The Decorated Life of StuART! Auld
The Society of St. Anne parades down Royal Street on Mardi Gras Day, 2025, with Stuart still leading the way. Photo by Ellis Anderson
March 2025This year on Mardi Gras Day, the legendary Society of Saint Anne celebrated the artist and costume designer who helped conjure the colorful magic.
-by Nan Parati
photos by George Long, Mike Cammarata and Ellis AndersonThis year on Mardi Gras Day, The Societe of St. Anne celebrated the artist and costume designer who helped conjure the colorful magic.
The legendary parade rollicked through the Marigny and the French Quarter, and once again, artist Stuart Auld led the way, as he’d done for many decades.
But this year, only Stuart’s image, printed on a sign, held his honored place.
Carried by those closest to him, the portrait of the smiling, costumed artist forged a path through the crowds of cheering spectators in the neighborhoods. Many of the costumes worn by the marchers had been made or inspired by Stuart’s creative fantasies and elaborate winged creatures that he’d sewn on his mother’s old Bernina sewing machine.
Stuart Auld in St. Anne, 2020, photo by Mike Cammarata
And when the parade ended at the river – as it always does, consigning the ashes of lost loved ones to its currents – Stuart’s own ashes, borne there in a purple velvet bag by purple-clad friend George Long, joined the journey to the sea.
Stuart’s friend George Long, taking Stuart’s ashes to the river with St. Anne. Photo by Ellis Anderson
A young Stuart Auld, years before the Dutch Boy costume incident, photo Stuart’s FB page.
Born and raised in the small town of Galion, Ohio, the young Stuart Auld couldn’t have imagined such a regal send-off. Or, actually, knowing Stuart, he probably imagined it well as a child, he just wasn’t sure how to pull it off, there in Galion.
He was the last and late-born son of Marjorie and Richard Auld, both of whom brought generations of artistry into their family life. Richard hand-carved and built much of the furniture in their house; Marjorie was a talented seamstress who provided her youngest son with handmade costumes for every youthful event.
That early interest in costuming came to a pause when, in seventh grade, Stuart was invited to a Halloween party and asked his mom to make him a Little Dutch Boy costume.
As usual, Stuart arrived at the party in a splendid portrayal of a Little Dutch Boy. Unbeknownst to him, however, his peers had decided that dressing up was for little kids, and he was the only costumed attendant. Mortified, that aspect of his life went into hibernation until about fifteen years later when he discovered Mardi Gras.
After graduating from college with a degree in graphic design, Stuart moved to Jackson, Wyoming and then, on to a job in publishing in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he taught disco dancing on the side.
In the late 1970s, a friend decided to celebrate her birthday in New Orleans, inviting Stuart to join her. As the familiar story goes, Stuart arrived in New Orleans and realized he’d finally found his true people, leaving the Mid-West and the far-West for the Deep South, for good.
Stuart Auld, 1995, by George Long
Soon after arriving, the artist was hired to design and create the storefront windows for DH Holmes Department Store on Canal Street. And it didn’t take long for him to rediscover his passion for creative costuming; Stuart met and joined Henri Shindler, Jon Newlin and Paul Poche in the Societe of Saint Anne, a Mardi Gras neighborhood parade krewe they had formed ten years earlier. He became an integral and highly visual member of the group with his energetic and lively costumes.
Lundi Gras eventually became Purple Party Day in Stuart’s world, when all the cool kids dressed in purple and showed up at his house to eat, drink and celebrate - as long as they were in purple. Purple of any sort, even if your outfit consisted of old pants and a purple t-shirt was acceptable. If someone showed up wearing the most elaborate of costumes that consisted of 400 colors but none of ‘em purple, they were shown the door. Stuart had rules!
Rule Number 1: Wear Purple to the Purple Party
One of the legendary Purple Parties, photo by George Long
Visual and textile arts were not the only talents Stuart possessed. He had a wide range of musical capabilities and maintained a facility in sight-reading music of many styles, both for recorder and piano. He was as fascinated playing baroque flute duets and four-hand piano as he was listening to New Orleans jazz.
Early on in New Orleans, he met Nancy Werner, a Minnesota native who was also beguiled by Quarter life in the late ‘70s. A nurse who sometimes busked playing flute with classical groups on Royal Street, Nancy and Stuart became lifelong friends, sharing a love of costuming, music, humor, Mardi Gras and the general enjoyment of life.
Stuart and Nancy in the early ‘80s, photo courtesy Nancy Werner
I lucked into meeting Nancy, Stuart and several other communal friends in the Quarter in early ‘80s. We glued ourselves together as eternal companions back then when we imagined life, love and ideological fusion would endure forever. Danny Toups joined that circle soon after.
St. Anne’s 2003 portrait by George Long
Stuart met Danny at a bar and they swept each other off their collective feet. Danny was raised on the West Bank but had taken the ferry to the French Quarter every day instead of going to school. He’d run the streets of the Quarter as a teenager, getting to know every hooker, bartender, and Bourbon Street character who lived there, and it was he who hammered the thickest nails into Stuart’s love for the city.
Danny Toups
As same-sex marriage wasn’t legalized until 2015, Danny and Stuart never married, though each referred to the other as “my husband” throughout their years together. Danny’s forte was cooking, (and just being a character) and no one who knew Danny would ever think of putting salt in your red beans; you just don’t do that.
That was rule number two. Don’t mess with Danny’s recipes.
For much of their life together, Danny and Stuart lived at 1010 Chartres in the French Quarter, in an apartment building owned by Ken Smoot. When Ken passed away, he left money and the Chartres Street apartment building to Danny.
Stuart and Danny later sold that building and bought a house on North Rampart Street that they converted into The Sweet Olive Bed and Breakfast, a glorious dwelling in which every room was manicured and painted by Stuart.
Rule number three: If you don’t have the piece you’re looking for, paint what you’ve got to look exactly like what you want.
In 1989 Stuart got his first gig working in New Orleans’ burgeoning film industry as a scenic artist. He was eventually hired as a scenic artist on more than 20 films, among them Hard Target, Legends of the Fall, Runaway Jury, Ray, The Smurfs, and then, the television series, Elementary. From there he wound up being employed by Lady Gaga herself, helping to design and build the castle for her 2014 G.U.Y. video.
In the late 1990s Danny and Stuart won a food booth at the Jazz Fest and delighted the crowds with their New Orleans specialties. Stuart was no stranger to Jazz Fest; I, as head of the art department had hired him many times to paint set pieces, backdrops and ancestors out there. The Blues Tent backdrop was painted by Stuart, as were the ancestral memorials to Allen Toussaint, Bruce Brice, George Wein, Henry Butler and others.
In 2001, soon after Danny’s death, Stuart painted a portrait of him. Photo Stuart Auld’s FB page.
Danny died of HIV in 2000, and, shortly after that, Stuart decided to downsize. He sold the Sweet Olive and bought himself an Airstream trailer that he planned to live in, splitting his time between New Orleans and Gulfport, Mississippi and maybe, even New York, where he was making good money on those films that kept hiring him. In fact, he happened to be in New York in August of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit both New Orleans and Mississippi, leaving Stuart with few possessions but an easy decision to just move on up to the Big Apple where jobs were plenty and hurricanes were few.
Stuart in 2007, photograph by George Long
Then, five years later, on Christmas night, his shared apartment there was destroyed by a fire.
Nancy was visiting him at the time. They had been out, having dinner with a childhood friend of Stuart’s.
“As we got off the subway coming home Stuart’s phone rang, warning him that the house was on fire. We turned his corner and saw Armageddon! Firetrucks, smoke, flames shooting from the windows and crowds in the street.
“It had just started snowing, which would turn into the worst blizzard New York City had seen in years. Stuart stood and stared at his apartment windows where the firemen had tossed the contents of his room out to the ground; the cherished rocking chair from his grandmother with the hand-stitched tapestry upholstery torn, the chair smashed into pieces.”
This second losing of nearly all his possessions confirmed for Stuart, as it does for many disaster survivors, that we don’t need lots of possessions to live a good life; we just have to love the life we have and keep on going.
In 2018, Stuart decided it was time to retire from the world of film, and devote himself to creating art for its own sake again. He missed New Orleans and, through his friends Gary and Mark moved into a rental they owned on Pauline Street in Bywater.
Stuart Auld and friend, Mardi Gras 2019, photo by George Long
Back permanently in New Orleans, the artist rejoined the second-line as the head of the Societe of Sainte Anne, shepherding the crab nets, supervising the route, organizing the annual ball, declaring the theme and raising the money to hire the Storyville Stompers as the parade’s accompaniment every single year.
Rule number four: Always pay the band.
Stuart Auld, Mardi Gras 1993, photo by George Long
While Stuart may not have focused on material possessions in later life, he wound his heart, soul, and all the fibers of his passion into his art and his love of experiences. Stuart Auld was The Master of the Art of the Bath.
He appreciated the value of a good soak, and when the opportunity arose to create the surroundings for the perfect tub he gathered all his artistic and aesthetic talents to construct the setting for the Bath of his dreams in the back garden of his house on Pauline Street.
Someone had given him a huge, footed porcelain tub, discarded during the renovation and “improvement “of another dwelling. The tub lay unused in Stuart’s backyard until just before Covid hit, when, one day he rose up, assembled his tools and ornaments, and declared that it was time to build The Tub Room.
A man on a dedicated mission, Stuart cleared a spot just outside his back door. Rocks and tree limbs, pavers and pipes, a pile of old glass doors and windows came together to receive the mammoth tub, which he installed with a well-placed lever and fulcrum.
Stuart selfie from his FB page
The finished project was a glassed-in room with flowering vines, shells and tiles that surrounded the gleaming white porcelain tub; finally, a vessel long enough and deep enough to swallow his entire lanky body – with room to spare!
The crowning accompaniments were the carved towel-hook and then, his beloved hammock which swung from a massive crepe myrtle tree steps from the door of his magnificent Tub Room. That hammock was the perfect place to accept him after his soak. It was also the place for him to live out his days while he anticipated his end.
And his end?
Stuart’s last FB profile photograph
Stuart wrote his last note to us all, announcing in an April 30, 2024 Facebook post what he had just found out: After battling a mysterious illness, he’d just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Here’s an excerpt from his post:
It's been so great to see everyone’s pictures from Jazz Fest, and to tune in to WWOZ for a taste of the music. I even had a soft shell crab po-boy, thanks to my neighbor!
Why am I not out there enjoying it myself, you may ask. Well, the answer is not an easy one to share…
I’ve been diagnosed with Stage 4 Renal Cancer. Maybe the oncologist will convince me otherwise, but at this point I am just hoping for better pain meds and a pleasant period of palliative care. I paid ahead for this with Danny (my partner who passed in 2000 from HIV) and am hoping for as pleasant a time as I crafted for him.
I have processed this pretty well and am putting things in place to keep myself comfortable at home as things progress, and to put my meager affairs in order. I really don't want to spend my last moments in a hospital or recuperating from invasive surgeries and treatments.
I'm sorry to drop this on you like this but I wanted people to know that I am probably approaching the end of a long, beautiful, colorful, and active life and am not feeling like there's anything on my bucket list that I can't easily dump out.
Many of you deserve a more personal message but I'm already spending whole days on the phone sometimes… I'm bored with the subject, to be honest.
My 71st birthday is next Monday. Bywater Bakery is having a post-fest crawfish boil and decompression celebration during the day there. My birthday mate Maggie Tidwell and I have decided to, at least, begin our celebration there, so swing by and give me a hug and a buck if you feel inclined…
I am so surrounded by loving friends it really blows my mind. A close core of them are looking after me already and making this journey easier.
The good part? I finally get to find out what happens when we die, and maybe I won't have to put up with much more of Donald Trump!
Full of love and gratitude for my many blessings, among which most of you belong!
Stuart aka S2
St. Anne’s marching toward the river, Mardi Gras 2025, photo by Ellis Anderson
By the time St. Anne reached the Moonwalk this Mardi Gras, high winds were raising whitecaps on the river. The weather was growing more turbulent by the hour.
But throughout the morning, despite the predictions of tornados and storms, crowds of people in costumes both lavish and laughable had made George Long appreciate the power of St. Anne. The seeds that the founders and members like Stuart had planted decades before had borne magnificent, marvelous fruit in the generations that followed.
“I believe with all my heart that St. Anne played an important role in helping younger people wake up to the value of costuming,” George said later. “They’re taking it seriously and are so joyful to participate.”
Then bearing a bit of his dear friend – covered with purple velvet – George stepped down the levee stairs to the river. Hundreds of members of St. Anne watched as he consigned the remains of Stuart to the Mississippi.
“I was surprised by my response,” George said. “It was a relief to cry and let go. I felt happy for Stuart that he was in a better place and happy to have had my time in his journey.
“He was a beautiful man.”
Photo of Stuart Auld by George Long
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