Hotel Monteleone Aims to Break Records

Hotel Monteleone, the quintessential New Orleans hotel, is looking to make history in a whole different way. Fittingly, the piece will be made out of Mardi Gras beads, bottle caps, and wine corks. It will depict Life in the French Quarter. Over the next year, Wanger will be traveling with the piece to schools and community centers statewide to work with volunteers on placing more than four million Mardi Gras beads on the art work. The piece will return to the Hotel Monteleone in summer 2015. 

The massive art piece titled “Life in the French Quarter” is the latest project of local bead artist Stephan Wanger’s Bead Town initiative. The inspiration behind “Life in the French Quarter” is to translate everything that makes New Orleans great into art. Wanger’s vision of the piece features a background of iconic New Orleans scenery and a second line of famous local movers and shakers from the past and present including Lena and Louis Prima, Robin Barnes, Tennessee Williams and many more. The free standing 16-panel plywood canvas measures 96 feet wide by 8 feet tall and will be made entirely out of Mardi Gras Beads along with bottle caps and wine corks. Wanger started to prep the canvas by sketching out his vision for the piece in July 2014 and he projects it will take a year to add over four million Mardi Gras beads to complete the project by August 2015.

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