Andrew LaMar Hopkins
“John James Audubon Floats by A Beautiful Creole Free Woman of Color,” 18 x 14 acrylic on canvas board
In this stunning work, artist and antiquarian Andrew LaMar Hopkins imagines a scene the artist and naturalist John James Audubon might have encountered during his explorations around the Louisiana region: a Creole woman, dressed to the nines, shares the bayou’s shores with an egret. A distinctly Creole feature of Louisiana plantations, a pigeonnier (such as the one at Longue Vue)—adopted from French architectural fashions—stands in the background. The image holds within it multiple intersecting threads that tie this collection of “Deep South Design” stories together. There’s the influence of free Creoles of color living on plantations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, explored through a deep dive into African House at Melrose Plantation. There’s classic New Orleans fashions, preserved in the fantastical world of Yvonne Lafleur’s shop. John James Audubon even makes an appearance, in discussions of the integral historic restoration work Lance Malley and his team at The Architectural Studio have done at Oakley House in St. Francisville. And then there is Hopkins himself, an artist inspired by the work of Clementine Hunter (whose work endures inside African House), who is described by writer Cayman Clevenger as a “reanimator of cultural memory.” In his home as well as in his art, he reconstructs and restores the built environments of days past, in all their adornments. It’s work akin to that of historical restoration, the work conducted by Malley, as well as Trey Trahan—who returns to the plantation at Live Oak and asks, through the language of design: how do we, faithfully, carry this place’s stories into the future?
