To mark the one-year anniversary of the 1 January 2025 terrorist assault within the well-liked French Quarter district of New Orleans, a brief public artwork set up has gone on view above Bourbon Road, reworking the world into an area for reflection and remembrance. Referred to as Second Line within the Sky, the set up options lights and greater than 800 prayer flags, welcoming locals and guests to affix in mourning and therapeutic.
The assault on 1 January killed 15 folks and left the town of New Orleans grieving. With the upcoming vacation season and anniversary of this occasion, the native restaurateur Katy Casbarian conceived of Second Line within the Sky,impressed by gentle shows she had seen in Regent Road in London.
“I’ve longed for a lighted vacation show within the French Quarter,” she says. “Earlier this summer time I had the concept to tie in a memorial for the victims of the terrorist assault with a lighted vacation show. The lights are the draw to get folks to the memorial to recollect and mirror.”
Second Line within the Sky put in above Bourbon Road in New Orleans’s French Quarter Picture by David Nola
Suspended above Bourbon Road by 18 January 2026, Second Line within the Sky got here along with Casbarian as lead collaborator together with the architect and design agency Studio West, led by Jennie West.
“Because the assault, we have been at all times eager about what we may do to try to deliver the group collectively once more. The town hadn’t actually come collectively since, which is comprehensible; the group’s belief was threatened,” West says. “When Katy got here to us within the spring with such a transparent imaginative and prescient, there wasn’t something to query or contemplate—we each needed to create one thing particular and uniquely New Orleans in order that we may seize a second for the collective to honour, mirror, and have a good time the numerous lives that have been impacted.”
The staff commissioned Babette Beaullieu, Margaret Crosby and Jan Gilbert, artists with ties to the town, to create the cover of vibrant flags. Every distinctive flag options imagery consultant of New Orleans, together with motifs alluding to the town’s wealthy musical historical past because the birthplace of jazz. Illuminated trumpets additional this connection, and handkerchief and umbrella motifs nod to the second line custom. Additionally referenced within the challenge’s title, the time period refers back to the crowds that comply with parade bands, waving handkerchiefs and umbrellas as a celebration of each life and demise.
Sewn into the flags are notes from survivors and the victims’ households, in addition to pictures by native artists Judy Cooper and Jamell Tate. The colors of the flags—deep pinks, reds and purples—have been chosen particularly to invoke therapeutic and resilience.
Second Line within the Sky put in above Bourbon Road in New Orleans’s French Quarter Picture by David Nola
“I’ve at all times felt that by artwork, therapeutic can occur,” says Beaullieu. “New Orleans was so in want of therapeutic and I needed to assist present everybody that we’re a group of energy in a constructive, loving and caring manner—and that we’re resilient. Once I make one thing, I need it to be stunning, and I hope others can really feel that too—discovering their very own model of magnificence and seeing how hatred may be changed with love.”
By including illuminated components, the staff ensured the set up may be loved throughout the day and at night time, as Bourbon Road is on the centre of New Orleans’s nightlife scene, too.
“I hope that residents and guests alike can really feel—or not less than see—what it’s like to return collectively in hardship,” says West. “There was a lot magnificence, therapeutic, and volunteership that has captured the really particular and distinctive spirit of camaraderie all through the whole lot of this course of, and I hope others have been in a position to be reminded of the infectious power of group that’s so distinctive to New Orleans.”
