Exhibition Timeline

Amazon Visions, Vanishing Acts A multimedia installation by Christine Baeumler

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:27:47 -0500

Celebrate a fusion of science, nature and art at LSU Glassell Gallery.
October 28, 2011 – December 9, 2012.

Opening Reception for the artist on Saturday, November 19thth from 6-8pm.

During the 2011-2012 school year, The LSU school of Art welcomes artists and speakers who focus, celebrate, research and address current issues in Ecology. In keeping with our theme: URBANATURE, we are pleased to welcome community and environmentally based mixed media artist, Christine Baeumler to Baton Rouge. Ms. Baeumler presents her Amazon Visions, Vanishing Acts series of work, which seeks to raise awareness of ecological issues such as extinction of species, climate change and eco-systems from reefs to rainforests. Ms. Baeumler will be in town to meet with students and attend a reception at the gallery on November 19th, 2011.

Amazon Visions, Vanishing Acts: Artist Statement:
In the multi-media exhibition, Amazon Visions, Vanishing Acts, I followed in the tradition of naturalist artists of the past to develop an installation that reflects upon both the vitality and fragility of the Amazon rainforest. In the summer of 2008, I traveled to the Lago Preto Conservation Concession as part of an Earthwatch Institute expedition. Lago Preto is a Conservation Concession consisting of a tropical rainforest at the confluence of Yavari and Yavari Miri Rivers. This area is one of the most biodiverse habitats in the Amazon. This area is home to an extraordinary number of avian species, as well as a great diversity of primates. The area has one of the greatest diversity of fish and frog species in the region. I also visited the Yanuyacu River to gather images and audio recordings.

The exhibition presents the lush environment of the Amazon rainforest through video and sound installation. The vibrant Amazon night, glittering with fireflies, lightening and echoing with the sounds of frogs, insects and birdlife are juxtaposed with images of taxidermied species from the Natural History Museum in Lima Peru.

Amazon Twilight acknowledgments: Amy Waksmonski, animation creation and sound assistance David Donovan, editing assistance. The creation of this work was generously supported by the University of Minnesota’s Grant-in-Aid for Research, Artistry and Scholarship and the Imagine Funds Grant.

BIOGRAPHY Christine Baeumler is artist and an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota. She has a BA in Fine Arts from Yale University and an MFA in Fine Arts from Indiana University. Christine is also currently the Artist-in-Residence in the Capitol Region and Ramsey Metro Washington Watershed Districts under the auspices of Public Art Saint Paul. She maintains both a studio and community arts based practice. The studio work includes painting, photography and installation, based largely on travel to World Heritage sites such as the Australian and Amazon rainforests, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Galapagos Islands. Christine’s concern lies not only with the diminishment of ecosystems and species, but also the extinction of human experience of these environments.

Christine’s community-based environmental work is collaborative and involves the ecological restoration of urban greenspaces with attention to increasing biodiversity, providing habitat, improving both the water quality and aesthetic dimension of the sites. She has worked on the East Side Gateway Rain Garden and the Maria Bates Rain Garden in collaboration with ecologists, hydrologists, engineers, University of Minnesota art students and youth volunteers. A series of related watershed projects on the East Side of St. Paul culminated in a large-scale effort to transform a polluted rail-yard along the Mississippi into the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, a new city park. She is a founding member of the Lower Phalen Creek Steering Committee that partnered with over twenty-five agencies to purchase and restore the site.

Christine is a recipient of grants from the Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation, the Nancy H. Gray Foundation Grant for Art in the Environment, and grants from the McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants and a Leadership in Neighborhoods Initiative Grant from the Saint Paul Companies. She is currently a member of PLaCE, an international research center based in the UK that focuses on a site-specific practice. http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/research/place/christinebaeumler.htm
Attached: Image: Christine Baeumler, Toucan, Oil on photopolymer plate, 2010.

Works in Porcelain: Andy Shaw & Mary Louise Carter

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:44:25 -0500

Andy Shaw
Artist Statement:

Mary Lousie Carter
Artist Statement:

Jesse Allison, Nick Hwang, Michael Straus: Social Structure [Construction no.1]

Tue, 6 Sep 2011 15:24:49 -0500

[ Construction no. 1 ] is an interactive audiovisual performance for voice, social media, interactive media, and constructed speaker blocks in which social media artifacts (tweets, Facebook statuses, 4Square locales, Flickr/Instagram photos) are re-interpreted into musical relations of resonance and dissonance.

Construction no. 1 is made from plexiglass blocks activated with tactile speakers and video projection. As an installation, audience-performers are encouraged to re-arrange blocks and create their own ephemeral social construct. The work is aware of tallisonic.comf the blocks, therefore building and rebuilding of the network is performative.

In performance, the artists navigate the constructed social space playing with resonance in both the media materials and sonic structure. Interaction between the media and the construction ultimately resonates the structure itself until balance fails, creating the danger of collapse.

[SONIC | MEDIATION] is a trio of Baton Rouge-based sonic artists using technology to make connections between ideological and societal currents, interactivity, and sound.
Jesse Allison [allisonic.com] | LSU Assistant Professor of Experimental Music & Digital Media, President of Hardware Engineering, Electrotap LLC
Nick Hwang [nickhwang.com] | Sonic and Experimental Artist, Interactive Programmer, PhD Candidate in Composition at LSU
Michael Straus [www.mstraus.net] | Saxophone Interventionist, EAR aDuo, PhD Student in Experimental Music & Digital Media at LSU

The Landscape and the Artist: Guichet with Wolfe and Botter

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:45:11 -0500

Melody Guichet with Carlyle Wolfe and Jacob Botter explore and create images from the natural world for this lush exhibition at the Glassell Gallery in the Shaw Center for the Arts. Wolfe and Botter are both graduates of the MFA art program at LSU and currently show in exhibitions across the country. Melody Guichet taught painting and drawing at LSU and recently retired to pursue a full time painting schedule. All events are free and open to the public.

Melody Guichet
Born in Hammond, Louisiana, she received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Louisiana State University in 1971 and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1973. She joined the faculty at LSU in 1974 and is currently Emeritus Professor of Painting and Drawing. Guichet served as Associate Director of the School of Art for 8 years. Prior to that, she served as Assistant Director and Undergraduate Coordinator for the School of Art. She was awarded “Professor of the Year” by the School of Art, “Distinguished Professor” by the university, and was named the Emogene Pliner Professor of Art by the College of Art and Design. In 2007 she received the “’Hub’” Cotton Award for Faculty Excellence” at LSU.

Guichet’s paintings have been recognized with numerous awards and grants. Some of these include a major National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts Artist’s Fellowship, two Division of the Arts Grants from the State of Louisiana, a nomination for an Artists in the Visual Arts National Award, as well as awards from the Arkansas Arts Center, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York.

Guichet has served as a panel member for the NEA Midwest Regional Awards, fellowship awards for the states of Kentucky and Mississippi, as well as having juried and judged many regional and local exhibitions. She has been a panel member on forums at the Southeastern College Art Conference, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum of Art, among others.
Melody Guichet's work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries. Some of these include: American Academy and Institute for Arts and Letters, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art; Birmingham Museum of Art; Alternative Museum, New York; Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; Chicago International New Art Forms Exhibition; Design Center of Los Angeles; School of Visual Arts, New York; Galerie Simonne Stern, New Orleans; Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans.

Jacob Botter
Artist Statement: Us and the Landscape explores the relationship between humanity and the natural environment. It is the study of how the artificial contrasts with the crude and fits into organic space. I find that in some way the thing that fractures the landscape usually resembles, or mirrors, its immediate environment — if not aesthetically, spiritually. Clearly there are places and examples where this is not the case, but in these pictures there is a touch of reflection between the two. These pictures are about us. -jacob botter

Carlyle Wolfe lives in Oxford, Mississippi. She works in a small painting studio on the Oxford square and teaches part-time in the Art Department at Ole Miss. Carlyle was born in Gainesville, Florida (1977) and grew up in Canton, Mississippi. She completed her undergraduate degree in Art at the University of Mississippi (2000) and completed her graduate degree in Art at Louisiana State University (2004).

Global Vision: Prints from Kyoto Seika University

Fri, 1 Oct 2010 22:18:38 -0500

The Foster Gallery is hosting Global Vision: An Exchange Exhibition of Contemporary Prints from the Kyoto Seika University (KSU) and LSU. KSU is a highly regarded Japanese art school, located in Kyoto that houses an especially strong printmaking program.
LSU Professor Leslie Koptcho and her Japanese counterpart, Atsuhiko Musashi who is an artist and the vice president of KSU, organized the exhibit, Global Vision. As a whole, the exhibit features prints from faculty, students and recent alumni of KSU, along with work from LSU printmaking faculty and students.

Global Vision highlights the technical diversity and digital innovation within Japan's printmaking community, by displaying processes of intaglio, lithography and relief. This exhibit runs in the Foster Gallery through November 19, open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., and Sundays 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

Foster Gallery
October 1 -November 19, 2010
Japanese Print Exchange: Kyoto Seika University

Robert Hausey - A Life’s Work

Sat, 4 Sep 2010 13:05:04 -0500

Born November 25, 1949 in Baton Rouge he graduated from Central High School in 1967. Along with his close friends, artists Melody Guichet, Michael Crespo and James Rink, Hausey studied fine arts at Louisiana State University with such notable professors as Edward Pramuk and John Opie. He received his Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania studying painting with world renowned artists; Alex Katz, Neil Welliver and Rackstraw Downes.

Hausey taught painting and drawing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Sam Houston State University, was a visiting Professor at Ohio University, at Southern University, and from 1977 until his demise enjoyed a long and distinguished career as Professor of Art at Louisiana State University. Hausey is represented in many important national collections and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a residency at the American Academy in Rome.

Though he achieved distinction in his profession it may be for his gentle creative soul that Robert Hausey is most remembered. From the start Hausey was a reader and dreamer who rode rodeo, sought love and discovered painting as a way of coming to consciousness. His paintings survive.

Quantum Landscapes: Shawn Foreman

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:18:13 -0500

Quantum Landscapes: Recent Paintings by Shawn Foreman—Artist Statement:

My first impulse is to create images that give me a feeling of awe. The idea behind Quantum Landscapes is one of straight up imagination. Taking the idea of the Quantum Field Theory and the way that I imagine my subjects would look like if they were viewed on a macro scale and not just on a nano-scale, I used memories of landscapes I have experienced in the past to manipulate these ideas.

Shawn Quincy Foreman earned his MFA in Painting from LSU School of Art in May 2009 and currently works out of his studio, Quincy Art Studio and teaches talented art for the Zachary Community School District.

Space 2010—9th Annual Summer Invitational

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:14:18 -0500

The sixty+ participating artists include LSU alumni and local artists. They have been asked to create art in all media based on the theme of Space 2010.

Participating artists include: Carol Arabie, Charles Barbier, Erin Barker, Billie Bourgeois, Susie Blyskal, Rancy Boyd-Snee, Christopher Scott Brumfield, James Burke, John Michael Byrd , Mary Anne Caffrey, Leanne McClurg Cambric, Craig Clifford, Sam Corso, Paul Dean, Mary Claire Delony, Barbara Donovan, Kevin Duffy, Linda Dautreuil, Scott Finch, Rene Fletcher, Elizabeth Fontenot, Shawn Quincy Foreman, Rosemary Goodell, Frankie Gould, Denise Greenwood, Diane Hanson, Adam Hess, Meg Holford, Patricia Jervey Hough, Michele Hudelot, Kathryn Hunter, Aaron P. Hussey, Nyssa Juneau, Cara Kearns, Stuart Kimbrell, Therese Knowles, Elayne Kuehler, Debbie Kupinsky, Kathleen Lemoine, Regina Loch-Elvert, Jonathan Mayers, Jill Moore, Betsy Neely, Liz Noble, Jonathan Pellitteri, Nancy Jo Poirrier, Ed Pramuk, Hunter Roth, Katherine Scherer, Mark Shumake, Durant Thompson, Elise Toups, Clifton Webb, Donna West, Jim Zietz, Reni Zietz and more!

Sponsored by Michael D. Robinson and Donald J. Boutté and the Glassell Gallery Group.
Mockler Beverage, Budweiser and Coca-Cola.

As We See It: Henry, Thomas and Pearson.

Sat, 29 May 2010 18:22:55 -0500

As We See It: Nationally acclaimed artists Randell Henry, Morris Taft Thomas, and Joseph Anthony Pearson will exhibit new works in mixed media at our contemporary gallery space in downtown Baton Rouge. Thomas is a resident of Alexandria, and Pearson lives in New Orleans. Henry resides in Baton Rouge, where he teaches art at Southern University. The three often exhibit their work together, different styles tackling different subjects. And topping it off is the fact that they live in different places.

The exhibition will feature paintings, collage and sculpture created by these talented artists all of whom use their visual vocabulary to describe their experiences and views of Louisiana culture and history. Each artist’s style is unique yet all share a common background of growing up in Louisiana. As We See It celebrates their individuality and invites the community to share in themes and imagery we can all relate to. Come enjoy the colorful, evocative, and expressive works and catch a glimpse of life As We See It. It is free and open to the public.

Deborah Jack: Memory Lapse

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 18:41:12 -0500

LSU School of Art to host poet, photographer and video artist, Deborah Jack. The LSU School of Art Glassell Gallery has invited artist, Deborah Jack to come to Baton Rouge for an exhibition of her works in photography and video. Ms. Jack will be a featured speaker in at the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars Conference to be held on LSU’s campus April 19-21, 2010. The conference is a collaborative effort between several LSU departments. www.acwws.org

EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION:
when the evidence of our wounds were reborn as petals…
The “evidence” series deals with the re/construction of spaces out of re/memory and the ephemeral quality of memory when applied to a tangible object such as the landscape. We move on through history with our man made efforts to forget but the land remains. The photos were all taken on St. Martin and seek to illustrate a moment that is fleeting like the tickle of a memory in waiting.
The images of the red flowers of the Flambouyant Tree carry with them an inherent beauty as well as a past that includes rebellion, revolt and emancipation. The land for me is a keeper, a witness to the events that occur/ed on the Caribbean island of St. Maarten. It is silent. It is strong. It is both the site of trauma and healing. The Caribbean reality carries with is a constantly evolving dichotomy of opposites that coexist on a daily basis. Beauty and tragedy live together in an uneasy harmony but together nonetheless.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The resonances of traumatic historical events in my personal and cultural memory are at the very core of my work. I see the work as the result of my investigation of the tension that exists in spaces that are at once sites of trauma and sites of healing. A strategic attack on the neo-colonial “Tourist Space” that continues to frame my identity as a Caribbean artist working within a Dutch colonial framework.

I am intrigued by Toni Morrison’s concept of the “re-memory”, a memory triggered by danger. A memory that is not necessarily my own. The images are meant to evoke renewal and the rebirth that occurs after tragedy, and the sacredness and vibrancy of that transformation. The monochromatic photo images are manifestations of blood-memories that are located in my imagined spaces.

The “imagined spaces” series deals with the construction of spaces out of memory and the ephemeral quality of memory when applied to a tangible object such as the landscape. For the land is a witness to all the atrocities and the triumphs. We all move on through history with our man made efforts which all decay but the land remains. The photos were all taken on St. Martin and seek to illustrate a historical moment that is not fixed or documented. Images are layered and repeated in some cases, to symbolize the continuity of nature.
This is about the creation of my own historical data.

I’m using the medium of photography and its cultural connotation as documentation/ document and playing with the notion of fact and fiction and the blurring of those lines. My concerns are that of creating a mythology out of a ruptured historical space. It is a strategic effort to resist disassociation from history and heritage mainly due to the effects of first slavery and later colonialism past and present.

The ongoing project, here nor there, has evolved into an exploration of the difference/similarity between home/homing. The images deal with the fracturing of home space that occurs in the Diasporic body. The fissures that exist between the ruptured spaces, which are evidence of trauma, are for me also sites of healing. These images are subtle investigation tensions and merging between my personal and public space in here in the US and at home in St. Martin (the Dutch Antilles). My shifting concept of home as I travel between these two cultural spaces. I hope to articulate the minor alterations that take place spatially and conceptually to compensate for not feeling at home anywhere.
here nor there represents my multiple modes of existence/being and my constant shifting of the concept of home. Home, not as a geographical space but as one of shifting memory/memories, where dynamic between the private/public, interior/exterior and the familiar/foreign is one of negotiation and compromise. In this scenario my body becomes a site for this flux and flow. This site, however is not fixed, it moves between cultural spaces that are at once familiar and foreign and finds the home space somewhere in between.

The resulting crime of the institution of slavery is the dis-membering of the histories, cultures, traditions, families, and personal memories of a people: a trend that for me is mirrored today by the tourism industry. I am attempting in my own way, as a result of my own re-memories, to re-member.

ARTIST BIO:

Deborah Jack received her M.F.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is an artist whose work is based in photography, painting, video/sound installation, and text. Her work deals with trans-cultural existence, memory, re-memory and hurricanes. She has had residencies at Lightwork and Big Orbit Gallery Summer Artist in Residence. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund of the Netherlands Antilles. She was a fellow at The Photography Institute-National Graduate Seminar and has published two poetry collections. Her work is part of the Lightwork Collection, the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University, and the collection of the Island Government of St. Martin. Her art has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally with recent shows at the Jersey City Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Wilmer Jennings Gallery in New York. She recently returned from Jakarta where she participated in the Utan Kayu Literary Bienale. Deborah Jack is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at New Jersey City University.

8 Fluid Ounces 2010

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:43:29 -0600

A National Juried/Invitational Ceramic Cup Exhibition
Juried by Andy Shaw

Cups! Cups! Cups! This exciting exhibition features work from over 60 artists from Canada and across the country including Arizona, California, Utah, Arkansas, New York and Louisiana. This is our fourth year for this popular exhibition of cups both functional and non-functional. Come enjoy the variety and creativity of the artists. It is no wonder this exhibition draws such distinguished participants from across the nation; the LSU School of Art has one of the highest ranked Ceramic programs in the country according to US News and World Reports. This has been a consistent accomplishment.

JUROR: Andy Shaw is Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University. Prior to LSU he was Resident Artist and the 2006-07 Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellow at The Clay Studio of Philadelphia. In 2000 he earned a MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and in 1992 a BA History from Kenyon College in Ohio. In addition he studied at Penn State University, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and worked as an apprentice at Basin Creek Pottery. Andy has taught at Alfred University, Arcadia University, Andrews University, and Gettysburg College. His tableware has received multiple awards and has been published in Studio Potter, Ceramics Monthly, Garth Clark’s Shards and most recently in New Jersey Life and Elevations, the magazine for Club Members of the Ritz Carlton. In the summer of 2009 Andy exhibited in 2 international shows: Tableware: An International Collection in Sydney, Australia as part of the Australian Ceramics Triennale ’09 and Affinity held at the Icheon World Ceramic Center in Korea.

Cups will be for sale and all events are free and open to the public.

This program was supported in part by funds from the Louisiana State Arts Council and the Louisiana Division of the Arts and by the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge through the Decentralized Arts Funding Program.

IMAGE: Lisa Maher, Cup

Faculty Show – Recent Work

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:29:58 -0600

On Saturday, January 24, the LSU School of Art Gallery (Glassell Gallery) will hold an opening reception for the recent works of LSU faculty members. Located downtown in the Shaw Center for the Arts, the LSU School of Art Gallery is devoted to presenting some of the greatest living talents in Baton Rouge year round.

The faculty exhibit is an annual tradition and is one of the highlight exhibits of the year.

Participating artists and their respective departments include: Jeremiah Ariaz (Photography), Kimberly Arp (Printmaking), Lynne Joddrell Baggett (Graphic Design), Gerald Bower (Graphic Design), Denyce Celentano (Associate Director of the School of Art, Painting and Drawing), Michael Crespo (Painting and Drawing), Paul Dean (Graphic Design), Robert Hausey (Painting and Drawing), Wei He (Graphic Design), Christopher Hentz (Jewelry/Metalsmithing), Chris Johns (Painting and Drawing), Kelli Scott Kelley (Painting and Drawing), Leslie Koptcho (Printmaking), John A. Malveto (Painting and Drawing), Malcolm McClay (Sculpture), Thomas Neff (Photography), Frederick Ortner (Painting and Drawing), Rod Parker (Interim Director of the School of Art, Graphic Design), Andy Shaw (Ceramics), Ed Smith (Painting and Drawing), Michaelene Walsh (Ceramics) and Professor Emeriti James Burke, Melody Guichet, AJ Meek, and Edward Pramuk.

The opening reception will begin at 6 p.m. and will run until 8 p.m. The exhibit will remain open through February 7, 2010

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

MFA Show December 2009

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:32:18 -0600

Photographer, Jill Moore, Printmaker, Melissa Graves and Graphic Designer, Philip Bastian will have a three artist exhibition in the Glassell Gallery December 15-18, 2009. This show presents their thesis work which was developed and created during their last year at the LSU School of Art. They will be graduating in December with Master’s Degrees in Fine Art.

BECOMING: Transformation and the Body, MFA thesis Exhibition by Melissa Graves

MARKETS RISING – a Philip Bastian picture

Born in 1985 in New Orleans, LA, Philip Bastian received his BA from Loyola University New Orleans in 2007. He will receive his MFA from Louisiana State University in December 2009.

Markets Rising is a thesis that incorporates video and the Internet to communicate with viewers, engage them, and inform them of the socially relevant topic of the 2007+ economic crisis. I intend to visually interpret into the crisis in an artistic and accurate manner.

Everyday – Photographs by Jill Moore

Everyday is an exhibit of thirty cibachrome photographs representing an ongoing documentary project. The photographer, Jill Moore, set out one year ago to photograph at least one new person from her life each day. To make the project more interesting, as well as more challenging, she set a goal of having each of these persons be a complete and total stranger – and so they are. However, there is something in each photograph that rings of the familiar. They are not of the ‘important’, but the often overlooked and unknown individuals we encounter during each day. Suffering information overload we filter out the vast majority of these people. We only ‘see’ those people that ‘matter’, all else becomes ‘noise’; filtered into the background of consciousness – vaguely familiar, yet simultaneously foreign. These portraits are tributes to those steering their lives through the every day and what is presented invites the viewer to take an interest, to pay attention and ultimately to acknowledge the people depicted.

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

Deborah Luster: One Big Self

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:15:43 -0600

Photographs by Deborah Luster with C.D. Wright, Featuring Works from One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana and Tooth for an Eye: A Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish,” Glassell Gallery, LSU School of Art, Shaw Center for the Arts,
downtown Baton Rouge, November 14 –Dec. 13, 2009. Hours: Tuesday-Friday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday, 12:00 to 5:00 p.m.:

As the Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. School of Art Endowed Lecture for 2009, C.D. Wright will give a reading of her poems on November 15th, at 5 pm, in the Old State Capitol Building.

Juxtaposing portraits of prisoners, urban landscapes, and poetry, photographer Deborah Luster and writer C.D. Wright collaborated in this exhibition project to create awareness for the realities of incarceration and street violence. Their images and words reveal an aspect of existence on the fringes of society which is far removed from the distorted and often romanticized notions projected by the media.

Readers and Writers and the School of Art welcome poetry legend, C. D. Wright. With thirteen collections under her belt, Wright is no lightweight in the poetry arena. Her thirteenth collection, Rising, Falling, Hovering, which was the international winner of the ninth annual Griffin Poetry Prize, has been aptly described as poetry that reminds us what poetry is for. As first-hand listeners we may indeed be reminded of what the title suggests: that poetry, like life, can show us that we are at once risers, fallers and hoverers. C. D. Wright was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Wright is currently the Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English at Brown University. Opening for Wright is the the 2009 ALL CITY All Star Poetry Slam Team: DeAndre Hill, Daniel Richard, Taylor James, Christin Rankins, Chase Chenevert, and Myeshia Carter. Join us at 5pm for an unforgettable reading and come to the show of Deborah Luster's photographs at the Glassell gallery after!

Deborah Luster has exhibited in venues such as the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, D.C., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Houston Center for Photography, TX. She is the recipient of The Dorothea Lange—Paul Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, The John Gutmann Award, The Bucksbaum Family Award for American Photography, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Her work has been collected by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Los Angeles County Museum, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, among others. Her monograph, One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana (Twin Palms Publishing), was selected by both the New York Times and the Village Voice as one of the top photography books of 2003. Luster is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

DIAD: site specific work

Fri, 9 Oct 2009 18:46:51 -0500

LSU School of Art presents: DIAD: site specific work by sharon engelstein and aaron parazette.

The exhibition will run from October 9th through November 8th, 2009 with an opening reception on Friday, October 9 from 6-8pm.

The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but to inspire them? -Bob Dylan
Our next step in the effort to bring new ideas and experiences home is an exhibition invitation to a Houston based team of artists: sculptor, Sharon Engelstein and painter, Aaron Parazette. Both artists have impressive exhibition records individually and collaboratively including participation in the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, and representation at the Marlborough Gallery in New York City respectively. Engelstein and Parazette share a passion for color, abstraction, and creative use of digital technology although each utilizes a refreshingly unique approach to apply their expertise.

Sharon Engelstein, the recipient of numerous accolades including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the Louis Comfort Tiffany award, uses a three-dimensional modeling computer program to create unique anthropomorphic forms. She writes: “I have long been trying to achieve in my work, a synthesis of organic and mechanical form –a merging of nature and technology.” The forms are then pulled from the computer screen to actual space and inflated into large, soft, rounded sculptural “balloons”. A completed piece may grow from an abstraction of a microscopic organism into an enormous, six to eight foot sculpture. The globular shapes or “Booleans” as Engelstein calls them, vary in size and material. While some are fashioned as inflated hollow cavities, others are presented as solid masses of plaster, foam, polyurethane, or vinyl-coated nylon, some even decorated with sequins. At the Evergreen Museum at Johns Hopkins University, Engelstein created a fifteen foot work called Green Golly, which was placed amidst the classical Greco-roman portico of the classical building façade. The contrast of the rounded, pop-art irreverence of Engelstein’s work and the stern, traditional architecture created a stunning visual experience. We are excited to anticipate her site specific reaction to the soaring space and industrial look of the Glassell Gallery space in the Shaw Center.

Whatever sculptural form Sharon Engelstein creates within our space will be in harmony and counterpoint to the colorful murals of partner, Aaron Parazette. Parazette, also the recipient of a National Endowments for the Arts Fellowship award, has shown in solo and group exhibitions from Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto to New York. He teaches at the University of Houston. A childhood at the beach in California informed his latest body of work. Bright pops of tightly controlled color race across his precise and minimalist canvases. At first glance one sees curving roadways of hot pink or bright yellow intersecting in seemingly random order yet a second look reveals carefully hidden text. The paintings are playful abstractions of words inspired in some cases by surfer slang such as “stoked” or “surfdog”. The playful tone of the verbiage is in stark contrast to the formalist elements of the composition and obsessively straight, tight, flat painted application. Parazette will paint a large scale mural directly onto the gallery walls in the School of Art venue. The hard lines of his graphic abstractions will blend evocatively with the softer, more organic sculptural forms by Engelstein. www.sharonengelstein.com www.parazette.com

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

Robert Joy, Rare Vision

Sat, 5 Sep 2009 21:22:47 -0500

LSU Glassell Gallery features Master Artist from The School of Just Being Myself. The LSU School of Art presents: Robert Joy: Rare Vision. The exhibition will run from September 5th through October 4th, 2009 with an opening reception on Saturday, September 5 from 6-8pm. All events are free and open to the public.

The gallery space will be transformed into a visual wonderland featuring the colorful, complex and deeply honest drawings and paintings of artist Robert Joy. This art installation will celebrate the unique and rare vision of an artist committed to creating work that is direct, profound and unfettered. The vibrant color and obsessive detail is witty and compelling and also very inviting. Joy creates new work constantly and is extraordinarily prolific. As an exciting extra bonus, not only will Robert Joy be available for conversation at the opening reception on Saturday, September 5, from 6-8pm but the artist will be in the gallery September 8-9, drawing new works to add to the exhibition. Viewers are welcome and encouraged to join him: pick up a crayon or marker and draw your own masterpieces!

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

Menagerie: Recent Works by Leslie Charleville

Sat, 8 Aug 2009 19:24:44 -0500

Why do I paint the way that I do? I often ponder this question and what I know is that when I am confronted with a black canvas, I begin from my soul and my intuition guides the way. Reflections on my childhood and the experiences i had growing up on a farm inform the imagery. When I was young, my life revolved around “the lamb.” I lived with a constant awareness of its presence.

My work evolves...... New creatures now creep onto the canvas and show off their personalities. I see the people who make up my world in these animals. My dear grandmother reincarnated as a songbird, my mentors, my soul mates and friends as well as myself are all personified in these beauties. I find it much more interesting to capture the essence of the people who surround me in relation to the animals that an outright representation. As each painting unfolds, it takes on its own life and voice. I respond. The end result is a mixture of it all, representing more than the animals, more than the paint, more than myself. It is a new kind of reality.

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

American Dream

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:52:01 -0500

The LSU School of Art held its eighth annual Summer Invitational Art Exhibition: "American Dream," from July 11 through August 2, 2009 at the Glassell Gallery in the Shaw Center for the Arts. A public opening reception was held on July 11 from 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.

This exhibition has become a much loved and anticipated summer institution and the crowds always flock to see what their favorite artists create in response to the theme. It’s a chance to see new works from some of the region’s finest artists, and to revisit with old friends and meet new ones.

The more than 60 participating artists included LSU faculty, alumni and local artists. They were asked to create art in all media based on the theme of "American Dream." The reception linked community art to a festive neighborhood party atmosphere and was theme-oriented with a backyard barbecue, music, etc.

The Summer Invitational Art Exhibition was sponsored in part by the generosity of the Glassell Gallery Group, or G3, which includes Cara Kearns, Nadine Carter Russell, Renee Daigle & Mark Edwards, Michael D. Robinson & Donald J. Boutté, Dixon Smith Interiors, VooDoo BBQ & Grill and Mockler Beverage - Budweiser.

Artists participating in the 2009 exhibit included Carole Arabie, Charles Barbier, Erin Barker, Anna Belenki, Anne Bigger, Dawn Black, Susie Blyskal, Billie Bourgeois, Matt Bourgeois, Brad Bourgoyne, Rancy Boyd-Snee, Patrick Brabham, Christopher Scott Brumfield, James Burke, John Michael Byrd, Mary Ann Caffery, Leanne McClurg Cambric, Harold Cambric, Sarah Cancienne, Leslie Charleville, Craig Clifford, Linda Dautreuil, Sandy Davoren, Paul Dean, Mary Claire Delony, Chris Dennis, Robyn Denny, Barbara Donovan, Kevin Duffy, Marcia Arnold Eisworth, Rene Fletcher, Scott Finch, Elizabeth Fontenot, Jacques Gasquet, Rosemary Goodell, Frankie Gould, Denise Greenwood, Dianne Hanson, Stacy Hennessy, Randell Henry, Todd Hines, Meg Holford, Robert Holford, Patricia Hough, Michele Hudelot, Kathryn Hunter, Aaron P. Hussey, Chris Johns, Nyssa Juneau, Cara Kearns, Kelli Scott Kelley, Stuart Kimbrell, Therese Knowles, Elayne Kuehler, Kathleen Lemoine, Janet Link, Regina Loch-Elvert, Hillary Lowry, Jonathan Mayers, Betsy Neely, Paul Neff, Tom Neff, Elizabeth Noble, John Norris, Jacqueline Dee Parker, Dennis Parker, Jonathan Pellitteri, Nancy Jo Poirrier, Lee Randall, Winifred Reilly, Hunter Roth, Katherine Scherer, Bruce Sharky, Danni Shobe, Mark Shumake, David Smith, Dixon Smith, Durant Thompson, Elise Toups, Lisa Unterbrink, Van Wade-Day, Clifton Webb, Donna West, Laure Williamson, Reni Zietz and Jim Zeitz.

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

Sacred Light: Photographs by A.J. Meek

Sat, 30 May 2009 19:20:44 -0500

Join us for an exciting new exhibition at the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery – Shaw Center for the Arts. Nationally acclaimed artist, faculty emeritus, and author, A.J. Meek will exhibit new works in photography at our contemporary gallery space in downtown Baton Rouge. The photographic study of churches and synagogues located mostly in Louisiana will be featured in an upcoming book from the University Press of Mississippi titled Sacred Light. Its publication date is mid 2010.

Meek’s photographs unveil the often overlooked facets of the mystery of the holy and the human. His artist’s eye explores the myriad details of the interiors of houses of worship, waiting for just the exact moment in which the serendipity of light dissolves any distinction between the ordinary and the holy. Viewers of Meek’s photographs will be drawn to see things anew, or perhaps for the first time, to catch a glimpse of a long forgotten moment’s revelation that can touch the heart and renew a dialogue with the holy. In remembering encounters they have had in places such as these, Meek’s photographs may inspire them, like Jacob, to proclaim surely God is in this place. – Marchita Mauck, PhD. Professor of Art History, Louisiana State University. Excerpt from the essay, Houses of Worship: Contemporary Parables.

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit

The Sky is Gray: Visual Works Inspired by Ernest Gaines

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:47:24 -0600

The LSU School of Art presents "The Sky is Gray: Visual Works Inspired by the Writings of Ernest Gaines," running Tuesday, Nov. 11, through Wednesday, Dec. 10, at the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery in the Shaw Center for the Arts.

This innovative art exhibition, curated by Leslie Charleville, features original artworks in diverse media by artists across the country and internationally including New York, California, and Paris, France. Participating artists include Leslie Charleville, Michael Crespo, Addie Dawson-Euba, Demond, Malaika Favorite, Jacques P. Gasquet, Melody Guichet, June Gumbel, Robert Hausey, Randell Henry, Patricia Hough, Christopher Johns, Libby Johnson, Charlotte Ka, Kelli Scott Kelley, Salonga Lee, Marcus McAllister, AJ Meek, Darlene Moore, Thomas Neff, Joseph Pearson, Morris Thomas and Lewis Watts.

Artists were asked to create new works of art inspired by their personal reading of Ernest Gaines' writings. Their visual responses to his literature will be featured along with the inspirational passages.

A reading of excerpts from Ernest Gaines by students from Teach for America will be followed by an artist's reception on Sunday, Nov. 16. The reading will begin at 4 p.m. and the reception will follow from 5-7 p.m. A symposium on Race and Society is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 23 from 2-4 p.m. Panelists will include Gaines scholars Reggie Young and Marcia Gaudet, activist and community leader Maxine Crump and documentary filmmaker Ruth Laney. All events are free and open to the public.

This exhibition is made possible through the support of Robert Galantucci, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation and Teach for America.

View the Photo Gallery of the exhibit