One wouldn’t normally expect to find the world’s most Googled street artist lurking among the ruins of the lower ninth ward in NEW ORLEANS, but that’s just where renegade stencil artist BANKSY has been holed up for the past week, covering the desiccated city with art to commemorate the anniversary of KATRINA, the hurricane that killed 1800 people when it struck the coastal city in 2005.

“Three years after Katrina I wanted to make a statement about the state of the clean-up operation,” he said, attested that the city’s levee wall offered “the best painting surface in the state of Louisiana.” In the art world, timing is everything, and as the anonymous bomber wraped up his project, the city was bracing for the onslaught of Gustav.

A photo diary here and news story here.