Happy Jazz & Heritage Festival 2012 this coming weekend. We are also putting out the LAST call for Rockmore's to be considered for the Louisiana Arts & Science Museum Show in 2013 by curator, Elizabeth Weinstein and for inclusion in The New Rockmore Documentary by Nomme de Guerre's TG Herrington. We are in the very final stages of adding Rockmore's discovered over the past 6 years and we will send them on soon, so PLEASE send us your image if we have not seen your Rockmore yet!  

 

Noel Rockmore loved going into the working class sections of a community like the Bowery in New York or Treme in New Orleans and sketching its people as he found them in the early 60s. Nobody did that in New Orleans before Noel Rockmore; going into Treme just did not make sense to most artists. Who would buy the work and what was the point of sketching folks in the African American section of town. Noel Rockmore was not most people however; he was color blind and simply saw himself as the documenter of the human condition as he found it. Rockmore is "The Master American Artist" who dared to document the human condition of all people in a segregated New Orleans in the early 60s. We are proud that The Cahoon Museum recognizes that and chose to include him in this show! 

 

This coming Thursday, April 26th at 9PM ET on eBay, the 10 works below from the Shirley Marvin Collection will be auctioned off. One of the works, "Smoky Mary - The Milneberg train" is actually Jazzfest related. Rockmore was the artist in residence who covered the 1st Jazzfest and also commissioned to do an "Homage to the Jazzfest" by George Wein and the "Jazz Train - Smoky Mary was part of that Homage.

#602 Smoky Mary on eBay - Click for Details

 Rockmore and Bruce Brice were commissioned by George Wein to do the first Jazzfest poster in 1970. Brice was to do the one that was displayed and sold at the Festival and Rockmore did the first Commemorative Poster that was sold through Larry Borenstein. George Wein, the Jazzfest promoter, was introduced to New Orleans, Borenstein & to Rockmore by Shirley Marvin who was a neighborhood friend growing up in Boston. Bruce Brice started out as a framer for Larry Borenstein and was encouraged by Rockmore as his Folk Artist career began to take off in the late 60s. All of these folks from all walks of life working together to make something that is now a part of history! How cool is that!