Help Us Repaint Beauty Plus with Beautiful Murals
Donation protected
Please support our new collaborative murals on St. Claude & Elysian Fields Ave!
People for Public Art’s team of local women & non-binary muralists is joining forces with the Young Artist Movement (YAM) to repaint the old Beauty Plus building at 1101 Elysian Fields Ave.
We're asking our community to help us raise $16,000 so we can achieve our project budget of $30,000 to paint the entire Beauty Plus building with murals, resulting in a beautiful and impactful public art project that will be visible from 3 sides on both St. Claude Ave and Elysian Fields Ave.
Your support will help us cover the following costs:
- Artist fees for 6 professional women and non-binary muralists to paint the mural and mentor the teen artist cohort
- High-quality, highly pigmented exterior paints
- High-quality UV varnish to prevent paint colors from fading over time
- Graffiti protectant varnish
People for Public Art collaborators Monica Rose Kelly, Tyla Maiden, and Sasha Kopfler all painted murals that were part of the original series on Beauty Plus, which were painted over in 2021. This prompted us to reach out to the building owners, a Vietnamese family from New Orleans East who are opening an internationally-inspired restaurant complex in the building. We have since engaged them in dialogue around the value of public art at this intersection and collaborative ways to bring the murals back. They are in support of our vision and contributed some funding to restore the presence of vibrant artwork on the walls.
Their contribution, combined with support from Arts New Orleans’ Young Artist Movement program, Spectrum Arts NOLA, and NOTCF have supported initial design and mural education workshops for our YAM youth artists, as well as our first round of supplies. All youth artists will receive fair working artist fees for their participation.
To reach our $30,000 total project budget, we seek to raise $16,000 via GoFundMe to bring the murals to life. Along with the contributions of initial donors, your donations will fund materials needed to complete 5,000+ square feet of murals and ensure fair wages to our team of lead professional muralists who will be working alongside YAM youth artists.
Our lead artists have already guided YAM youth artists through a series of workshops to plan the design of the murals. The mural concept is inspired by the herbs and plants that have contributed to the international food culture of New Orleans, especially those grown by our Vietnamese communities. The youth artists are adding portraits of themselves interacting with food/herbs, using some of their own photography for reference material. The mural will be created with several different techniques including acrylic, aerosol, and even watercolor! Our youth artists have dreamed up some design ideas to improve bike safety on the corner as well.
Lead Artist Team:
Monica Rose Kelly (@monicakellystudio)
Tyla Maiden (@tylamadeit)
Sasha Kopfler (@sosh.0)
Gabby Tolliver (@gabbytolliverart)
Lillian Aguinaga (@lillianaguinaga)
Journey Allen (@artistjourneyallen)
Learn more about People for Public Art, our artist-run mural collective: https://www.peopleforpublicart.com/
Instagram: @peopleforpublicart https://www.facebook.com/PeopleForPublicArt/
Learn more about Young Artist Movement, a program of Arts New Orleans: https://www.artsneworleans.org/collection/young-artist-movement-yam/
Instagram: @this.is.yam
Learn more about Spectrum Arts NOLA, the new arts youth education initiative founded by Artist Journey Allen:
Instagram: @spectrumartsnola
Organizer
People for Public Art
Organizer
New Orleans, LA