High art across the tracks
Located just yards across the parish line (and less than eight miles from the French Quarter) is the glass studio and art gallery, Studio Inferno. After more than 20 years in the Bywater, owner and internationally known glass artist Mitchell Gaudet moved Inferno into an old 1947 movie theater in Arabi. The space totals over 12,000 square feet, with a 2500-square-foot gallery and 8000-square-foot glass studio and metal shop.
The gallery hosts rotating exhibitions on a bimonthly basis that feature painters, metalworkers, sculptors, and other artists from around the country, and quite often, around the world. For those interested in glass production, just stop in during working hours and watch Gaudet and his team create some of Inferno’s production-line items, which include iconic New Orleans imagery: brightly colored fleur-de-lis, water meters, hoodoo dolls, and sand-cast Mardi Gras maskers infused with symbolism from nature and bacchanalia. There are also hanging monkeys (inspired by the 1960s game Barrel of Monkeys), wineglasses with male and female torsos as stems, and glass pendant necklaces featuring chili peppers, lucky cats, oysters, red beans, and alligators, to name a few.
Info
Address 6601 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117, +1 504.945.1878, www.facebook.com/infernonola | Hours Mon–Sat 10am–4pm. Art openings on select Saturdays 6pm–10pm. The glass furnaces are typically up and running October–May.| Tip The Old Arabi Bar (6701 N Peters St), featuring live music, is a neighborhood watering hole where you might find music legends in the audience being goaded onstage for jam sessions. Tuesdays are open-mic nights. And if the music is too loud, buy a tamale, get a go-cup, and stroll on the levee.
Using glass for its transparency, beauty, and fragility, Gaudet’s own intricate artwork represents his take on history, music, religion, manmade disasters, nature, and the complexity of personal relationships. His collection of various found items is located all over the rear of the studio.
Inferno also does custom jobs (see the cast-glass blue note atop the Musicians Tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1) and commissions of all kinds, from awards to convention gifts to large-scale architectural glass walls (like the one in the Renaissance New Orleans Arts Hotel). The studio is also available for private tours and school groups by appointment.
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