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Elders Sacred Talk Series: Martin Payton and Eric Waters

Wed, October 1st at 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

NOMA and the Congo Square Preservation Society present the Elders Sacred Talk Series with prolific elder New Orleanians, celebrating the lives they lead while providing the opportunity for visitors to learn firsthand about the impact they’ve had on our city. This conversation between Martin Payton and Eric Waters will be moderated by Ron Bechet.
This program is included with museum admission, which is free for Louisiana residents every Wednesday courtesy of The Helis Foundation’s Art for All initiative.

About the Speakers

Martin Payton

Martin Payton, a native of New Orleans, has sustained a distinguished career as both artist and educator for more than five decades. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Xavier University of Louisiana and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Following his return to New Orleans, Payton embarked on an academic career that included appointments at Southern University at New Orleans, Southern University in Baton Rouge, and Xavier University, where he played a formative role in shaping successive generations of artists.
Payton’s artistic practice is most closely identified with his monumental public sculptures and monochromatic constructions, created through the welding of salvaged industrial steel. By reconfiguring discarded materials, Payton engages in a process that is simultaneously aesthetic and cultural, transforming the remnants of industrial production into abstract forms resonant with historical, spiritual, and communal associations. His collaborative work Spirit House with John Scott stands as a significant intervention in the visual and cultural landscape of New Orleans.
Peyton’s work is represented in major institutional collections, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, the William King Museum of Art in Virginia, and the Rosekrans Runnymede Sculpture Garden in California. Payton’s work is recognized not only for its formal innovation but also for its critical engagement with African American cultural memory and the material legacies of labor and industry.

Eric Waters

For more than four decades, photographer Eric Waters has served as a central documentarian of Black social life and cultural traditions in New Orleans. A graduate of Dillard University, he studied photography under the late Marion J. Porter, whose mentorship shaped his early artistic development. While Waters has been widely sought after as an event photographer, his enduring reputation rests on his incisive visual record of Second Line parades and the ceremonial pageantry of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition—cultural expressions that lie at the heart of New Orleans’s African American community.

 

Waters’s photography captures the dynamism, movement, and layered symbolism of Black vernacular performance. His images serve as vital historical archives, preserving traditions that both affirm and continually reinvent communal identity. His work has been featured in international, national, and local media outlets and publications, including Ties That Bind and Freedom’s Dance: Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs in New Orleans (co-authored with Karen Celestan). He also co-edited SEEING BLACK: Black Photography in New Orleans, 1840 and Beyond with Kalamu ya Salaam and Shana M. Griffin, a landmark volume that situates Black photographers within a broader historical and cultural continuum.

 

Waters received the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities’ Documentary Photographer of the Year award in 2018 and was named a Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist-in-Residence in 2019. His body of work continues to be regarded as both an artistic achievement and a crucial intervention in the visual historiography of New Orleans’s Black cultural practices.

 

About Elders Sacred Talks and Art Thrives

NOMA’s Art Thrives initiative presents creative aging programs designed to support visitors ages 55 and up. In addition to art-making workshops, courses, and opportunities for hands-on art-making, the Elders Sacred Talk Series provides a platform for older adults in New Orleans to share their experiences with audiences of all ages.

The Elders Sacred Talk Series is presented in partnership between NOMA and the Congo Square Preservation Society. Art Thrives is supported by E.A. Michelson Philanthropy.

Details

Date:
Wed, October 1st
Time:
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
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