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Beading
at the bar, Lawson started work on
the piano in January 1999. Almost
immediately, it drew the attention
of people walking by on the street
who'd see the work-in-progress through
the window and decide to drop in.
Surrounded by piles of Mardi Gras
beads, Lawson labored over it for
three months—10 to 11 hours a
day, an average of six days a week.
When Mardi Gras rolled around, Lawson
found himself having to keep a close
eye on his beads—revelers staying
at the hotel next door to the bar
were walking in and absconding with
them. The worst offenders, according
to Lawson, were “elderly”
people. “They’ll wait
till you use the bathroom or go
to get a beer,” he explains,
“and then they will grab ’em.” |
Lawson’s work is almost always inspired
by native cultures, and Voodoo Blues is no
exception. A portrait of Marie Laveau—dressed
in a white robe with her arms outstretched—dominates
the piano’s lid. Her angelic visage is
framed by a garland of purple, green and yellow
flowers.
Her left hand holds a flame, symbolizing
rebirth. Unfurling from her other hand, and
coiling around the piano’s lid, is a
red-nosed snake.
A voodoo ritual—featuring another
snake, a chameleon, a bongo drummer
and dancing figures—is depicted
on one side of the piano; a swamp
scene, with a frog and lilies, wraps
around the opposite side. Thanks
to the precision and tightness of
Lawson’s beadwork, the imagery,
as in a finely woven tapestry, is
strikingly distinct. The overall
effect is suggestive of the intricate
sequined mosaics found in Haitian
artwork.
The piano, imbued with sly touches by
the artist, resonates in a highly
personal way for Durel. On the front
is a red bull, which Lawson included
because Durel was born under the
sign of Taurus. Above the keyboard
is a small plastic slot machine
taken from a throw Lawson found
while scavenging on Fat Tuesday.
“I put it on because Marlene
likes to hit the machines,”
he explains, “and she’s
real lucky on ’em.” |
The
lid of "Voodoo Blues"
The imagery resonates in a highly
personal
way for the piano's owner, Marlene
Durel,
whose drinking establishments
pay homage to
the legendary voodoo queen Marie Laveau. |
"Voodoo
Blues" owl
The precision and tightness of Lawson's
beadwork often yields strikingly distinct
images. |
Also appearing on the piano’s lid
is an owl, whose feathers, Durel
points out, are rendered in “one-of-a-kind
beads”—a gift from street
person named George, who used to
wash the windows of Marie Laveau’s
on Decatur St. The brown, teardrop-shaped
beads are etched with lines and,
when laid in next to one another,
look just like feathers. Says Durel,
“A lot of special people [have]
given me certain beads that went
on the piano.”
The piano’s chair is also something
to behold. Lawson beaded it to cover
his bar tab at Voodoo Two, and his
girlfriend, Liz, covered the cushion
with a silver lame material that,
says Durel, “set the whole
thing off. It almost looks like
Liberace should be playing on that
piano.” |
No doubt the sequined crooner, if he
were alive, would get a kick out of Voodoo
Blues. Camp fashion-plate extraordinaire Elton
John almost certainly would, though he might
be hard-pressed to make Durel an offer she
couldn’t refuse.
“No one could ever buy it from me,”
she says. “I could be on skid
row, and I wouldn’t leave the
piano.”
More recently, Durel commissioned Lawson
to bead a mannequin for her new
poolhall bar, The Club Behind the
8 Ball, at 3715 Tchoupitoulas St.
To help decorate the place, Lawson
made a gift of an antique condom
machine (though he’s holding
on to another model, which he says
he’ll probably wind up beading).
Durel predicts good things for Lawson’s
mojo.
“When I met John, I met somebody
who was very wonderful—very
good-hearted—and never thought
so much of himself that he wasn’t
able to give. He gives a lot...and
he’ll always have luck and
he’ll always have the right
things happen to him.” |
Club
Behind the 8 Ball mannequin
Through skillfully rendered "negative"
(i.e., unbeaded)
space, Lawson was able to preserve
the piece's antique
quality. |
And as a matter of fact, things have
indeed been looking up for Lawson, who now
lives with Liz, a wig and hat maker, in a
comfortable French Quarter apartment. Plenty
of commissions are now coming his way. And,
thanks to media exposure and his lawsonworks.com
Internet site, his visibility is on the rise.
Venturing into the realm of pop art,
he has beaded a series of antique bathroom
scales. Suitable for wall hanging, they’re
emblazoned with words, such “Bitch,”
“Oh Well” and “I Luv You —“things,”
explains Lawson, “that you would normally
say to the bathroom scale, you know, when
you stand on it.” One of them, Cutie
Pie, has three winged, glow-in-the-dark king
cake babies encrusted amid the beadwork.
In January 2000, 10 of Lawson’s
scale works were featured in a show at the
Quarter Scene Restaurant, at 900 Dumaine St.
Its owner, David Favert, is an admirer of
Lawson's work. Hanging on a wall of the restaurant
is one of the artist's flat panels—a
beaded portrait of the Mexican painter Frida
Kahlo. Then there are the beaded tabletops
that Favert commissioned from Lawson. One
depicts dancing vegetables. The other is a
portrait of Tennessee Williams, embellished
with a streetcar and a French Quarter lamp
post. Appropriately, it covers table #1, where
the writer used to sit when he visited the
restaurant.
In the summer of 2000, Lawson's work
received national exposure through the New
Orleans installment of MTV's popular Real
World program. The idea behind the voyeuristic
series: Arrange for a diverse group of young
adults, who aren’t actors and don’t
know each other, to move into a house together
and then let the camera be a fly on the wall—recording
their supposedly unscripted, “real-world”
experiences and interpersonal dramas over
a six-month period.
Scouting around for distinctive furnishings
and objects d’art, the folks responsible
for decorating the New Orleans MTV house got
in touch with Lawson after having seen his
beadwork on display at Barrister’s Gallery.
They wound up negotiating with Spradlin to
borrow a beaded mannequin from his personal
collection and one of the panels from Garden
of Delights, the title of the work Spradlin
commissioned for the Audubon Hotel’s
bar top. (The panels had been completed but
were not yet installed.) Also displayed in
the house: one of Lawson's beaded skulls.
Further evidence that the artist is well
on his way to garnering wider recognition:
a commission from the Brennan family of New
Orleans, a veritable culinary dynasty, to
bead a grand piano for a new restaurant, Jazz
Kitchen, at Disneyland. It's called Take Five—a
nod to the song of the same name by jazz composer/keyboardist
Dave Brubeck, and the fact that it's the fifth
piano the artist has beaded. The design includes
musical notes, a large saxophone and flambeaux—the
fuel-burning torches utilized in some nighttime
Mardi Gras parades.
| In terms of aesthetics and clientele,
Disneyland is a far cry from the Audubon
Hotel. Just how far is made clear in a
new documentary, Rise, which explores
New Orleans' vibrant rave scene and the
impresario behind it—Donnie Estopinal,
a.k.a. Disco Donnie, who is a friend of
Lawson's. The raucous film, billed as
"an unforgettable journey into the
heart of the New Orleans underground,"
includes footage from Mardi Gras 1999
and interviews with some of the Audubon's
most notable denizens. One segment captures
Lawson in his studio, on the second floor
of the hotel, stomping around barefoot
in a pile of Mardi Gras beads—a consecration
ritual of sorts, in which he partakes
before starting a major piece of beadwork.
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After the film was shot, Lawson decided
to bead a flat-panel portrait of the rave
party promoter. Entitled Disco Don, and measuring
5 feet by 4 feet, it shows the subject striking
a pose in a disco suit, amid ascending spacecraft
reminiscent of Flash Gordon. When Disco Donnie
saw the finished piece, he "loved it,"
says Lawson, "and immediately bought
it." Subsequently, the image was incorporated
into a poster promoting a screening of the
film at the CMJ Filmfest in New York City.
Rise is sure to enhance the Audubon's
infamous mystique. Yet Lawson maintains that
the place isn't as “scary” as some
people might think. Noting its prime parade-viewing
location on St. Charles Ave., he says “it’s
the best place to be during Mardi Gras. It’s
open 24 hours, and if you get really tired,
you can rent a room.”
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