Kady Yellow is a street art advocate and self-proclaimed graffiti scholar who is also the woman behind New Orleans: Murals, Street Art & Graffiti  Volume 1, a new book documenting much of the city’s public art. Featuring works by more than 70 artists as well as interviews, biographies and never-before published stories and photographs, the book is the first of its kind. Currently available for purchase through her website (and at Octavia, Blue Cypress, Garden District or Frenchmen Art & Books), the tome is more than 160 pages long (and proceeds from its sales go towards “organized mural programming’).

Kady spoke at length with OffBeat.com about New Orleans street art, her history in the arts and future plans.

Who are you and why street art, why NOLA?
I grew up poor in post-industrial up-state NY with little to no access to the arts. Single mother, three little girls, addict, average household income $20,000 at times. It’s okay to say that I have seen the darker sides of what it means to be human and so I have always sought beauty. There, we say ‘Eds or Meds’ meaning we either work in a school or at a hospital. I’ve always had a wild imagination largely because of raising myself and ended up in the more mysterious corners of life. As I got older, I worked very hard to address issues of access for both the next generation and myself by committing my life to arts management. Street art was the answer, free to consume and outdoors, no stuffy places to go into. I started the Department of Public Art in my hometown, which included a gallery I volunteer-directed and an annual MuralFest. I taught mural-making workshops, helped City Hall sanction wheat-paste and establish a Public Art Advisory Board, which I was named to. I was also appointed the youngest Commissioner for Downtown Development. I was 18, 19 and 20 doing all this.

In my early 20s, wanting for more, I moved to graffiti’s stomping grounds –NYC– where I worked in the street art world in Brooklyn for one year as an undergraduate adjunct and teaching muralist. While in Brooklyn, I was painting in a jam on Halsey Street and felt selfish for veering too far towards making art and not providing it. I put the paint down and committed fully to the provider and teacher roles. As an organizer, I focus on programming: getting walls to create opportunities for both artists to get paid and everyday people to have access to art. Then, I moved to New Orleans in the summer of 2015, and have been based here since. I got myself into UNO’s Arts Management Master’s Program and worked on Royal Street dealing art, with summers spent on street art, mural, and public art projects in Alaska, Ireland, and most recently Flint, MI, and California. I most recently organized a street art conference with the University of Michigan-Flint during the first Free City Mural Festival, crowd-funded and self-published New Orleans: Murals, Street Art & Graffiti Volume One and now write for Street Art United States and Inspiring City (London).

What makes New Orleans street art distinctive from the street art of other cities, the street art of New York or Berlin?
In 2018 I went to Berlin to research both Banksy and Martha Cooper’s Library in Urban Nation Museum. In 2016, Banksy’s former manager Steve Lazarides organized a retrospective “Banksy Unauthorised,” that he knew the artist would not like. As the show traveled, Banksy took to his site to list his sanctioned, free shows and discourage attendance at Lazarides’ paid shows. The battle continued over the internet and then, in 2018, a Belgian court shut down the show over questions about ownership of the 58 works on view. I was also there to document Flower Thrower as the site was being developed. Berlin is incredible for this art form and has a storied history with graffiti and so it’s nearly impossible to compare NOLA and Berlin.

I was there for less than a month; I do not yet have a world-view on this art form. I am only a decade into a lifetime of work. With that, I can speak to only really knowing the scene in NYC. NYC was where graffiti started (in the United States), arguably in the ’70s with TAKI 183 (or for the super-nerds with Julio, a Puerto Rican teenager who began throwing up JULIO 204 in the late 1960s). Back then you could get up, but now it’s a police state. There are some spots, but they’re territorial and nothing compares to 5pointz (RIP). I was recently asked a question like this, to compare NOLA to other places, and so I would say there are stylistic differences, scale, ego and messaging. We can count the local crews on one hand, whereas other places like NYC and Berlin have more than you can count.

They are different in enforcement and control. I pay attention to both the underground scene and the formal-permission world. For example, there’s compelling litigation around street art and graff in Detroit and New York right now, a national stage New Orleans just walked up onto. A New Orleans federal judge ruled that city’s regulation process for street art violated First Amendment rights—which means artists now have more freedom to express themselves here.

In most urban cities, you can just paint anywhere and whatever you want but you can’t just come up into New Orleans and do that, as we saw with the Muck Rock saga and even the destruction of Banksy’s works in 2008. It’s way smaller than NYC and Berlin. It is a sacred place in so many ways, even to the local graff writers. I was recently quoted in CURBED magazine as saying “In New Orleans, you can get up. You can paint anywhere.” What I meant is the guys that do it here, really get up. They can practically go out in broad daylight because they are the ones policing the streets and because the police are much busier with more heinous crimes. You can not do that in NYC today.

Despite its small size and relative obscurity in the world of street art, New Orleans is original in the art that’s here. It has roots in the original muralist movement, where walls depict, preserve and present history (see Ayo Scott’s piece on Press Street or Henry Lipkis’ Third Line mural on St. Claude Ave.). Also, for a town its size and with a limited collection of pieces that are out and about, there are really well-known names here: Kobra, Drew Meritt, READ, Louis Masai, Nick Walker, Banksy, Swoon, Bmike, Shiro, Hugo Gyrl…

Since street art, by its nature, is ephemeral, what effect does capturing this art form in a book like New Orleans: Murals, Street Art & Graffiti Vol. 1 have on the way people interact with street art? 
The book covers all three art forms: street art, murals, and graff, which are different. They’re different in style, tools, culture, approach/technique, and social scene, although they cross-pollinate. Street art and graff, since often unsanctioned and unpaid for are ephemeral and so I take my role as a visual storyteller seriously.

In my line of work all I want is for the people who do not look up and all around them, to start. And for those that do, to take time to stop and learn the story behind the art. Especially in New Orleans. I want people to know the art they see every day by reading this book and to learn why Jay McKay’s signature is the camouflage, or why Fat Kids’ work feels nostalgic when you see it, or who the women are in SWAN’s portraits.

What do you hope this book will achieve?
I made the book for three main reasons: to raise the visibility of each artist and the New Orleans street art scene, to tell stories about NOLA that aren’t commonly associated with it (stories other than music and food) and keep the art form authentic, and to get artists paid. As I was learning more I was finding myself in other graff/street art worlds and people did not have any idea what was going on in NOLA. Secondly, I wanted a succinct way to share the stories of the entire New Orleans scene, the flavor, the uniquenesses. I started it in 2017 as a graduate school assignment idea and then when I was in Berlin, I got access to the Martha Cooper Library and I had this moment: we need to document this more. We need to tell the stories. We need more people, authentically from the scene, to write about it and it can’t be all pictures — it needs to tell about the people and their intentions and how they got going.

Do you have a favorite art piece, interview or artist’s story featured in the book?
I try to not have favorites as a guiding principle in the work that I do. I work hard to present the facts and stories, and not share opinions or interpretations of the art. With that, replace “favorite” with “memorable.” For an art piece, it is Danae Brissonnet’s “Change” Mural at Fairgrinds. It’s wild and original, technically stunning and she has quite the lifestyle. A true commitment to the movement. A most memorable story is that of a living legend with Will Kasso, who just took on the Trenton City Museum to host NJ graffiti art. I find this movement epic-historic; it’s the first time in art history the movement is happening simultaneously, all over the world. The most memorable interview, due to rarity, was with Old Crow. It was the first time he sat down to be formally interviewed and I worked my ass off to get the interview for months.

Since this book is volume one of a series, what can readers expect from volume two?
The next two volumes will come out much more quickly since I have the images and information needed but I wanted to put a line in the sand, so I broke it into volumes so that I could finish and put something out. Volume one covers the Marigny and Bywater and Volume 2 will cover the 7th ward, CBD, Central City, and Bayou-St John, to be out in 2020. I am working with the same local street photographers and interviewing a lot of new artists like LOVE, Louis Masai, and Flashyken.

Readers can also expect another city to join. I am writing the next book on Flint. I have spent a considerable amount of time in Flint, MI this year. I just finished part one of a project called FLINT x NOLA, a mural exchange between the two cities. In partnership with the Flint Public Art Project, in August I flew to Flint with Ceaux, Jay McKay and SWAN to do a one-week residency. We painted our asses off, got a lot of Flint press coverage, and then came home to NOLA buzzing. The grant restricted the artists to be all three–Louisiana born, raised, and based–which was a challenge. There is something very special about Flint and over 100 pieces have been put up since May to shift the dialogue from poor, corrupt, unhealthy, dirty and uneducated to colorful, vibrant, communal, creative and real, and I am happy to support that movement with my event planning and visual storytelling skills.

I returned in October for three weeks to help launch the city’s first Mural Festival called Free City, where I not only worked production but also taught spray-paint to court-ordered teen women and partnered with the University of Michigan-Flint to curate and moderate a street art conference. I plan to bring Flint to New Orleans in the next year and looking for a wall now.

What areas would you like to explore outside of the Marigny/Bywater and what’s next for you?
I plan to look at the bigger picture soon and am applying for a research grant at Tulane to look at the American South. We have real gems in the region in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and surrounding areas. Blek le Rat has work in that footprint (he’s THE seminal figure who converged graff and street art with his use of stencils around Paris in the 1980s, who Banksy often credits). I want to get the artists, administrators, curators together for a long weekend in NOLA and offer a panel-style walking tour and demonstration-style conference.

In addition to developing the American South, I am working in the already developed West Coast. For 2020, I am working with Hebru Brantly (who is originally from Chicago, but I discovered while in Detroit at Murals in the Market) to do both sculpture and murals; Los Angeles-born Tom Fruin on his first traveling and temporary piece (his iconic water tower added to the NYC skyline); street artist David Zinn (also Michigan); and on public art projects with Chakaia Booker and Isaac Cordal.

A lot has changed since I was that lost, little girl in upstate New York nerding out over math and art, trying to make sense of the world around me and do so by using outdoor art to make the world a more comfortable place. I am happy since I now get to see the world differently and have come at this movement from the inside out.

For more information on Kady Yellow, click here. For more about New Orleans’ street art, read OffBeat’s November 2019 cover story on Brandan “Bmike” Odums, here.