Lady embodies the artistic spirit of Faubourg Marigny, with a heart so big some might even call it wild.
Lady Walker was born under another name and raised in Lower Coast Algiers. Her raised home was flanked by forest and surrounded by critters of every kind imaginable. She caught fire flies, dodged snakes, and didn’t often give thought to the city across the river.
As a teen, however, the ferry would serve as an escape pod shuttling her to another world, the “east bank.” A land she describes remembering as, “a giant place of enormous possibility.”
Today she is a tiny woman of enormous possibility. A woman who found a sanctuary and herself while exploring District C.
This is her story….
Home Sweet Home
Stepping across the threshold of Lady Walker’s shotgun is a bit like being plunged feet first into a vat of creativity. The type of creativity I’d soon realize was life preserving.
Lady sits in front of me on a vintage chaise, her knees tucked up against her chest as though she’s about to cannon ball through the pine floors.
Lady is petite. Perhaps just over five feet, with brilliant blunt cut hair, sharp features, and a bias towards color pop cosmetics. Today however she’s highly caffeinated, her hair is tucked back, her face bare. I am in the presence of a friend.
The walls surrounding us are strewn with posters from events across that city that Lady has attended and perhaps even created. Behind the chaise is a Chinese screen that’s a Bywater, Bargain Center score. Her tiny scruff of a dog, Peanut, sits by my side, a skipper on our journey. A notebook from her company, WildHeart, rests on the low table between us. To our right is a large multi-tiered crate harboring four juvenile opossums.
Lady embodies the artistic spirit that people refer to when they defend why they moved to the neighborhood. She doesn’t just create; her heart is so big it manifests whatever it pursues. Some might call it wild.
Manifesting The Marigny
“There’s something to that idea, manifestation. The concept that what you put your energy into manifests itself,” she explains.
I believe her. She is the type of woman who relies on talent to pay her bills. She does so while nursing wild animals to health. I once witnessed her trap, and coddle four kittens into domesticated pets while finding them new homes. What cosmic shift landed Lady in Faubourg Marigny? Turns out it was, unrequited love.
“I remember coming over to the Marigny to visit friends that lived this way. We spent time over here but I was young. Too young to really grasp where I was or what was happening around me.”
Lady wasn’t clear on what attracted her to the neighborhood, she did however have a clear memory of a very attractive guy. She was a kid at Delgado college and started borrowing his bike.
“He was an Adonis, 6”5’ and beautiful. There was never anything romantic there – unfortunately - but he had this smaller boy’s red, Western Flier that he and his sister were too tall to ride. He let me use it and so I’d come over the river, park my car, and ride that bike downtown. I suppose that was my first introduction to the neighborhood; a good place to park.”
The Marigny may have started off as a place to park, but it gave Lady the idea of what it would be like to live here. She made friends who shared artistic leanings over drum circles and similarly followed their hearts.
She found asylum within The Noisician Coalition - a group dedicated to auditory disruption of parades and events. Which according to Lady used trashcans for instruments until it got so big it was expected and no longer disruptive.
After graduation she began pursuing a gig downtown.
“I think I just had this romantic notion. I was going to live by ‘my people’ in the Marigny and work in a little shop in the French Quarter.”
And so, she did. She worked at Road Kill in the Quarter and moved in with creative friends just one house down from the beautiful man with the bike.
The Frenzy that was Frenchman
Lady was in a new reality of her own design. A reality that provided her with a new name, “Lady.” Lady was a ‘gift’ from a small child and the title suited Lady’s metamorphous into adulthood. With it developed a reputation all her own.
Her reputation as an outgoing social personality made her lots of friends. Some were loud mouths. Soon their word of mouth helped make her passion, photography, something she could rely on financially… almost. This created some tension. Her heart was in photography but bar tabs paid higher. She followed the money and landed a gig at the soon to boom Spotted Cat.
“It was the heyday of Frenchmen. We had the right mix of the right kind of locals and tourists. People came there because they came to see the music.”
But the ‘right kind of tourists’ also had loud mouths. Soon word got out about Frenchmen and brought in a louder rowdier crowd. A crowd Lady attributes with smothering most of the ‘good’ out of Frenchmen Street.
“It was over when people started talking over the music.”
As the crowd increased so did Lady’s agitation. The life she’d manifested had radically evolved and so did the drinking that went with it. She picked up some life lessons, albeit hard lessons that encouraged an already tough and independent girl to become more so.
“My manager pulled me aside and asked me, ‘What are you doing?! You’re talented and you’re doing nothing with it here.’ It reminded me that I was putting my energy toward bartending instead of my passion, photography.”
Lady dropped the gig and focused on her craft.
Wild Hearts Run Free
Overtime Lady’s focus made her business sustainable. She ditched the bar gigs. She made new friends. She began reflecting. In doing so she recognized there was something else she’d need to ditch, drinking.
“The first thing you notice is time. How much you suddenly have. You’re not taking up nights with drinking or days with recovering. The second thing you notice is how much your brain works, really works when you let it.”
She challenged her new found clarity by resetting her focus. She spent the extra hours crafting and costuming. She created an Instagram account, @sobrietystitches where she shares her work. Needle point helped combat the idleness. She soon moved onto headdresses and costuming. She turned both into a side hustle during slow photography months.
Lady also used her free time to volunteer at a local animal rescue. It started with rescuing kittens. It evolved into a fundraiser. Holiday Pet Portraits with Santa, by Lady Walker.
Lady realized her love of photography and her love of animals could be combined. She re-branded her own business as WildHeart photography and began marketing family pet portraits; portraits of people and their pets.
The renewed effort helped Lady channel her passions into one point of focus. A focus that would keep her away from alcohol and onto bigger, better, and stranger things.
Anything is Opposible
For the WildHeart launch party, Lady networked with New Orleans most popular influencer pets including a pig and opossum duo with over 124,000 Instagram followers. The launch was a success and Lady became so enamored with the opossum she modeled her next Mardi Gras costume after him. But the universe had more to deliver.
Shortly after Mardi Gras, Lady heard a funny coughing under her home and went to investigate. It was a baby opossum. She called her rehab friend at Trampled Rose for advice. She was given instructions and kept the baby alive until a rehabber could pick him up in the morning.
Two days later Lady received a call back from Trampled Rose. Could she sit another opossum overnight?
“It just sort of happened. One minute I’m photographing and dressing up as an opossum. The next they’re showing up at my door.”
Lady is now a licensed rehab apprentice with four baby opossums in her living room. I got to hold one. It was lovely.
“I’m literally manifesting opossums, I’m realizing it’s time to put that energy back into something on purpose.”
And so, Lady finds herself combining her passions once again. She is using the WildHeart brand to not only produce income for her own sustainability but to raise funds to sustain the lives of rescued wild life.
A Lady Found
Lady used creativity to rescue herself. Today she uses it to rescue those who cannot fend for themselves.
She's combined her passions of photography and helping animals by crafting a company all her own. She does so whilst enjoying a life in the land of enormous possibility.
Contacts
If you’d like to engage Lady’s photography services or support her cause, you can do so here at wildheartnola.com.
Lady’s Men and Marsupials calendar features attractive men and adorable baby opossums. It benefits wildlife and is available for purchase here.
If you find an animal that needs rehabbing – or would like to learn about becoming a licensed rehabber - contact the department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
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