Lester Carey is a sign painter and hand letterer who lives and works in New Orleans. From the pictures and the video below, I can tell he’s a pretty interesting character. He creates signs on the sides of bars, convenience stores, gas stations, mechanic shops, funeral homes, and whatever other local businesses hire him, painting pictures of Arthur Ashe, Louie Armstrong, and a lot of sandwiches to go along with the words. His work has a great outsider art , unintentional beauty to it and definitely has ten times more heart and soul than any manufactured, lame Damien Hirst dot painting.
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His stuff is ephemeral, as you can see, and much of it was washed away when Katrina hit. You can see a painstaking and lovely catalogue of his work on Flickr from Anthonyturducken. We’ve included some of the photos as well as a paper from Anthony.Lester, come to New York! We can crash some gallery openings!
