We were lucky to catch up with Lissie Stewart recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Lissie , thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I’ve been very blessed to work on many meaningful projects through our nonprofit. Most recently I facilitated “Art in the Park”, a $10,000 public art initiative supporting an artist cohort in the creation of en plein air paintings at the Audubon Louisiana Nature Center. After extending a Call for Artists across the state, the 2023 Art in the Park Cohort was selected through a highly competitive process. Artists, families, art and nature lovers were encouraged to come and witness a day of painting and enjoying the 86 acres of mixed forest habitat and wetlands that the nature center has to offer. On Saturday September 16th ten Louisiana based artists took over the Audubon for a day of public art and appreciation of our natural surroundings. 10 Artists. 1 Day. 10 Artworks.
With much consideration I decided funds would be best spent if they were distributed among several artists for the creation of a public art engagement and a diverse collection of artwork for public display. As our organization is very committed to environmental awareness, I knew I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a park or nature preserve for the project. The Audubon in the East is a stunning location and my daughter actually goes to Nature School there two days a week. Little did I know when we started this project how meaningful the partnership with the Audubon would be. It was an unexpected added benefit to be able to promote the Nature Center, while using art to interpret ideas and concepts reflecting changing environments specific to Southeastern Louisiana. After those aims were established, the project really began to take shape in the meaningful way I was hoping it could.
The collection aims to call audiences to action in the environmental issues that impact our region. This collection highlights the beauty in nature, while contextualizing its fragility and examining our relationship with the natural resources available to us, addressing important cultural topics such as conservation and green infrastructure initiatives in our community. Discussions including history of landscape painting and literature, conveying specific political messages about what land is and who has the right to move through it, are encouraged. The collection invites audience participation and discussion about sustaining nature in urbanized areas and the conflicts associated with New Orleans’ unique relationship with the wetlands and river. Through documenting the post Katrina reconstruction of the Audubon Nature Center after the devastation of flooding, we can reflect on our roles in environmental stewardship, preservation, and sustainability.
The culminating exhibition for the 2024 Art in the Park is scheduled to open in December of this year. In addition to all the planning involved in creating the project, I am charged with framing all works and curating the exhibition for public viewing this winter.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My background is in Fine Art and Art Education, where I worked for ten years as a teaching artist in NOLA public schools. I’m a TeachNOLA Master Teacher and oversaw the Talented Visual Arts Department and Advanced Placement Studio Art program, while working in room 208 at Edna Karr. After leaving the classroom to raise my daughter I obtained my Masters Degree in Educational Leadership and continued to work with students as a State Certified Evaluator of Talented Art. I also became a certified Louisiana Master Gardener and certified Permaculture Designer (Oregon State University). I am the Executive Director and Founder of the NOLA Artist Incubator.
The NOLA Artist Incubator was born out of the Galvez Garden, a social practice project and teaching garden located in St. Roch. Establishing the community garden was my way to give back to the community while creating a green space in the neighborhood. Someone asked me if we were a nonprofit, and when I told them no, they asked, “Why not?”. I didn’t have an answer, and just repeated the question to myself for the next few weeks. When founding the organization I was led by the saying, “If you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life”, and quickly decided on three focus areas: Arts; education and community involvement; and, sustainability. Creating a network of makers for a more sustainable New Orleans, we believe in the power of art to transform spaces. Through establishing the NOLA Artist Incubator I advocate for the arts, education and the environment through the Galvez Garden and my daily operations of the organization.
While I left the classroom to raise my daughter I never stopped loving teaching. I developed Budding Artists, a free arts and literature program for 2-5 year olds and their caregivers focused on creating sustainable art based on nature. In the spring we offered weekly classes at no cost for participants through a partnership with New Orleans Public Library. It received tremendous praise and we’re looking forward to continuing our programming in 2024.
We also built the Magical Mobile Art Cart, a whimsical traveling makerspace designed to spread the love of art and gardening to different locations. We debuted our art cart at the Jazz and Heritage Festival and facilitated art projects for visitors in the Peace Garden, outside of the Children’s Tent for all seven days of the festival. We’re looking forward to returning to Jazz Fest for 2024. It has since delivered Sustainable Environmental Art Delivery (S.E.A.D.) programing at the 2023 Kid smART Art Jam, and of course at the Galvez Garden. That was a fun day! We had a second line with a traditional masking Indian and hired Bogue Chitto to perform an acoustic performance while painting a rain barrel with children and community members to share with another community garden. I’m excited about partnering with local schools, bringing the Magical Mobile Art Cart to their sites to plant gardens and create art with more students in the future.
In its first year of operation we created the Artist-in-Residency program and invited our first artist, Anna K. Lemnitzer, MFA to create a sculpture in the garden. We continued to advocate for artists through multiple events that supported our mission to create a network of makers for a more sustainable New Orleans. We thoroughly enjoyed the connections and impact we made through Art in the Park, and hope to gain funding to make this an annual event. I look forward to creating more opportunities for local artists and culture bearers through my role at the Incubator.
Perhaps what’s most exciting about the nonprofit is that I organized it to still permit me time to create. I was a featured artist in a collaborative art showcase, “Placeholder” in January and thoroughly enjoyed my Artist-in-Residency at the Louisiana Children’s Museum through their Studio in the Park this summer. I’m painting a mural for my daughter’s school this Fall and planning for an upcoming installation, this Spring, in which I was selected to create meaningful interactive art for the Committee for a Better New Orleans “Civic Arts Challenge”. In my role at the nonprofit I get to actively support other artists, while still being able to authentically express myself as an artist and participate in my individual artistic pursuits.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Umm…2020, anyone? But seriously, I became a first time mother in December of 2019 and had just completed course work for grad school at the start of 2020. The plan was to be a stay at home mom and become more involved in local community matters before returning to the educational sector. But no one could have anticipated the pandemic and how isolating it would be to try and raise a baby in a vacuum. And, the idea of going back to a virtual classroom had no appeal to me.
Our family took the threat of Covid very seriously and I insisted on not getting my baby exposed. As such, I was at home with my husband and daughter for the first two years of her life. I found one early childhood play date program that I felt we could safely explore socialization for an hour a day that we visited weekly. They had Covid protocols that limited the number of attending families and required masking, but that was the only exception to our “stay at home” routine. We wouldn’t take her to public places unless they were outside, so daily walks became of great importance. It was over that time that I developed the idea of starting a community garden.
I spent months researching programs, properties, and the benefits of sustainable urban agriculture. I ultimately discovered a land stewardship program offered through the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority called “Growing Green” aimed at taking city owned vacant lots and turning them into public green spaces of value. I worked diligently to create a proposal for the program and on December 11th, 2021 the Galvez Garden was established. Truly a labor of love, the garden was my pandemic obsession.
After vaccines for children became available our world got so much brighter! But by this time I had formed the NOLA Artist Incubator and was already offering programming through the garden. Knowing I could go back to teaching or even try my hand at administration, I made the decision to take the road less traveled and pursue the nonprofit at full steam.
I enrolled my daughter in preschool -two half days a week- when she turned three and started to actively grow the organization. I still had time to teach her and watch her grow, but took full advantage of nap time and days she was at school to run the Incubator. As time went on we received local and federal funding to grow the Galvez Garden into a USDA People’s Garden with an open area surrounded by native plants and a vegetable garden with 10 raised beds to grow food to share with the community. We partnered with Compost NOW to serve as a food scrap collection site and average diverting 100 pounds of food waste weekly at the garden. We became an LSUAg approved Master Gardener project site and have Master Gardener Volunteers assisting with keeping the property maintained.
Our organization also grew its educational outreach programming and gained more funders to support our efforts in advocating for the arts. We are currently in a selective cohort led by Artspace Immersion, a capacity-building program for arts and cultural organizations planning for new space. I’m learning about raising capital funding in efforts to gain a building for Incubator as we continue to expand our organization and meet the objectives of our mission. We are in the process of partnering with other community based nonprofits to find ways to create more opportunities for meaningful public art and more avenues to support local artists.
It’s funny, I decided to go to work for myself to make my own hours. Now I just work 80 hour weeks…Ha! But I love putting the time into the organization; it doesn’t feel like work. If you’d have asked me in 2020 if I thought I’d be the Executive Director of a 501c3 nonprofit, I would have laughed. It’s exciting and rewarding work though, and if you ask me now, I can’t imagine doing anything else!
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Obviously, if it hasn’t come across yet, I’m a bit of a gardening enthusiast. But my connection with gardening is so much greater than just getting my hands in the dirt. (Admittedly I am happiest in paint covered overalls and with soil under my fingernails…) My mission as an artist and in operating the NOLA Artist Incubator is inspired by our relationship with our environment.
Living in New Orleans I am acutely aware of environmental factors that influence our life. When we first purchased our home, we planted trees to help reduce flooding on the property. The same can be said of starting the garden. Our first task was planting trees to add to the canopy while mitigating heat island effects. Along with other residents of NOLA, My family and I have been personally impacted by the increasing frequency and severity of weather related events. I am very much moved by the work of coastal restoration organizations and volunteers. New Orleans is like no other city in the country, and this is my home. It is deeply personal that I use my art to create dialogue around raising awareness about coastal restoration efforts, the benefits of sustainable urban agriculture, and environmental conservation.
In my installation piece, “In Place; Reflections on Sustainable Practices in New Orleans” I aimed to draw attention to the work of others in efforts to restore the bayou and oyster reefs that help protect Louisiana’s eroding coast line. The use of recycled glass sand, reclaimed cypress wood, oyster shells, and specific plants used to restore the bayou pay homage to the changemakers that are working towards coastal restoration efforts in the most fragile spaces of our community. Over the course of my time as the Louisiana Children’s Museum Artist-in-Residency I worked with children in an “Art and Entomology” project teaching the value of beneficial insects to museum visitors. In my upcoming exhibition I’m creating an interactive meditation garden with a plant based wishing wall for community members to grow intentions of, “Dreams they have for a better New Orleans”. Through this installation I hope to create a dialogue among residents that leads to calls for action to improve the areas identified in need of remediation through the process of the project.
Guided with the mission, “to create a network of makers for a more sustainable New Orleans”, the nonprofit’s art education programs promote sustainable art making and environmental stewardship. Through the NOLA Artist Incubator we strive to make all our public art draw attention to bigger environmental challenges facing our city. While providing opportunities for artists to create, facilitating projects under this mandate ensures that all artwork is embedded with another level of meaningful contributions to the community. Just as Art in the Park drew attention to preservation, our upcoming public art project aims to draw attention to environmental and historical challenges facing NOLA East. You’ll have to stay tuned to learn more about this large scale project in the works!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://nolaartistincubator.org
- Instagram: https://Instagram.com/nolaartistincubator
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/idigitnola
Image Credits
Lissie Stewart, M.Ed.