Goldman Thibodeaux, notable Creole Cajun musician who was honored in 2014 with the Louisiana Folklife Heritage Award. The poem is after Bill Gingles’ painting Here and Here:

HERE AND HERE   

Sometimes my brother lives in a yellow temple inside here and here,

sometimes he lives in blue arches bent around those songs he’d keep

all his life if he could. I go to see him as often as I can, play Quoi faire

as many times as he asks me to. For him songs stay a while then seep

back into that almost imperceptible line here makes next to a place

not here. That line is the place we were boys together, pulling plows

through black gumbo dirt, picking the cotton the dirt made, his face,

then as now, darker than mine, bronzy color that favored blue, a vow

almost that beauty would always live in our house. He seemed a race

all to himself when I knew him then. He knew no other time than now

& he took me with him wherever he went. If he held something dear,

I did. If he climbed the sides of field wagons and burrowed in the heap

of white fluff we’d picked, I did too. He taught me how to lessen fear,

to live where he lived. Here is one leap; another here is another leap.

Darrell Bourque, December 21, 2015

Darrell and Karen Bourque at Little Big Cup

Photographs by Victoria I. Sullivan

"HANGING OUT" IN ARNAUDVILLE

The Poets

Yesterday morning, we took a ride over the "prairie" in St. Landry parish to have lunch in Arnaudville with our good friends, Darrell
and Karen Bourque. It was a chilly December day but the sun was out and as we drove into the small town of 1400 residents, we felt excited to be meeting with our old friends and visiting a town that has become a buzzing haven for writers, artists, musicians, and chefs. Arnaudville has gained recognition as the hub of the French cultural renaissance; in fact, the town received the award of "Cultural Economy Hero of the Year" from the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation in 2013.

We were also excited to be picking up a piece of glass art created by Karen, who had done a wonderful rendering of the pickerel weed, inspired by drawings she had seen of Susan Elliott's art in Vickie Sullivan's book, Why Water Plants Don't Drown, a naturalist's guide to aquatic plants. And, of course, Darrell and I had a chance to "talk poetry." He's a former Poet Laureate of Louisiana and winner of the "Louisiana Writer of the Year Award" presented at the Louisiana Book Festival this year.

The Artist

Both Darrell and Karen, native south Louisianans, contribute much to the Arts and also support writers, artists, and musicians throughout the State. Darrell has become fascinated with, and actively involved in, memorializing Amédé Ardoin, the legendary Cajun accordionist. The Amédé Ardoin Project is raising money to build a public statue in honor of the musician, and an estimated $30,000 to $60,000 is needed for a bronze statue.

Darrell has already memorialized Ardoin with his last book of 14 poems entitled If You Abandon Me, and he's busy working on another book that will include the Amédé poems and poems about other famous Cajun musicians of Louisiana.

We enjoyed lunch at the Little Big Cup restaurant on the banks of Bayou Fusilier, and Darrell took us on a tour of several cottages recently moved into Arnaudville that will be available for artists, writers, and musicians who apply for a few months' stay in the village so they can work on their various projects. He was inspired to take us on the tour because I had said how great it would be to have writing space in a tiny house in an out-of-the-way place like Arnaudville. The cottages near the center of town are situated on the banks of Bayou Fusilier, a bayou that forms a junction with Bayou Teche. Darrell said that artists from around the world visit the area, and some of them take up residence after tasting our Louisiana bayou waters.

We missed the Fire and Water Rural Arts Celebration that took place at NUNU's, but Darrell took us to this Arts and Culture Collective, site of the recent celebration, to meet George Marks, owner of the old warehouse that houses the artwork, books, and products of regional artists. NUNU's will also be the repository for funds raised for the Amédé Ardoin statue.

Amédé Ardoin's story is a sad song in itself. The famed musician who sang of loneliness and heartbreak, performed at a dance one summer night, and a white woman brought him her handkerchief to wipe his brow during the performance. Following the dance he was run over by prejudiced assailants and injured so badly he could no longer take care of himself. He was committed to the State hospital in Pineville, Louisiana where he died in 1942.

Darrell tells this tragic story in the 14 poems mentioned earlier and was inspired to carry out the project to create a statue in the musician's honor. Any home in south Louisiana (or anywhere else, for that matter) that hosts a party and raises as much as $300 toward the Ardoin project will receive a yard sign that says: "Amédé Ardoin stopped here on his way home."

Naan Oven

Birdhouse
Tower

When we took a walk in the yard around NUNU's with George Marks, I spied a unique clay oven that brought back memories of the ovens that baked our weekly naan when we lived in Iran. The oven was another creation of local artists and was fired up continuously during the Le Feu et L'eau (Fire and Water) Rural Arts Celebration last week. Vickie Sullivan snapped photos of the oven and a yard "totem" topped by a birdhouse made of tile that are displayed on this blog.

(Note: Before we left NUNU's, Darrell told us that George Marks will have a "tiny house" on wheels next door to NUNU's available by the Spring of 2015...hmmmm).

We always come away from a visit with the Bourques inspired to write and to support the Arts and are already planning an early January get-together with this talented couple to celebrate the New Year in bayou country.