In a little less than a decade, New Orleans native Brandan “B Mike” Odums has evolved from a man who can draw to an artist that is inspiring a new generation.
In grade school, Odums was always told that he could draw well. The compliments from family and peers led to Odums’ decision to become an artist.
“Friends would ask for my drawings, go to another class and claim that they drew it,” Odums said.
Odums went to the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts to further his artistic talents. While at NOCCA, he set a goal to become the best artist in the program. After believing he had achieved that goal, Odums still felt dissatisfied. He lost his motivation to create art because he had no competition.
While in NOCCA, Odums found another passion in his filmmaking classes. He stopped painting to focus on his newfound interest.
After Hurricane Katrina, Odums and a few friends began to explore the city of New Orleans. While exploring, he would see graffiti on the walls and doors of buildings. Odums purchased a few cans of spray paint and began tagging places around the city himself.
“I was in an environment where these beautiful pieces of art would never be seen. I was fascinated by how much those artists went through for the sake of art,” Odums said.
He would only tag when he explored with his friends, but soon Odums found himself going out with the purpose of tagging places. Instead of using a signature style of lettering, he relied on his drawing talents to express his art. Odums said that the walls he painted on were simply larger canvases.
Odums has traveled as a professor, director and artist. He taught videography and photography on the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona for three summers. It was during his last summer there that he met Native American artist Douglas Miles.
The next year, Miles traveled to New Orleans to paint a mural for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Miles contacted Odums about creating a separate mural. The two met with a few other local artists and went to the Florida Housing Projects in New Orleans, where they painted within the walls of houses that had been abandoned after Katrina.
Those murals would later become Project Be.
The project consisted of graffiti murals such as Odums’ depicting figures Odums looked up to such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans began boarding up the Florida Projects to keep artists out last summer. HANO hopes to demolish the old buildings and rebuild the complex.
Odums said from the beginning of the project, he had a feeling that his artwork would be destroyed eventually. But he said that Project Be was more about how the artists felt in their moments of painting.
“There’s a constant debate about preservation of [New Orleans’] culture versus progress,” Odums said.
Despite the destruction of some of his art, Odums believes that New Orleans has the potential to become a great city for street art. Odums said some see progress such as street art as a destruction of New Orleans’ culture.
“There’s a lot of space in New Orleans that could be made valuable again through art,” Odums said.
Odums mentioned the story of famous graffiti location 5 Pointz in New York. The 200,000 square foot factory building became a mecca for street art covered in colorful pieces. 5 Pointz was painted over in white paint in one night indicating the end of the building’s artistic purpose. Odums sees many possibilities for New Orleans to have an artistic area similar to 5 Pointz.
“I think more people are acknowledging street art as something cool,” Odums said. “This new generation will redefine what we consider art, and I want to be a part of that.”
“There’s a lot of space in New Orleans that could be made valuable again through art.”