ANNOUNCER: Michalopoulos: The Art of Celebration is funded by Andy & Marian Peeler.

Additional funding provided by Goldring Family Foundation, Lipsey's, and by the following: A complete list of funders is available at APTONLINE.ORG.

(engine revs) KERMIT: All aboard, let me grab this old trumpet right here.

Drop me off in New Orleans.

♪ BRADLEY: James is a painter for the people.

I'm sure there's a lot of New Orleanians that can't name another painter except for James Michalopoulos.

NINA: I recognize his work without even looking at the name, and it's because of the way he captures the city.

ALEXA: His presence is just magical.

It's whimsical and it comes out through his art.

TERRANCE: Here we are on Bourbon Street.

This is exactly the spot where he was at the time.

I was like, oh my God, who is this guy?

And I loved what he was doing.

♪ Have you ever been to New Orleans?

♪ ♪ It's the hottest city that you've ever seen ♪ ♪ You gotta love them red beans ♪ ♪ You gotta love them butter beans ♪ ♪ Way down south in New Orleans ♪ BRETT: James Michalopoulos is an intellect.

You know, he's a person who's curious about the world and engages with it, beyond his paintings.

QUINT: One of the things he's known for is his architecture, besides the beautiful colors of the architecture, it's got a life to it.

It's got like, a motion to it.

KIP: There's something magical about one of James's paintings, and not only does it reflect or do they depict the local architecture, but there's a twist to them.

It's very difficult to actually draw or paint a building.

Not only in these paintings was the perspective correct, he was able to depict the buildings as if they were dancing.

♪ BRADLEY: When he's on the streets of New Orleans painting, he's waltzing the muse.

BRETT: I mean, this isn't someone who parachutes in or- or who lives behind some kind of fence... on the contrary.

He lives in the thick of it.

ANDREW: And no one embraces that more than James.

BRADLEY: James is fighting the good fight out there, trying to create space for artists, be able to have affordable housing, trying to claw back some of that space, for the creatives, for the makers.

♪ TERRANCE: I think that artists in general are historians, right?

It's our job to capture the culture and tell the story.

You know, so if New Orleans culture goes away and somehow they happen to pick it up thousands of years from now, the first thing they're going to do is look at the artwork.

JAMES: It's a celebration and they get it.

TANK: And it is definitely is a celebration.

JAMES: Well, you know, it's a testament to your talent.

TANK: Thank you, James.

JAMES: My pleasure.

TANK: This is so special.

KIP: James Michalopoulos is using his talents and energies to do whatever he can to create a solid foundation so that the celebratory spirit of New Orleans will continue to thrive long after he's gone.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (door opens) JAMES: Hey, Gavin, can you do me a favor?

When you get a chance, take a shot of the sculpture - GAVIN: Okay.

JAMES: As it's sitting on the table right there, I laid some pieces on it and send it to me.

GAVIN: All right.

JAMES: Thanks.

I'll have something to think about a little bit.

KIP: Boy, James Mitchell, that name brings back memories.

I met James Mitchell in 1995.

He goes by Michalopoulos now, but back then it was Mitchell.

James Mitchell is a wonderful, wonderful man that lives half the time in New Orleans, half the time in France.

JAMES: I was christened James Mitchell.

And how did I become James Michalopoulos?

My dad came over and they gave him a new name at the point of entry, which was common in the day.

You know, I had all these Greek relatives and they had all these exotic names and and many of them accents and, and I was like, geez, I'm a Mitchell.

It never felt right.

So it's about being true to yourself.

But I decided at some point that I wanted to go back to my original family roots.

And so I said, well, that's it.

I'm going to take my family name.

And I went back.

KIP: James's father was a very highly respected architect in Pittsburgh.

In fact, he was co-designer of the Civic Center, which was one of the first, if not the first, stadium that had a roof that could open up.

I think he was also the first architect to put a park on top of a parking garage, which at the time was very innovative.

JAMES: Demetrius Michalopoulos is my father and he was an architect, a modernist architect with a profound respect for classical architecture.

And he led the redevelopment of downtown Pittsburgh and did many civic buildings there.

BRADLEY: When you look at James's childhood, the son of a famous modernist architect in the great northeast, and the fact that he was living with his uncle's paintings, the great modernist surrealist painter, Baziotes, those two things converge in his life, and it's exactly what he's dealing with now.

Art and architecture.

JAMES: I think this staircase is really beautifully done.

I like the posts there on the side.

I think that building holds together as a unit, you know, and it's a masterful work.

KIP: The original intent was to make it very symmetrical.

Right?

JAMES: Yes.

KIP: And your intent always seems to be to blow that up.

JAMES: Be symmetrical.

Right.

That's right.

That question came up in another context about my dad's rectilinearity and his architecture, and my response to that, you know, maybe, in some way, adolescent revolt.

Right?

I would say there's probably something to that.

You know, there was a bit of a revolt, in some of this.

You know, but it's natural.

I mean, I'm not, like, rejecting the patrimony.

Just saying, you know, there's other stuff going on.

There's a song to sing here.

♪ ♪ BRADLEY: James Michalopoulos came here as a young man from the northeast.

And I think what the city offered him, the city offers to many of us was the chance to reinvent himself.

I can imagine coming from a place like Pennsylvania and coming into the city of New Orleans, "The City That Care Forgot."

or the last frontier of Bohemia.

And just the architecture is different from the rest of America.

The people are different from the rest of America.

I imagine James felt like he was dropped into another planet.

JAMES: I first arrived in 1978.

I would paint outside.

I was a plein air painter.

I only painted what I could see.

And so the first thing that got me when I arrived was the greenness of the city in the middle of the winter.

That we have so many beautiful big trees.

And I got off the highway at Elysian Fields and worked my way up to the French Quarter, and was just taken aback by the originality of the buildings.

And then that was even further magnified by the specialness of the French Quarter and its unique qualities.

So I was kind of slewed right off the bat.

ANDREW: The architecture here is very Mediterranean, it's very European, it's very French, very Spanish.

The buildings are right up on the sidewalk.

They're painted these bright colors.

There's iron, there's brick.

A lot of the buildings are decaying.

And we love our architecture to look like that.

We don't want to completely restored.

James has a very unique way of capturing New Orleans architecture.

When I look at his painting, the buildings breathe, they move.

TERRANCE: His lines, it's almost like a sort of an exaggeration, but it's all there.

You know that that's a New Orleans shotgun house.

You know it's a camelback.

And the way he drenches it with light.

He saturates this house with these colors, and it's amazing.

JAMES: This is one of your typical New Orleans cottages.

And if you can see the way that it's laid out, there's a front door here and a front door here.

So it's considered a shotgun double.

And what that references to is that you could take a shotgun, stand in the front door and shoot somebody in the backyard, because there is a hallway that runs right through one room after another, which makes for a special kind of family arrangement.

They're a marvel of craftsmanship, expressiveness, economy, graciousness.

I mean, they're a marvelous way for people to live.

That's actually working-class housing, that we're looking at.

And what a luxurious gift they are.

NINA: James really captures the essence of New Orleans.

New Orleans is so captivating, so much color.

And those Creole cottages remind me so much of my childhood in Saint Lucia.

The artwork reflects the neighborhood.

So he really takes the essence of it and puts it on these beautiful paintings that really jump out at you, where people like, where is this?

BRADLEY: Well, if you look at James's primary focus, it's not modernist architecture of the northeast.

It is Spanish architecture of the French Quarter.

It is vernacular architecture of New Orleans.

It is the kind of rough and tumble angles of, you know, do-it-yourself building that New Orleans does so well.

The city with no right angles.

And I think that shines through in his paintings as well.

♪ KIP: When James paints, it feels like he's expressing a feeling.

He really captures the energy and the emotion of what he's looking at.

The bramble, as he calls it.

And that's what makes his pieces so powerful.

They're really capturing an existence and a feeling and an emotion.

♪ JAMES: There's history.

We can feel the presence of other generations here in the quarter and other parts of town.

You know, this is a city of many layers and many ebbs and flows over time.

And every one of those passages is recorded in some fashion in these buildings.

When we live the life and celebration that New Orleans represents, we- we party with our predecessors, our patriarchs.

Generations come and gone and, and these homes are as close as we can get to a kind of in-life partnership with those people.

♪ BRETT: One thing I say sometimes about New Orleans, and it's a bit of a crude way to say it, but I think you'll get the point, is that if you take the culture out of New Orleans, if you take away its food, its music, its architecture, its visual art, you've got Gary, Indiana, you've got a place with bad schools and ***** roads.

But when you add all those things into it, it becomes this incredible cultural treasure.

JAMES: We have been gifted a tremendous culture and we have neglected it at great peril.

Most of our distinction comes from the built environment, and it's stunning, and it is routinely neglected and it is threatened.

It's threatened on all sides.

You cannot go into a lovely neighborhood and build a monstrous, modern structure so that you can enjoy the beauty of the ancient surroundings.

Or we go in and we subvert an area by ignoring the context and building inappropriate buildings in the middle of it.

So you go ahead.

You keep doing that.

You keep building big buildings in the Marigny, and before long you don't have a Marigny any longer.

You have an indistinct, anywhere city, and it's happening all over this town.

♪ ANDREW: This is, to me, the only European city in America.

People come here because of the look, the architecture, the buildings are the identity of New Orleans.

So if you didn't have that, you're going to lose a huge cultural heritage.

JAMES: And you can't rebuild it, you cannot rebuild it.

It's impractical.

So this is a real need for us to steel ourselves in the face of opportunists and to insist upon a husbandry that's responsible for the recreation and support of our historic neighborhoods.

Part and parcel with that is supporting the culture.

Like if you don't have the artist culture here, if you don't have the bohemian culture, you have lost an enormous gift.

You are becoming anywhere.

TERRANCE: It's often said that we are like an island and I used to think that all places were like New Orleans until I started traveling.

And New Orleans has such a rich culture.

The way that we dress is colorful.

The houses that we're in, they're colorful, our food is colorful, our music is colorful.

So that needs to be preserved.

BRADLEY: What good is this place without the people that made it special?

If the people that made the music that makes New Orleans desirable can't afford to live here, what do we have?

If the people that paint the paintings or write the poems that define this place.

If they can't live here, what do we have left?

♪ (singing - lyrics indistinct) (singing - lyrics indistinct) (singing - lyrics indistinct) ♪ BRADLEY: In the 1980s, when James arrived here, the French Quarter was filled with artists and weirdos and people escaping the world and outcasts.

And it was affordable.

And the bars were filled with creativity.

The coffee shops were just alive with artists and poets and musicians, and I'm sure James felt like he had found paradise here.

♪ JAMES: This neighborhood has been home to me for 45 years.

Amazing to think about that.

We're on Frenchmen Street.

It's this place that was largely coffeehouses and nightclubs since the 1940s.

It was the home of Bohemia for a lot of years here in New Orleans, I've spent a lot of time.

Cafe Brazil was here.

The Dream Palace, some great clubs and great times.

And still a spot where the locals and visitors to town come to enjoy live music.

I mean, it's rich, it's livable, it's lovable.

♪ It's sometimes laughable and rarely lamentable.

I could spend another 45 years here and still feel inspired.

BRETT: New Orleanians are more kind of ambitious about their experiences.

It's not as though you don't have successful people here.

It's not as though you don't have people that are working hard in their jobs, but people in New Orleans, particularly if you move here from someplace else and stay, it's often for a reason that transcends your job.

It's often because you like what the city offers when you're not working.

And that in itself, I think, lends a bohemian cast to how people live in the city.

BRADLEY: Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "When you're seeking the divine "to take yourself to nature "in solitude and be completely open to it," he describes himself in that state as a transparent eyeball.

I see James when he's on the streets of New Orleans, painting in plein air.

In that same way, he's completely open to the city.

And it's not just the visuals of the city, it's the smell of the city, maybe most importantly, the sounds of the city.

WAYNE: When he first got here, he lived as he could, which was, he lived in, crashed in empty houses.

He lived in his truck for a while.

He was selling paintings on the street.

JAMES: And I discovered Jackson Square and everybody making the portraits out there.

And that was a fascinating discovery, because in a sense, it's a school.

You can go there without paying anything and watch somebody from beginning to end while they create a piece of art.

And so I had the opportunity of watching any number of talented people make a pastel portrait.

I had never done portraits before.

Oh, look, that's my friend Beverly.

TALLULAH: Oh, cool.

BEVERLY: Oh, it's good to see you.

JAMES: Do you remember back in the day when there used to be, I'd say, 15 portrait painters on each side?

BEVERLY: Yeah.

I was gonna say a couple hundred artists and almost all of them were portrait artists.

JAMES: I was thinking maybe Tallulah could get a portrait today.

BEVERLY: I would love to.

JAMES: Yeah?

BEVERLY: She's beautiful.

JAMES: Wonderful.

Okay, let's go for it.

TALLULAH: What was my dad like when you guys were out here painting?

(Beverly laughs) BEVERLY: Your dad was wild.

TALLULAH: He was wild?

Is he different from how he is now?

BEVERLY: Is he wild now?

TALLULAH: I don't know honestly.

BEVERLY: He's a dad.

TALLULAH: Yeah.

I guess that'll change anyone.

JAMES: One of the things that I'm observing, as- as Beverley works, is how she uses three different chalks to express her, her forms.

She uses a chalk that's a mid-tone that's like very close to the value of the paper.

And it helps her express freely.

She doesn't have to worry so much about, her line making where she can come back in and she chisels and rechisels and redefines the image as she goes.

So that's a great example of the kind of thing that you can, like, actually learn from somebody else while they're working.

And with Jackson Square there as a school, I would take my new lessons and I'd go down to Schwegmann's on Rampart Street, where people would wait for a taxi after making groceries.

So, I would do a quick sketch of you while you're standing there waiting for your taxi.

And then I'd say, three bucks, three bucks.

And they'd bargain me down to two, and then I'd have enough to eat for the day.

TERRANCE: I remember walking down Bourbon Street when I must have been just started high school, ninth grade, and I noticed this guy off to the left, and he's in this sort of nook, right?

It's in between a restaurant and, I don't know, a strip club.

I can't remember what it was, but his artwork was phenomenal and his back was to the street, so I couldn't see his face.

But he had all these houses that were warped, these New Orleans houses, women and men, sort of, you know, socializing and these cars that, that were so dynamic, JAMES: So, you know, I had my cart and I pushed that cart.. TALLULAH: With all your supplies.

JAMES: Yeah.

And set it up right over there.

TALLULAH: Right there.

JAMES: And unfold it, and I put my easel right here.

And I would line up the paintings on here and hang them up here.

TALLULAH: Oh wow.

JAMES: And hang them up there.

TALLULAH: Oh, so that's perfect.

JAMES: Yeah, but Bourbon Street's very active.

So I would start in on, say, a portrait.

And sometimes I'd have 100, 125 people watching me do it.

TALLULAH: Oh wow.

JAMES: Yeah, it was pretty intense.

TALLULAH: So it was packed over here.

JAMES: Yeah.

Packed.

It was like a big arc, like a big circle.

And, you know, it was intense.

It was- it was fun.

Lively TALLULAH: Yeah, it probably felt like a micro-celebrity or something like that.

JAMES: Yeah.

Very micro.

Very micro.

I didn't really want to be on Bourbon Street.

I would have preferred to be on Jackson Square.

And I tried to get on Jackson Square.

I was never able to get a license.

I wish I could have gotten a license there.

I never succeeded, so I made do with the Pirates Alley and out here, and I did this for a few years.

And then finally I opened a gallery and that was that.

TALLULAH: Well, that's what you do.

You make do with what you can, you know.

JAMES: That's right.

TALLULAH: Yeah.

And you did a great job with it.

JAMES: Thank you.

I appreciate that.

ALEXA: The first New Orleans gallery that James was ever featured in was mine, and it was called Alexa Georges's Interiors.

It really wasn't a fine art gallery.

It was a decorative art gallery.

I knew his work was going to be famous.

I knew he was going to be famous just because he had something.

He had something very different than what was happening in the art world.

I think he created a style.

When friends would come in to see my shop or my gallery, they would look at the paintings and say, wow, who is this guy?

And then I would start to tell 'em and I- I really wasn't giving 'em a sales pitch.

I was really being honest, telling them, look, this guy's is going to be something special.

He's not just an average painter, and I really think that you should buy a painting from me.

And they did.

And I sold so many paintings, it was unbelievable.

So once James got his own gallery in the French Quarter, he never looked back.

ANDREW: From being on the streets to owning a gallery in the Quarter.

That was a inspiration for me.

♪ TERRANCE: At that time, either I'd just started painting or I hadn't gotten into it.

I can't quite remember, but seeing his work set the precedence for me, for my interest in painting.

So I studied his work immediately.

And ultimately, you could see the influence when I really started painting.

I couldn't help it, I was so influenced by what he was doing that it showed up in my work, too.

BRADLEY: He's definitely been influential on an aesthetic, and I first noticed it with bad copies of his work popping up in the French Quarter, but now, some younger, really talented artists, you see the influence of Michalopoulos.

On the way they portray this city.

And it's often native sons and daughters of New Orleans that embrace that.

CASEY: James mainly uses a palette knife, which I'm very familiar with.

That's what I use for my own work.

The amount of detail that he is able to put into his texture is just remarkable.

So he uses the palette knife and adds in so much movement and bold expression, but also is able to capture a lot of intricacy.

That's a very difficult thing to master as an artist, and he has done that.

BECKY: I relate to him on so many different levels, we're both self-taught.

We both love color, we both love our city.

We're both trying to preserve the essence of our city.

♪ He is just brilliant in every way.

KIP: To be able to grow as an artist in a city where the master is still practicing.

I'm certain that's why so many artists come to New Orleans to be able to learn from the master.

BRADLEY: What I really love about James's work, at its best, is that once you've seen it, you see New Orleans through that lens.

♪ JAMES: I opened myself up to it, and I let it move me where it will.

The colors and the forms and shapes all have an effect.

♪ I'm not taking a photograph.

Like, for instance, I look at something and I'm feeling a real rhythm to it, and I'm going to allow that to flow into the picture.

Another time, I'm looking at a subject and it seems so perfect.

Rectilinear, geometric.

That's what I want to get after.

And another time it's the light and it's none of the physical stuff.

So in a way, I consider myself a victim of the circumstance.

You know, I let myself be taken by it.

NINA: New Orleans is not a shiny penny.

There's grit to it.

And I think that's what he loves about the city.

And that's what he thrives in, because he brings this beautiful piece of it.

But there's a little bit of mystery.

And I think that's what he really does capture in all his work.

♪ WAYNE: James depicts a city that's really alive.

There's a real sense of syncopation, there's rhythm, there's a beat.

You see it in the houses.

The houses are moving and dancing.

The musicians that he depicts are also moving.

There's something about the musicians that's also extremely monumental.

The houses might be temporary.

The music is forever.

BRETT: And I feel like street music in particular in New Orleans, has that quality.

It seems to sort of seep into the cracks in the buildings that sort of naturally, James's mode, you know, is to capture sort of movement.

And so I see that when he paints musicians, too.

BRADLEY: I mean, since the invention of the camera, we no longer need painters to give us, perfect representation of people.

So they become psychological studies of people, and especially when it's dealing with musicians, you see, their spirit, the spirit of their music, the sound of their music, come through in the way he depicts them and paints.

♪ JAMES: This is the Jazz Fest poster for 2025.

This is Tank of Tank and the Bangas.

They are lively.

They are unpredictable.

And they are playful.

It's not photo real, but I think that it- it gets a lot of that excitement and movement there.

When Tank gets going her band gets going, I really wanted to capture a sense of that excitement of the crowd there, in front of the stage.

(singing - lyrics indistinct) TERRANCE: James did a series of Jazz Fest posters, and if you know anything about Jazz Festival, this is the highest grossing festival in the world, right?

Anybody who comes to New Orleans, you know there's Mardi Gras, ♪ and then there's Jazz Festival.

♪ (audience cheering) QUINT: It's one of the 4 or 5 great American festivals now, in its size and its scope and its history, we put about 5000 musicians through that festival in eight days.

We have three different stages of jazz, but we also have some of the biggest acts in the world.

♪ MICHAEL: You name it, gospel, and rock, rhythm and blues, funk.

Its got it all.

It's one huge platter of what the city can offer you.

♪ JAMES: It is also a wonderful window on the musical culture in Louisiana and New Orleans for the visitors.

♪ The poster series is a critical part of the festival.

I would say that it's probably the most successful poster series in the country.

QUINT: It's almost like the music, people look forward to knowing who's going to play.

They look forward to knowing what's the poster, who's going to be on the poster.

It's a much bigger part of the festival than normally you think of a poster would be, but it's more than a poster.

It's an artwork.

♪ TERRANCE: One thing that Jazz Fest requires is that it is a New Orleans artists, or at least that artist's work is influenced by New Orleans.

You have to be absorbed into New Orleans culture in order to be chosen to do this poster.

NINA: The official Jazz Fest poster is like winning an Oscar or an Emmy, it's so prestigious.

QUINT: We do 10 to 15 thousand of these posters, depending on the year.

So it's a major, major accomplishment for an artist to be the artist up.

TERRANCE: James is like, he's like the OG of the Jazz Fest posters.

You know, to get this poster is a huge honor.

And James has done more posters than any artist.

QUINT: James has done Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino, Mahalia Jackson, he's done Dr.

John, he did Allen Toussaint, and he did Aaron Neville, which are the people that from New Orleans that helped change the music of the world.

JAMES: Well, the first Jazz Fest poster that I became involved with was Mac Rebennack - Dr.

John.

♪ ♪ Been the wrong time ♪ BRETT: Dr.

John was born Mac Rebennack and is a piano player, singer, songwriter.

Also, a great guitarist.

♪ Hung up in my mind ♪ ♪ Ooh ♪ He passed away a few years ago.

He has had some hits like "Right Place, Wrong Time," a big radio hit, but has really been someone who has just sort of explored and stretched and expanded the idea of New Orleans music for a long time.

JAMES: He has a lot of character.

I went to visit him at his house in New York City, and we spent an afternoon with him and took photos, and I'm still working from those photos 35 years later.

It was a lot of fun.

I sat him in the Quarter.

It was about midway on Bourbon Street in... partly why I chose that was there was a townhouse that had a piano right inside it, and I actually showed the entrance way to the building.

And you got a glimpse of the piano there on the side, and there's a certain imperiousness to Dr.

John too, haughty at moments and I tried to get some of that majesty in there, also.

HENRY: He had the nickname The Night Tripper, and if you look at it, you know, James captured him in the night scene.

You get the feel of the French Quarter, and you get the feel of what Dr.

John was all about.

QUINT: If you look at Dr.

John's body leaning look at his cane and the look on his face, very subtly, he captures the essence and the spirit of the person.

HENRY: And as The Night Tripper.

There he is.

He looks like he's in the right place at the right time.

♪ ♪ The right place, must have been the wrong time ♪ ♪ Must have been the right thing ♪ ♪ Must have been the wrong, wrong, wrong ♪ ♪ Wrong, wrong time ♪ ♪ TERRANCE: One of my favorite Jazz Fest posters that James has done is the one with Aaron Neville.

He painted this image of Aaron with these birds circling around in the air, and it's so graceful and beautiful.

JAMES: He is a person that is rooted in spirituality, and I think his music kind of comes from that well, and I try to get at that, that he comes from the heart.

He's this big, strong guy, and he comes from the heart.

When you hear that voice mounting and soaring, it's him leaning into his spiritual heart.

And that's why I chose the backdrop of a cemetery and for the rising of the birds around him.

♪ WAYNE: My favorite is Fats Domino poster.

It's something that A, I love Fats Domino and what he's meant for the city, what he's done for the city, but also that poster is, I think, really dynamic and fun.

♪ Goin' yonder ♪ JAMES: I knew Fats and he was sort of from my neighborhood and, well, I felt personally affected by his music, plus the fact that I would see him from time to time.

It was a special honor to paint him.

♪ WAYNE: They both have a similar style.

Fats Domino had a way of just like making the piano move, making the room move.

It was just sort of a rolling swell.

Really both had a sensuous and supple approach to their art, one visual and one musical.

♪ JAMES: And he was a very gentle and loving spirit and a rocking, sexy son of a gun in the day.

So that's where I went when I went with that poster, was some of that great physical energy.

And, trying to capture some of the importance that he was on the American musical scene, something I think that is consistently overlooked, not by everybody, but I think that he had a much larger effect than people acknowledge.

♪ Ain't that a shame ♪ ♪ You're the one to blame ♪ ♪ (audience applauding) JAMES: It has been a real joy.

TANK: Thank you, James.

JAMES: Yeah, it has been a real joy.

And it's been great to paint.

Well, I guess we'll start with the pièce de résistance.

(Tank laughs) TANK: Look at that!

Oh my god, look at the girls!

JAMES: How about that?

TANK: Oh my god!

JAMES: She's rockin' there.

TANK: Look at that!

JAMES: She's out there.

TANK: Wow!

All this right here?

Is me.

All this color, all this, all this that it takes.

This is all that it takes to be Tank.

All of this color.

All this purple, all this blue.

All this orange, all this brown, this red.

This green, these yellows.

That's all me.

JAMES: That's all you.

And I mix in a little magic.

TANK: That is so cool.

♪ KIP: I've never met anybody that could have so many projects going at the same time.

And still be successful at all of them.

♪ Shortly after I met James, he got this gig designing stage sets for the House of Blues and was able to take his paintings and create these 3D representations of his work on the stage, for the cameras.

♪ MICHAEL: In 1995, I was able to convince Warner Brothers to fund an entire 26-part series, Live from House of Blues.

And James was under this amazing pressure to come up with sets, and he came through.

He nailed it.

KIP: He decided that he was tired of drinking bad rum, and came up with his own system of distilling rum.

BRETT: It was really groundbreaking.

People weren't making rum in the United States.

And furthermore, New Orleans itself had never really historically been known as a rum producing area.

But it did have this long history with sugar and sugar cane and which is what you make rum out of.

So it made a lot of logical sort of cultural sense why someone would make rum here.

I thought, that seems to me like a very James insight.

KIP: At some point, had over- close to 100 different people working for him there in New Orleans on all these different ventures.

So, I think what he realized is that if he didn't get out of town, then he would lose some of that free spirit that helps him inject such a life into his work.

♪ JAMES: We're in Cluny and we're downtown in the center of Cluny.

Cluny is especially significant because it was the center of the Western world between 900 and 1100, it has the largest abbey in the world.

♪ It's got lovely winding streets, great architectural proportion, good restaurants and great cafes.

(James speaking French) ♪ A lot of the most exciting things in this village are hidden like this and almost never seen.

And a lot of the local people don't even know them.

This is a vestige of the abbey.

So, you can see the top of one of the towers, and then beyond that tree line, that whole zone there, behind all of that was part of the abbey that was taken down during the French Revolution.

(James speaking French) We're at my gallery in Cluny, and it's called Jeudi Prochain.

And currently there is an exposition of eight, I think?

WOMAN: Six.

JAMES: Six, six artists, and they will be here for the next month.

It's a great place to make art.

It's a beautiful environment.

And, it's an affordable place to live.

We're in the country, so it's not Paris.

So for me, this is a great place to be an artist.

(water splashing) (bird chirping) ♪ ♪ ♪ KIP: Some of his best work, I think it comes out of his work in France, where he's been doing a lot of these wonderful landscapes.

You squint, all of a sudden you feel like you're on the French countryside.

JEAN-MARIE: There is a difference indeed, between James in New Orleans and James in France.

James in New Orleans is a seed which was planted in New Orleans.

France, he fell in love with Burgundy.

You fall in love with the landscape.

And when he came to France, you'd see the change.

The painting he was painting is little rivers and fields and trees.

BRADLEY: If you look at his work in France and his work in New Orleans, it's hard to see the same painter.

You see his knife painting become more impressionistic and responding to those patterns in nature, and I think that's representative of his emotional state.

I think, you know, the person he is in New Orleans may not exactly be the person whose mind is at rest and in tune with nature, in Burgundy.

JAMES: Plein air painting means, in short painting in nature.

There is an immediacy and an access to color.

It's personal and direct.

There's the sensual contact with nature.

That's a lovely thing.

And it's very enjoyable to go out and just allow the rapport to unfold and to let nature take your hand and guide you home.

I'm part of the deal, all of me and my headache and the fact that I ran out of the orange that I like, and I got to make a new one.

All of that.

I bring my moods and I bring my tools, whatever I can.

And I try to make something that contributes to life and that somebody will enjoy.

♪ I've been in this house for 25 years, and it was abandoned for 25 years before I bought it.

It was either condemned or close to being condemned.

And so these ceilings were all falling down.

The city was in the process of getting ready to knock it down, but the walls were all great.

So when I saw that, I thought, I can save this place.

♪ So I foolishly decided to go ahead and try that.

And here I am, 25 years later.

♪ And this is, in a big sense, an ordinary house.

Where we enjoy the celebration of friendship.

Over the years I've had many people work with me here.

And I've had many friends come to visit.

I love sporting dinner.

I am a good cook and I enjoy putting something together that I enjoy sharing with friends.

Part of the reason that I liked this whole European adventure was that it threw me off my game, you know what I mean?

It's like it's easy in life to fall into a program and you're doing the same thing, and it's comfortable and all of that.

Well, I really like the idea of upsetting that.

So every season, I'm having to adjust.

The light in my studio is different and ambiance is different.

The colors are different.

So I have to rest myself from my quietude and rise to the occasion.

BRADLEY: If New Orleans is a place that he fell in love with and married and is in for the long haul, his home in Burgundy seems to be a wild affair.

But he always comes home.

♪ JAMES: Being an outsider is a setup, it's a setup for the marvel that the city is, there is no other built environment like this.

The affordability of the city was a generous offering to a creative class that came here to live life as an act of celebration, in a city of celebration and gratitude.

What a great cultural birth!

When you look up and you think about the the extent of the cultural reach of this city is immense and it comes from my viewpoint, from these earlier periods when the artists were able to live and thrive.

It's harder now, it's much harder.

It's harder for an artist to support themselves here.

It's harder because the cost of living has escalated.

It's escalated for everybody.

MICHAEL: James, as a incredible artist, he has made it a mission to keep that tradition alive of this wonderful bohemian, basically artist community.

And you have to applaud him for that.

ALEXA: James puts his money where his mouth is.

I mean, he's really helped artists, and he's created this amazing space in the 7th Ward called "Orleania."

It's this huge concrete building.

And within this building, he's allowed artists to take space there for $0.50 a square foot, which is unheard of.

EPAUL: After Hurricane Katrina, the majority of the warehouses in New Orleans were taken and turned into luxury condominiums.

So for an artist to buy a building like this and give back to other artists is beyond just having a space.

It's like a community.

It's, you know, extended family.

(singing - lyrics indistinct) JAMES: It's a square city block, about a quarter of a million square feet.

It's divided up into artists studios, and there you find a very heartful group of dedicated artists and so it's our way of providing affordable workspace.

And eventually, as the project matures, a place to live and work.

♪ We want to create an environment that has people hard at work, bringing forward what they love and sharing it with the world.

♪ EPAUL: I call it the largest open air asylum in the country.

He wanted to put us all in one building so we can keep the spirit of creativity and all these things just inspire you to keep creating.

And from there, it's just a matter of connecting with the collectors and hoping that the magic of success happens.

♪ JAMES: Honestly, I find that disregarded materials are such an opening for creativity.

EPAUL: Yeah, I noticed your pallets.

Like you'll leave your pallets up and put them up as art.

And I was like, yeah, why toss that out.

It's so rich.

JAMES: There's such a passion here that it's lovely to see the expression.

It's lovely to see people expressed and, and for them to share that with the world, it's a terrific thing.

So, I feel great about being able to be helpful in that.

I see this ribbon that cuts across it, you know.

WOMAN: Yeah.

JAMES: I know you're trying to say something with that.

WOMAN: I am.

I'm painting a journey, journey of my life as an artist and journey myself as I evolve as an individual.

I feel I was given a gift, a paintbrush, when I was born, and I keep painting flowers over and over.

And then, my mission and my journey is to cover the world with flowers and the joy and the love that they bring.

ARON: The biggest thing that it did was it was suddenly a place where I was actually going to work and and just focusing on work and creating, yeah, getting a separate space really was, was a huge sort of shift in my career because it really allowed me to treat my art more as an occupation.

JAMES: We're an art-cubator, we give people the chance to express themselves.

And we try to support them.

And there are some people here that will make their rent for the year tonight, which is a wonderful thing.

Then they're off on their own, making wild stuff, doing what they want.

EPAUL: James Michalopoulos.

He's my role model, my mentor.

I hope he's not the last of his kind because now we live in this world where everybody's more selfish and thinking about themselves.

And if they had a building like this, they would be thinking about what they can do with it to make money off of it.

He's thinking about what he can do to keep the energy and the culture of New Orleans alive for the next generation.

JAMES: Like, what is that one?

GIRL: It's like sometimes it's like, flowers, stars.

JAMES: I love it.

It's very fresh, very exciting.

It's not only about the art, it's also about the feeling here.

It feels like the just world, the great world, the world of celebration and gratitude.

That is life in the city of New Orleans.

♪ BRADLEY: There's no artists more closely aligned with the city of New Orleans than James Michalopoulos.

Sometimes an artist becomes so much a part of a place that it's hard to separate the two.

For me, you cannot separate Georgia O'Keeffe from the landscape she painted, or vice versa.

I cannot separate Walter Anderson from Horn Island, or vice versa.

And I think for so many, you cannot separate James Michalopoulos from the city of New Orleans.

ANDREW: James Michalopoulos is a treasure to New Orleans that showcases the number one thing that makes New Orleans, New Orleans, and this is architecture.

And he has a unique way of painting that.

You can see his joy through the paintings.

You can see the liveliness of the city.

BRETT: I feel like his paintings helped me sort of see the city in a way that I would not have.

♪ JEAN-MARIE: Buildings, houses, streets for him are alive.

ANDREW: You can kind of see all of those decades and people living in them, of the buildings breathing, of the color of the cast iron columns, the faded, you know, weatherboard, the brick.

BRETT: It's an argument to just let it be.

QUINT: You can talk about the architecture, you can talk about the music, you can talk about the musician who's in it.

But he combines them all into one essence, into one thing.

So you feel the architecture, you feel the art, the colors, the same way you feel Dr.

John or Louis Armstrong or Fats Domino playing in the middle of the street.

I never felt a separation between the buildings and the artist, you know, it was all one feeling.

KIP: We want our cities to survive if we want to see New Orleans maintain that artistic edge, we have to take care of the people.

I think through his efforts, he's teaching us how to do that.

MICHAEL: What I love about James Michalopoulos is that he stayed true to himself.

He did not let outside influences dictate what he was going to paint and who he was going to be as an artist.

♪ Even after James retires and he sits back, and whether it's going to be here in New Orleans or in France or wherever part of the world, he can sit back and say, I did it, and I did it my way.

JAMES: The life of expression is intertwined with this notion of bohemian life.

They're complementary.

So it's a commitment to a creative life, to listening and having your integrity intact, where you're taking the risks, taking the chances to express yourself, and then putting yourself out there, having the vulnerability to actually share it with people.

So this is the quintessential activity of a musician on a stage.

Now you will unveil your poster.

♪ (crowd cheering and applauding) And I have taken immense inspiration from that life, the life of the musician in New Orleans out on a stage, coming forth, putting themselves on the line in front of this crowd.

Wow, what a risk.

What a beautiful thing.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Michalopoulos: The Art of Celebration is funded by Andy & Marian Peeler.

Additional funding provided by Goldring Family Foundation, Lipsey's, and by the following: A complete list of funders is available at APTONLINE.ORG.

(pages flipping) ♪