Artists Talk with LVA: March 20, 2025

The 2025 LVA Honors will recognize Annette Cable and Dr. Jabani Bennett and both joined us this week live in the studio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Annette Cable (2025 Art Educator) grew up in the country outside of Columbus, Ohio and graduated from the Columbus College of Art and Design. As an illustrator, she has worked for commercial clients nationwide, including having illustrated 20 children’s picture books. She has worked for LVA for many years and has been a CFAC teacher, an Open Doors teacher, and a Summer Camp coordinator and teacher. She has been the LVA Education Director since 2016.

Her non-profit experience includes her work with many local museums and historic landmarks, including the Portland Museum for the past 25 years. From her drawing board and computer screen creating book illustrations to large murals, art classrooms, and community centers, creativity, community, and education encompass her teaching philosophy. 

Dr. Jabani Bennett (2025 Community Impact) served as the first Black woman director of the Women’s Center at the University of Louisville and as a student in 2007 was the student events coordinator at the center and led one of the few community-wide celebrations for LGBTQIA women on campus.

Dr. Bennett has shaped and provided oversight over numerous creative and inclusive learning and engagement programs for diverse learners across their lifespans. Her career as an award-winning arts educator in New York City and Louisville public schools informs her current projects in social justice, cultural equity planning, and empowering self-identified femmes and feminine-presenting women through the arts. 

In October 2024 through January 2025, The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage hosted her solo exhibition, And Say Hi To Your Mother: 30 Portraits of Black Women Culture Leaders.

Artists Talk with LVA: March 12, 2025

It's almost time for LVA Honors & LVA Executive Director Angela Hagan joined us to talk with two of this year's Honorees: Chuck Swanson & Juliet Taylor. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Dr. Angela Hagan became the Executive Director of Louisville Visual Art in September 2024. For over a decade, she worked in leadership functions including development, marketing and communications, and community engagement for nonprofit organizations focused on affordable and fair housing, education, youth development, and art (KMAC Museum) before spending a decade at Louisville-based Fortune 60 health plan Humana, where she led functions  and teams in member engagement and community health strategy and insights.

Chuck Swanson is an artist, primarily a painter, but he is also one of the pioneer gallerists in Louisville, having opened a gallery on Bardstown Road in 1982 and then in 1998 on East Market Street in what would eventually become the celebrated NuLu neighborhood. For the record, Swanson opened the space near Market and Clay well ahead of the rechristening of the area, so he must be counted as one of the reasons why the once-neglected and depressed environs became a hot spot for redevelopment.

Juliet Taylor is an interdisciplinary artist working with quilting & wearable art. She was a featured designer in the 2024 KMAC Couture and was a part of the Material Obsessions exhibit in the fall of 2024 at KMAC Museum. Most recently she has worked as the lead fabricator on the SPARK sculpture scheduled to be unveiled on the LVA building in February 2025. Juliet was a student in LVA’s Children’s Fine Art Classes and at DuPont Manual Visual Art Magnet.

Artists Talk with LVA: March 14. 2024

Sheila Fox is a mixed-media artist who resides in Louisville, KY. She has been drawing for well over twenty years but has been painting since 2016. She signs her works under the artist name GodivaGoddess. Her motivation is rooted simply in being a Black Woman in America. She focused most of her life attending to work and supporting her family but has always known that she was an artist. She specializes in capturing the timeless essence of black women; and tackles the beauty within history, race, power, and repression. 

On March 21 Sheila will be recognized as the Emerging Artist at the 2024 LVA Honors, a fundraiser for Louisville Visual Art. Find out more about the event and how to purchase tickets here: louisvillevisualart.org/lva-honors

Artists Talk with LVA: March 7. 2024

Amanda Thompson has been a Visual Art teacher at Western Middle School for the Arts since 2010. She joined LVA’s Children’s Fine Art Classes the same year. She was recently awarded the Baird Excellence Award Outstanding Teacher for Middle School 2023. She served as a Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence Teacher Fellow in 2022 and Classroom Teachers Enacting Positive Solutions fellow in 2020. In collaboration with LVA and PNC Broadway, her classes have participated in 3 separate art installations at Kentucky Center for the Arts for Blue Man Group, Little Mermaid, and Anastasia, the Musical. 

Artists Talk with LVA: February 29, 2024

The 2024 LVA Honors takes place on March 21, 2024 at the LVA Building. This week is the 1st of 3 conversations with Honors recipients, C.J. Pressma (Legacy Award), Jon Cherry (Community Impact), Amanda Thompson (Teaching), & Sheila fox (Emerging Artist). You may purchase tickets to this fundraiser HERE.

In 1970 C.J. Pressma founded the Center for Photographic Studies – an alternative school of creative photography. The Center provided a learning experience for those seeking to explore photography as creative expression. During its eight- year existence the center attracted students from over 35 states and foreign countries to its full-time resident program and provided part-time instruction and darkroom access for hundreds of students in the Louisville metropolitan area. Its two galleries provided monthly photographic exhibits featuring the works of local, regional, and internationally acclaimed photographic artists including Ansel Adams and Minor White. In 1978 he was awarded a National Endowment Fellowship in Photography.

In 1979 Pressma embarked on a career as a multimedia producer and marketing communications specialist. In 1984, his seven part series Witness to the Holocaust, was released in the U.S. and Canada where it remains in distribution today. One of the first productions to use survivor interviews as the exclusive content to tell the story of the Holocaust, Witness to the Holocaust has received numerous national awards

Jon Cherry is a photojournalist based in Louisville, Kentucky. Jon works  as a stringer with Getty Images, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg News, and The New York Times and has been published independently by The New York Times, Sierra, TIME Magazine, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, New York Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. Jon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography as a part of the Getty Images team for “comprehensive and consistently riveting photos of the attack on the U.S. Capitol” with Win McNamee, Spencer Platt, Drew Angerer, and Sam Corum.