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Art

Sympathetic city

A displaced New Orleans artist finds a home in St. Petersburg and is back at work painting his "Pathetic Art" (that's a style, not an insult).

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published October 6, 2005

	[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]
	Ronnie Boudreaux, 45, paints in a style that finds the art in mundane objects. Pink Katrina Hanger (acrylic on canvas with oil stick) is among his latest collection.

ST. PETERSBURG - The road from the Big Easy to St. Petersburg hasn't been easy street for Ronnie Boudreaux, but he isn't complaining. The 45-year-old artist landed here about a month ago, fleeing Hurricane Katrina and leaving behind everything but a small bag of clothes and a toothbrush. Today he calls home a one-bedroom apartment downtown.

It's also his studio, and he has been working nonstop on a collection of new art he will debut Saturday in an ArtSpace studio during the monthly gallery walk sponsored by the Downtown Arts Association.

"I was born and raised in New Orleans," Boudreaux, a third-generation New Orleanian, said in a recent interview. "I rented an apartment in this wonderful old plantation house in the Lower Garden District. I don't drive, so I left with a friend in his truck early Sunday (Aug. 28), the day before Katrina hit. I've ridden out lots of hurricanes, but I just had a feeling this one was going to take out the city."

Boudreaux and his friend, Martin Cino, headed east in bumper-to-bumper traffic and eventually headed south to St. Petersburg, where Cino has family.

"I only expected to be gone a few days," Boudreaux said. But his day job as a waiter in a French Quarter restaurant no longer existed.

His friends have scattered, he said. Some he still hasn't been able to reach. Nor were there any tourists left to buy his work, which he sold on the sidewalk behind St. Louis Cathedral.

"So I'm planning to stay here," he said. "I haven't had a vacation in six or seven years, and I'm treating this as one. I've gotten checks from FEMA and the Red Cross that will tide me over."

Boudreaux said he was charmed by downtown St. Petersburg. "It's like New Orleans; you can walk everywhere," he said.

Cino stayed with his family, and Boudreaux found the Princess Martha Hotel. The management waived the usual move-in fees to help him get settled in a furnished apartment. He paints his canvases on the floor spread with newspapers.

A week ago, Boudreaux stopped in at the nearby Florida Craftsmen Gallery and met artist Mary Klein.

"Mary sat me down and we had a long conversation," he said. "I was still reeling from the whole situation. She found a studio (in ArtSpace, above Florida Craftsmen). She knew I didn't have any money, so Bill Killingsworth (ArtSpace manager) rented me one for a nickel."

Boudreaux was the subject of a Wall Street Journal story in 2001 , which was about a movement known as "Pathetic Art."

"It's taking stupid, ridiculous stuff and making them the subject of art," he said.

Boudreaux at the moment is painting a series of hangers, "because what's more ridiculous than a hanger?" he said. "Now it's funny because it plays on the fact that I am hanging right now, too."

Each hanger is perfectly centered on the canvas. Boudreaux uses several layers of acrylic paint, roughly applied as the background, which he sometimes scratches or builds up with oil stick crayons. Sometimes he attaches funny embellishments, such as an outline of plastic eyes.

Boudreaux thinks he will have at least 20 paintings ready to hang by Saturday and plans to sell them far below the price they fetched in New Orleans, sometimes several hundred dollars.

"I'll miss New Orleans. It's my home," he said. "But I'm really glad I relocated here. I don't know what brought me here, but there's more going on here in the arts, it seems, than there was there. I love the people. If I didn't believe in God, I do now. And he's in St. Petersburg."

- Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 5, 2005, 10:24:08]