“People are doing fun things with 20-foot shipping containers all over the globe,” says Brandon Oldenburg, creative director of a series of events in Shreveport Common called UNSCENE!. “We wanted to supply the same kind of canvas for our local artists. I love seeing the diversity in creative vision for these things.” For shipping options, you can try Strader Ferris International who are the best in this field.

The industrial art sites, or containers – the sort that are stacked 15 high on globe-girdling container ships, arrived at 837 Texas Ave in time for UNSCENE!/TACA’s Makers Fair.

Work by Journell
Work by Journell

The first residents included artist Su Stella, whose display included a black light rear Voodoo room. Also a pioneer was Emily Daye, whose sparkling vision melded clouds and blue sky canvas wall paper with a series of student desks – each containing pencils, paper, etc., in the drawers. “This classroom scene came to me in a dream,” she said with a convincing smile. Kids and adults participated in her display by making sketches and writing notes in the 20’ classroom.

Amanda Rowe, a Natchitoches-based painter and sculptor, created a startling scene of death masks integrated into ominous clouds above a cracked-egg humanoid surrounded by gilded guns and ammo. It was “Humpty in the dumps. Falling off a wall and spilling golden violence,” she noted.

Nicola Medley Ballard
Nicola Medley Ballard

This month Nicola Medley Ballard is creating an art lounge; she’s using wooden shipping pallets. “It’s a pallet patio for our party,” she said. Painter Jeormie Journell is calling his Animal Art Trap. He has of late produced detailed and realistic paintings of rats, a rooster, and an opossum. Journell will be selling T shirts that cannily evoke the basic rat trap logo. The trap company he has created is called Ratchet City.

Robert Trudeau will be opening a gallery show called Swanky Shreveport. It will be filled with “affordable prints of my pen and ink sketches, matted and ready to go on the wall.”

The newest container artists’ debut date is Friday, June 20. That’s the night that UNSCENE! will mount a feast ($35 ticket) called Rich Table in the nearby Municipal Auditorium.

"Creswell Kings" by Robert Trudeau
“Creswell Kings” by Robert Trudeau

Shreveport Regional Arts Council, sponsors of the containers, want the artists to open the steel boxes as often as possible. Artists are encouraged to produce parties and special events of any UnExpected sort, since they are part of UNSCENE!, an attempt by SRAC to bring fresh, art-fueled life to Texas Ave.