My mom took this photo in Metairie yesterday; the flag is made out of Go-Cups in a chain-link fence, and seems sort of remarkable. It’s interesting how some people are drawn to the process of creation in such a direct and unaffected way.
Whoever made this, living in a suburb of New Orleans in some dated, archetypal middle-American dwelling, is probably not an artist and likely doesn’t know many artists. Without much sophistication in the selection of subject*, s/he exemplifies an unmediated folk-art sort of craft that seems very genuine to me.
In such a milieu, s/he would have no peers or context; it’s unlikely others on the block are creating analogous offerings, so there’s a kind of radical individualism in it that’s absent among artists whose art itself may be more unique or sui generis. That is, such folk art occurs in an artless environment where the most creative and original act is merely making something at all.
(*It is perhaps rather elite of me to derogate the subject of the work, but I think defensibly so).