Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Hattiesburg, Mississippi (click on the photo for slideshow)

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile, Alabama (click on the photo for slideshow)

New Orleans

New Orleans (click on the photo for slideshow)

Train Ride from Houston, TX to New Orleans, LA

Train Ride from Houston, Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana (click on the photo for slideshow)

Trinh Le Biloxi, Mississippi Tour

Trinh Le's Biloxi Tour November 2008 (click on the photo for slideshow)

November 15- 22, 2008 Biloxi, Mississippi- Gulfport, Mississippi- Mobile, Alabama

Biloxi- Mobile (click on the photo for slideshow)

Blog for Biloxi & Mobile

Howdy blog devotees!
We’ve been away from catching you up on our many accomplishments and milestones because we’ve been so busy.

I’m currently in Biloxi (pronounced /bi lux’ ee/), sitting with Elia Arce and preparing for a meeting today with representatives of the diverse communities found here (Vietnamese, African American, Latina/o, Croation, to name a few). Today’s meeting is focusing on making a walking tour brochure to show the civil rights and struggles of the area as well as to bring more arts to the area. Some of the groups represented are the University of Southern Mississippi – Long Beach Campus, Hands Across America, East Biloxi Relief and Redevelopment Agency, and more. The people we’ve been meeting are devoted to the intersections of people that we know as community (broad sense of the term, and yet the personal sense too). They’re devoted to social activism, including the arts as a significant part of this. Elia and I are so impressed with them all that we’re referring to them as “the real deal.”

We’ve found the real deal in unsuspecting places: an owner of a Latina/o store named La Bamba who’s so excited that she was already planning an entire event for us. :-) We spoke with shrimpers who explained their business and how Hurricane Katrina is still have a detrimental effect on their business (shrimp boats are commonly being sold for half their value as people leave this long-standing local business). We saw Lady Patrice singing at a local bar, Just Us, that we’re hoping to meet because she knocked our socks off.

And of course we’ve had some fun moments to ourselves as well, drinking beer on the beach (don’t tell the authorities we had glass bottles!); putting on the Waffle House songs from their juke box; chatting with wait staff and counter staff at various places. Although a little chilly, it’s been very sunny and we’ve shed the humidity of Houston – ahhhhhhh.


Oskar Sonnen

Hot, Humid & Steamy

So, we are getting ready for our first trip!

Oskar Sonnen will accompany me to Biloxi and Mobile this coming Nov. 15th to Nov. 22nd.

We will be meeting with Community Empowerment Coordinator Trinh Le from the East Biloxi Coordination, Relief and Redevelopment Agency and with Developer of Housing First Enterprises Emile Wilson from Housing First, Inc. in Mobile. Both are 2008 New Voices Fellows.

We will also have the great opportunity to meet with Deanne Nuwer from the Katrina Research Center at the University of Southern Mississippi and at with Susan Fitzsimmons, head of the Art Department. Curator Anna Harris at the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi and Jason Clark, gallery manager and exhibitions coordinator at Space 301 in Mobile, Alabama have also gracefully accepted to meet with us. We are extremely excited to say the least and look forward to posting photos from our trip when we get back to Houston.

Until then!

Elia Arce

Artistic Director