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“We were curing a building and the neighborhood,” Bodenheimer says. “We were trying to do something more ambitious than opening a bar.” Cure’s custom cocktails, kaleidoscopically complex intersections of local, seasonal ingredients and made-from-scratch tinctures and bitters, garnered glowing mentions in GQ, Food & Wine, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. In addition to serving as a cornerstone in Freret Street’s redevelopment, the bar also is socially active, holding a coat drive last January, donating proceeds from cocktail sales to the Red Cross last March and hosting the “It Gets Better” antibullying project last month. “Gathering places can be either constructive or destructive to people’s lives, and we wanted to do a very constructive space,” Kohnke says. “We know it’s a bar, but we still want to do better.” — Wilkinson
VANESSA BROWN, 39 JEFF LOUVIERE, 38 Visual Artists, Louviere + Vanessa Photo by Cheryl Gerber
Co-owners, Satsuma Cafe Photo by Cheryl Gerber
Though some chefs take a conceptual approach to their menus, Cassi and Peter Dymond, co-owners of Satsuma Cafe, craft their menu from the ground up — literally. “Peter will say, ‘I have some mizuna coming,’ and so we’ll develop menu items around it,” Cassi says. “Our mission is to source as much locally grown produce as possible, even down to things like honey and lettuce and all the vegetables.” By relying on seasonal, locally grown produce at their Bywater cafe and coffee shop, the Dymonds support Louisiana farmers and community gardening programs like the one at Our School at Blair Grocery in the Lower 9th Ward. The ever-shifting menu (current offerings include ciabatta sandwiches, quinoa salad, tomato basil soup and pumpkin pancakes), fresh-squeezed juices and made-from-scratch pesto, mayonnaise and dressings reflects a culinary ethos as much as the agricultural terrain of Louisiana. “If you buy locally, you are supporting (Louisiana) farmers. It might be a dollar more a pound, but that dollar is going directly to where you live,” Cassi says. The Dymonds, both of whom came from fine-dining backgrounds, sought to fill a hole in the New Orleans dining scene: “We felt New Orleans had been longing for somewhere to get good, fresh local produce at affordable prices,” Peter says. Garnering shout-outs from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and mentions in The New York Times, Satsuma has expanded its staff from three to 15 since opening in August 2009, although the food is still prepared in a tiny, 150-square-foot kitchen. “We have no stove or anything. It’s all plug-in appliances,” says Peter, who wants to expand the cafe to several locations and create a service connecting farmers with chefs who want to serve their produce. “I would hope we would be a start of a movement.” — Wilkinson
KRISTEN EVANS, 37 Executive Director, New Orleans Fringe Festival Photo by Cheryl Gerber
Kristen Evans has always been attracted to building things from the ground up — whether it’s a graphic design company in Atlanta, sustainable forests in Bolivia or a local theater festival in New Orleans. “I think it’s because I’m unemployable,” Evans says. “No one would hire me, so I hired myself.” Evans’ realization was the catalyst behind founding Blink Interactive in Atlanta in 1996, and her entrepreneurial sprit has remained strong. “Once you do that sort of project, it gets under your skin,” she says. “You learn so many things … that it’s hard to imagine a job that’s even a little more circumscribed in what you do. Once the entrepreneur bug bites you, you’re kind of unemployable.” After working with indigenous communities in Bolivia with the Peace Corps, Evans decided to move to New Orleans. (“Everything I owned fit into a shoe box, so I was at a point in my life where I could pick anywhere to live,” she says.) Tapping into her longtime interest in theater, Evans helped create the Backyard Ballroom performance space and, eventually, the New Orleans Fringe Festival. It has become an annual event featuring more than 100 shows at alternative and traditional venues around the city. As this year’s Fringe Festival approaches, Evans, who is working on a master’s degree in sustainable tropical forest management at Tulane’s Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies, can be proud of what she’s cultivated. “People outside of New Orleans who are performing see this city as an exciting place to do theater,” she says. — LaBorde PaGe 21
Gambit > bestofneworleans.com > NOVEMBER 02 > 2010
Photographer Vanessa Brown came home one day to see her negatives lying in the sink with some Comet and steel wool, which husband Jeff Louviere had used to distress and alter them, much the way he scratched copper plates to make intaglio prints. She wasn’t happy at first. “I almost freaked out,” she says. Though that might not seem like the most harmonious juncture in an artistic partnership or marriage, it was a pivotal moment for the duo, opening up a world of experimentation with processes and materials, and forged a rare collaborative approach to making photography-based art. Previously, their arrangement had Louviere acting as art director, setting up scenes to shoot, and Brown taking still shots. Now they combine old and new processes and equipment, from cheap Holga cameras to Photoshop manipulations to printing using arcane processes and rare papers. “We’re both very passionate about what we do,” Brown says. “We both have ideas. We’re not the same. There would be no point in collaborating if we were.” Shows like their 2005 Slumberland series featured images of mythical and horrific human and animal figures that seemed both ancient and modern primitive in ethereal black-and-white images that simultaneously appear antique and timeless. In a more recent project, they created the first film made entirely with still images from Holgas. A native of Ithaca, N.Y., Brown studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and in 1995 moved to Georgia, where she met Louviere, a New Orleans native who was pursuing a master’s degree in graphic design at the Savannah College of Art and Design. They settled in New Orleans in 1998 and have made the transition to full-time collaborating artists. They are represented locally by A Gallery For Fine Photography and have work in the George Eastman House, the Odgen Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art and other museums and private collections nationally. Their work also appears in international exhibitions and film festivals. — Coviello
CASSI DYMOND, 32 PETER DYMOND, 32
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