Artists Talk With LVA: July 21 2022

It's time again for the Louisville Fringe Festival and Nick Hulstine, Cris Eli Black, & Hannah DeWitt talk about what's in store for 2022. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Nicholas Hulstine (he/him) is a Louisville, Kentucky- based theatre artist. On stage he’s appeared in Tuesday Night Poker (Theatre Row, NYC), Foreign Gothic (FringeNYC), The Dazzle (John Cullum Theater, NYC), The Flick (The Alley Theater), Nobody Bunny and the Golden Age of Animation (Theatre 502), Tales of the 4th Grade Nothing (StageOne). He’s directed productions of Abramovic (Richmond Shepard Theater, NYC) and The Principles of Dramatic Writing (Slant Culture Theatre Festival). As a playwright, his plays have been produced in Chicago and NYC.

Cris Eli Blak is an award-winning and internationally produced writer for the page, stage, and screen. His work has garnered him a Bronze Remi from the Worldfest Houston International Film and Video Festival, the Christopher Hewitt Award in Fiction, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and honors from Vectis Radio, Negro Ensemble Company, Clocktower Players and A is For. His work has been produced, performed, and/or published worldwide, from Off-Broadway, California, London, Australia, and Ireland. He continues to strive to create work that reflects the world that we live in, with all of its different and diverse colors, creeds, and cultures, through his artistic endeavors and work with organizations such as TedxBroadway, Fine Arts Forward, and the Black Theatre Caucus.

Hannah DeWitt is a young artist working on her MFA at the Hite Art Institute in Louisville, Kentucky, and has a BFA from Spalding University. She is a multimedia artist with an emphasis on conceptual performative works, both live and digital. Her works are often participatory, deeply personal, and ethically fraught as she fumbles in the dark in search of anyone to witness. Blurring the line between public and private space, her work balances radical vulnerability and exhibitionism.

Artebella On The Radio: May 27

Jon Cherry is a happening photojournalist who has covered the 2020 Louisville Black Lives Matter protests and was in Washington on January 6. His work is currently on exhibit at the Portland Museum and as a part of the Promise, Witness, Remembrance exhibition at The Speed and he is our guest this week Tune in to WXOX 97.1 or stream @ Artxfm.com Thursday at 10 am.

Exhibiting at The Portland Museum n conjunction with Voices and Votes, an exhibit from The Smithsonian. June 12.

Jon’s work is also included in Promise, Witness, Remembrance at The Speed through July 24

“I am dedicated to capturing moments that spark action without words and convey emotions that may be otherwise foreign to the viewer. This work requires an intensive approach to challenges.  ‘Never walk past a problem you can solve,’ was my father’s credo, and it is this stride that carries me through all my pursuits.” 

He works as a stringer with Getty Images and The New York Times and has been published independently by The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and others.

Artebella On The Radio: February 18

Healing Walls Project presents ”From Spark to the Streets” Healing Immersive Art Experience benefitting the Louisville BIPOC artists HWP Mural Cycle. Artist & curator Ashley Cathey, singer Michelle Johnson, singer-songwriter Tabin Ibershoff, & writer Valentina Ashrova joined us to talk about this fundraiser and the larger mission of this organization. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10:00 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.

Healing Walls Project presents ”From Spark to the Streets” Healing Immersive Art Experience benefitting the Louisville BIPOC artists HWP Mural Cycle

8 Immersive rooms

6 ways to heal through creating art

$25 donation,

Private, safe

COVID compliant

February 26-28 -

Friday, – Sat 3-9 pm / Sun 1-6 pm

Artspace, 321 W Broadway, 7th Floor

Hosted by Creatives of Color Collective

Artebella On The Radio: October 1

John Brooks, Vian Sora, Denise Furnish, & Andrew Cenci all join us to discuss the Quappi Projects exhibit "We All Declare For Liberty: 2020 and the Future of American Citizenship" which is available for viewing beginning October 9. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on ARTXFM.com Thursdays at 10 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists on LVA's Artebella On the Radio.

For the last fifteen years, John Brooks has made his home in Louisville, with several years away in London and Chicago. In mid-2017 he launched Quappi Projects, an art-and-artist-focused gallery exhibiting work reflecting the zeitgeist. Brooks is both a visual artist and a poet.

Vian Sora was born in Baghdad in 1976. She left Iraq in 2006, during the Iraq War, eventually settling in Louisville, Kentucky with her husband in 2009. Sora works primarily with oils but utilizes mixed media and engraving techniques to create three-dimensional textures on canvas.

Denise Mucci Furnish was born in Louisville, Kentucky. She has a BA from the University of Kentucky and a BFA and MA from the University of Louisville. She has backgrounds in quilt restoration, painting, surface design, and graphic design. ... She currently works from her Portland studio in Louisville.

Andrew Cenci is an African-American artist based in Louisville, KY. He uses photography to focus on the beauty of the every day through portraits, contemporary landscapes, and candid images. ... With frames that highlight the beauty, joy, loneliness, and longing of the realities of everyday life.

John Brooks was inspired to develop this exhibit in part by this quote from a speech by Abraham Lincoln:

“The world has never had a good definition of liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in need of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty.”

A Talk With Great Meadows Critic-In-Residence Kóan Jeff Baysa

Baysa with Brianna Harlan while visiting the LVA exhibit, “Ballet Box”, curated by Skylar Smith.

Kóan Jeff Baysa is a specialist physician, writer, art collector, Whitney Museum ISP Curatorial Alumnus, and AICA member who networks the areas of medical science and contemporary culture and creates interactive exhibitions and forums that focus on health perception, acculturation, sustainability, access to creative experiences and the sensate human being. Some of these goals are achieved through his company, SENSEight, and the Come to Your Senses Series. Others are manifest in two startups: Collectrium, that pioneered image recognition software for art, and Medical Avatar, a visually personalized avatar on a health app for handheld devices, where his current focus is the role of social media in patient engagement and formulating educational strategies for improving individual self-awareness and health betterment.

He is currently the 2020 Great Meadows Foundation Critic-In-Residence. The residency was intended to be only for the months of February and March, but the CoVID 19 pandemic dramatically altered his plans to return to Los Angeles, his home base, or the location of his next adventure in Hawaii, so he is staying with us a bit longer. I spoke with him at length on March 26 about his observations on the art community in Kentucky and other subjects.

Baysa’s mission, as was the case with the previous Critics-In-Residence from Great Meadows, was to visit a wide array of visual artists in their studios. Of course, about halfway through his tenure, social distancing took over because of the growing coronavirus pandemic. Still, he estimates he did personal or live social media interactions with over 50 artists so far, and he hopes to accomplish more now that his stay in this area has been extended. “Using social media you miss the dimensionality, texture, and visceral feeling of the work, but in terms of what sort of observations and advice I am able to give the artist, I believe that hasn’t changed.” We were pleased that he did manage to visit LVA’s “Ballot Box” exhibit at Metro Hall, conceived and curated by Skylar Smith, while the building was still open to the public.

Even more than his predecessors, Baysa had emphasized group meetings and public events in his schedule, but most of it had to be canceled. “I’m a grass-roots person,” explains Baysa, “and I approach with a perspective formed from multiple overlapping careers: medicine, collecting, and curating. I arrived with an open mind, but I had an idea of coming to Louisville to investigate the interstices of the art world here. I am looking at the diversification of the community, art made in prison, art made by special needs individuals - ‘incarceration’ in any form, even if self-imposed.” How much has social isolation affected his ambition? “I had planned on traveling the state more. I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to explore Appalachian art on this trip, especially Queer Appalachian artists that I’ve heard about. Which just means I will definitely be returning.”

Baysa has traveled and worked all over the globe, and when asked how he saw Louisville fitting into an international landscape, he answered, “States can be considered entities within themselves, with something like a creed among the communities found there. What I have discovered is that Kentucky has an air of Southern Hospitality, a politeness that is certainly very welcoming, but it begs the question of how do you then develop a useful critical perspective, which I think is what is badly needed here.“

Baysa, Stan Squirewell, Susan Moremen, & Lance G. Newman II.

“Kentucky, and Louisville in particular, has been described as, ‘where the south meets the west’. What I have found is that it is a city filled with conundrums. It is also called the most cultured city in the MidWest, but at the same time, it is the 4th most segregated city in the region and has the 4th highest number of deaths from opioid overdose. But are artists addressing these issues?” The open space Basa leaves in the dialogue there suggests that he hasn’t found sufficient evidence that they are, but his recommendation is problematic in this moment of government-issued orders to stay at home and quarantine. “I look at the LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) program (public talks that happen internationally in 30 cities and which have now moved on-line) as an example of events that break down what I call ‘stealth regation - the isolation that Louisville needs to overcome. It could boost the common integrity of the art community.” 

With Baysa’s unique background crossing medicine, science, art, and broader cultural concerns, I wondered about his take on our current public health crisis. ”People will always seek ways to lessen the anxiety and art will help,” he offered. We spoke at length about the opportunity for new forms to develop during this period, as artists turn to social media both as a means of self-expression and a method for reinforcing the existing community and perhaps building new ones.”

For visual art, some models are already in place. “The Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco has placed their current and upcoming exhibits online.” In Louisville, Moremen Gallery has posted both an on-line catalog and a video tour of Anne Peabody’s Sunspike exhibit that was opening at the very moment that non-essential businesses were being closed, and the University of Louisville Hite Art Institute MFA candidate Shae Goodlet’s Invocation exhibit is also online.

Big Talkers: Kóan Jeff Baysa is a virtual lecture from Baysa hosted on Zoom by Ruckus and Great Meadows Foundation on April 7 beginning at 6:00 pm.

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2020 by Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.