Artist arrested for graffiti on New Orleans building offers to paint a mural in its place

Artist Josh Wingerter found himself locked up in the Orleans Justice Center on Tuesday. He and a fellow artist, Paco Lane, had been arrested on Franklin Avenue in broad daylight, accused of defacing the former Frankie & Johnnie furniture store with graffiti.

“The whole experience was pretty horrible,” Wingerter said in an interview Thursday. The NOPD officer who hauled the pair in “was a really nice guy,” Wingerter said. But jail was awful. He said he was confined in a room with 21 other detainees. His roommates, he said, were cool, but the place was chilly and blankets were scarce.

In the course of his roughly 26-hour stay, he said he ate only a slice of bread. The hot meal – a hot dog on rice – wasn’t especially appetizing.

An art star is born

Wingerter, 38, is a star on the New Orleans art scene. He first made his mark at the start of the COVID quarantine. When the Frenchmen Street entertainment was shut down, Wingerter painted a series of popular small murals on the plywood panels over the windows of the nightclubs and restaurants.

His painting of Louis Armstrong wearing blue rubber gloves, with a COVID mask stretched over the bell of his trumpet, is a classic image of the era.

This week had its ups and downs for Wingerter and Lane. On the Saturday evening before their arrest, they had happily greeted visitors to an exhibit of their work at a gallery on Sala Street in old Westwego.

‘Gentlemen, don’t go painting on buildings’

On Thursday morning, Wingerter and Lane stood before Judge Juana M. Lombard in Magistrate Court, handcuffed and wearing orange inmate jumpsuits.

The artists’ lawyer argued that they possibly believed that painting the Franklin Avenue structure was permitted. Though it has recently been pristinely whitewashed, the building had, at one time, been a graffiti and mural hot spot.

The artists were released late that afternoon on $150 bond each, with the judge’s admonition still fresh in their minds: “Gentlemen,” she said, “don’t go painting on buildings.”

A proposal 

Yet that’s just what Wingerter has in mind.

His “first prison experience” was – like all momentous life passages – grist for future art, he said. “An artist gets inspiration from what they feel,” he said, and this particular experience made him feel “helpless, unheard, scared and manipulated.”

The artist, known for his brightly colored compositions that blend aspects of Banksy and Warhol, said he plans to propose a mural to the manager of the building to replace the unpermitted aerosol painting that he and Lane are accused of committing.

He said that, if allowed, he plans to invite Lane and other artists to collaborate on the project. The sketch is already underway, he said. A fully realized mural, Wingerter believes, would deter incidental graffiti.

And a counterproposal

Zella May, a real estate agent who manages the old, rambling Frankie & Johnnie Furniture store building for out-of-state owners, said she estimates the cost of whitewashing over graffiti ranges from $1,000 to $5,000 per incident.

Personally, May said, she might consider allowing Wingerter to create an artwork on the wall. But it’s not entirely up to her.

“I don’t have a problem with it,” May said, of Wingerter’s mural proposition. She said she’d be happy to pass his sketch by the Historic District Landmarks Commission – a city agency that regulates historic landmarks and historic districts. But she can’t be sure the HDLC would approve.

In the meantime, it’s up to her to paint over the approximately 50-foot aerosol graffiti that now exists.

“I feel bad,” May said, of Wingerter’s experience with the criminal justice system, because “he probably thought he was doing something good.” But she said, she’s “had to paint this building a couple of dozen times.”

And she’ll have to do it again, May said, unless Wingerter would like to paint it over in white. That, she said, “would be the right thing to do.”