(Photograph by Anton Haardt, Circa 1998)

Willie White was born in 1910. His parents were sharecroppers. He eventually landed in New Orleans. Having uprooted himself from the cotton farm, he settled there, working as a waiter, barber, nightclub janitor and occasional sign painter. In the 1960's White began decorating his front porch on Dryades Street with his drawings, mostly created with magic markers on poster board, a medium which he began to work exclusively in after the late 1960’s. His subjects became fantastic prehistoric birds, alligators, dragons and flying horses, and abstract aerial landscapes. Willie White died in 2000 following a series of strokes.