Ask the team · Bywater, New Orleans
The Art Program
The Art Program.
The art in the villas was made for these rooms by New Orleans artists: painted, tufted, and built onto the walls.
CastleDay is run, designed, and operated by locals, and the art is by locals too. We asked seven New Orleans artists to make work for the rooms: the Bywater, the river, and the animals and plants of Louisiana are the subjects.
The work is in four forms: hand-painted murals, tufted canvases, screenprinted mobiles, and macramé. Each piece was made for the wall it is on. The living-room mural is different in each villa: a red flower-snake at The Herald, alligators at The Cocodrie, and a blue flower-snake at The Florentine.
Mural & painting · The dining rooms
Maddie Stratton
Maddie Stratton is a New Orleans painter who works in color, animals, and plants. In the dining rooms she extends her paintings across the walls with one-color murals and found objects.
Each villa has its own subject. At The Herald, the warehouse next door, which once housed the tractors that pulled the Mardi Gras floats down St. Charles Avenue. At The Cocodrie, the Mississippi seen from Crescent Park. At The Florentine, a Louisiana-coast beach looking toward the Gulf, with two oil rigs painted on the wall.
@maddiestratton →Mural · The living rooms
Hill Landry
Hill Landry painted the living-room murals: Louisiana reptiles at room scale on each villa's main accent wall, around the square-window grid. The Herald has a red flower-snake in reds and marigolds. The Cocodrie has alligators (Cocodrie is Louisiana French for alligator). The Florentine has a blue flower-snake.
@hill.handed →Screenprinted mobile · The stairwells
Antonia Zennaro
Antonia Zennaro's photo-based screenprinted mobiles hang above the stairwells. They show the bridges, trains, and waterways near Japonica Street, and the site's past as the SPCA.
@antoniazennaro →Mural & painting · The bedrooms
Zac Maras
Zac Maras made painted cutouts of Louisiana species: fish going up a bedroom wall at The Florentine, and a crawfish standing off the wall at The Cocodrie.
@zmarasart →Tufted paintings · The bedrooms
Jess C.X
Jess C.X's tufted works hang above the beds. They are based on Harold Fisk's maps of the Mississippi's old channels and the migratory bird paths that follow them.
@jessc.x →Mural & macramé · The bedrooms
Weepy Weaver
Every spring, yellow cat's-claw vine blooms over the roofs of New Orleans houses. Catherine Goll (Weepy Weaver) recreates that in fabric and weave: chartreuse and gold yarn over a painted cottage.
@weepyweaver →Painting · The bedrooms
Epaul Julien
Epaul Julien paints on discarded New Orleans fleur-de-lis window frames. The portraits are of the city's musicians: Louis Armstrong at The Herald, Fats Domino at The Cocodrie, and Mahalia Jackson at The Florentine.
@epauljulien →Every piece in the villas was made by a New Orleans artist for the room it is in.
See it in person
The art is in the villas.
Each villa has a different living-room mural. The villa pages show the rooms.
See the villas