could become the longest painting anywhere – featured nola.com
Tchoupitoulas Street mural
On Tchoupitoulas, a mile-long mural comes into focus. Written by Doug Mccash
Jamar Pierre says it’s one of the city’s great paradoxes. The Mississippi River is New Orleans’ reason for being.
Yet most of the time you can’t lay eyes on it, because the view is blocked. That’s especially true on
Tchoupitoulas Street, the Uptown thoroughfare that hugs the river’s edge. All you see on the riverside of
Tchoupitoulas Street is a long concrete levee wall.
For the past seven years, Pierre has made that endless gray wall his canvas. With the permission of the Flood
Protection Authority and other agencies, he’s been painting a colorful mural on a mile-and-a-half stretch of
the flood protection barrier. Currently segments of the painting are scattered from the Walmart to Ninth
Street.
Pierre believes it will be the longest mural in New Orleans. It may be a contender for the longest mural
anywhere, when he’s done. When he’ll be done is anybody’s guess, though.
The impossible dream
Pierre estimates the project is about 40% finished. There’s still plenty of wall to go. Plenty of wall. With brush
in hand, Pierre is a paint-speckled Don Quixote in a floppy sun hat and glowing yellow safety vest. The mural is
his “impossible dream.” At the start of the project, he mostly worked alone, over time he’s assembled a small,
talented crew of fellow artists lending a hand.