Farrington Smith Gallery

It seems as if Adam is finding kittens here, there, and everywhere these days.

About 3 months ago, he was exploring an abandoned, flooded house. Not the typical kind that’s got broken windows, peeling paint, and a messed up roof that you see all over the place here in New Orleans, but one of those special ones that just looks like a mound covered in vines. I think these occur mainly in rural areas of the South, but this city has more than a few.

So he heard a mewing coming from inside the wall, one thing led to another, and he ended up carrying this black fuzz ball of a kitten home to me in the breast pocket of his shirt. I bottle fed the kitten for a few weeks, and now he’s a bona fide member of our family along with my other three cats.

His name is Wally- get it? He’s the black one on the right.

The one on the left is another find of Adam’s.

A couple weeks ago, on the last Saturday we had the gallery open on Royal Street, Adam found a mixed breed Siamese kitten on the sidewalk of the French Quarter. We were definitely at our limit cat-wise, but with the SPCA and other rescue organizations so depleted of resources around here, I decided to take responsibility for finding this no-name kitten a home.

I asked around to all our friends and sent out a mass email to all our local contacts, but no one wanted to adopt. Luckily, once the ad I placed in The Times-Picayune was published, I was inundated with calls. And luckily again, the first woman to come look at the kitten was a true cat lover. She and her family lost their house and all their belongings in the hurricane, as well as her 16-year-old cat, which was boarded in a facility that flooded.

So little no-name kitty went with her, and we got to make a small contribution to this family’s rebuilding. It feels good.

-Amy

No longer in the French Quarter, the Farrington Smith Gallery is now at 2514 St. Claude Avenue. The move brings the retail part of our operation closer to the creative part of the process, because Adam’s studio is behind the storefront of the new location.

Adam and I live above the gallery and Scott lives in Treme. All of us love this part of town the way it is, but we also hope that more and more interesting businesses start populating it over here…not that we don’t appreciate furniture stores, of course! So in that sense, we hope we are part of an early wave of something bigger.

Opening the French Quarter space back in November was a spontaneous decision born out of frustration, pent-up energy and love for the city. We had been back for over a month but still had no electricity, so Adam couldn’t make art or otherwise work. People were filtering their way back and businesses were reopening here and there, but there was so much devestation all around.

Doing something positive seemed like the thing to do. By opening the gallery, we all felt as if we were digging in our heels and creating a bright spot. We wanted to bring a jolt of vitality to the city we love and to our own day-to-day lives. Now that the city is on it’s way back, we have an opportunity to get a little more specific and focus on the part of the city that we happen to love the best.

The move also simplifies our lives, both in the obvious, financial way, but also how we get to direct our energies. We will miss being right there on Royal Street, hanging out and seeing who happens by. But we all can’t wait to get going on some new ideas that have been simmering on the back burner due to lack of time.

We will be open on Saturdays from 10-5 and will be available for appointments as well. Just give us a call for that.

-Amy

This Friday, April 28th, the Royal St. art district will be celebrating After Fest from 6-10 p.m.

Lots of galleries are participating; come look at some art, walk around the good old French Quarter and have a drink. We will all be there in our newly spiffed-up gallery; Scott and I have been repainting and Scott has been rearranging. It’s looking great, if I do say so myself!

Also, in this week’s Gambit, our local weekly paper, you can see one of our fish prints on the Shop Around Town page. I haven’t seen it yet, but a friend called to say she thought it looked very eye-catching.

Adam and Scott are working on getting a new round of prints ready for the Jazz Fest crowds we hope will be here for the next two weekends. I think I’m going to Jazz Fest for the first time ever on Sunday, so I’ll post about that next week!

- Amy

ETA in May: I never really posted about Jazz Fest, but I went one day both weekends, and I sort of get it now…even though I still don’t like crowds or sun without shade. But I imagine I’ll go again. Elvis Costello was great playing with Alan Toussaint and I had about 3 different amazing snacks involving crawfishies.