Artist Lester Carey
(1953-2017)
Lester Carey was a New Orleans sign artist whose work has been found on churches, corner stores, neighborhood bars, and other commercial buildings around numerous neighborhoods of New Orleans for three decades. His vernacular style has probably graced the wall of a market where you got a shrimp po boy or the wall of a lounge where you popped in to get a cold beer.
After Hurricane Katrina, The Society to Preserve the Art of Lester Carey group was created on Flickr to document Lester’s unique works of commercial folk art.
SPALC can also be found on Facebook.
Photos of Lester’s work are tagged with #LesterCarey on Instagram.
Press and more:
- Corner Businesses in New Orleans and the Naïve Commercial Art of Lester Carey, April 2009
- Sign Language, Gambit cover story, June 2014
- Hand-painted store signs: artwork worth preserving, June 2014
- Everyday Imaged Nature: Making ‘Ruin’ in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2015
- The Sign Painters of New Orleans, February 2017
- Lester Carey, artist behind iconic hand-lettered signs, dies at age 64, March 2017
- Lester Carey, New Orleans old-school sign painter, has died, March 2017
- Remembering the Artist Behind New Orleans’ Hand-Lettered Signs, March 2017
