Artists Talk With LVA: June 2, 2022

Reflections on Twelve Years: An LVA Exhibit for Metro Hall Curated by Keith Waits and Jonathan Cherry runs now through December 2022. It includes work from Carlos Gamez de Francisco, Ewa Perz, Jon Cherry, Destiny Jackson, Metro Communications Office, and The Polaroid Project from the Tyler Gerth Foundation and Louisville Urban League

Carlos Gamez de Francisco was born in post-revolutionary Cuba in 1987, to a Cuban-Spanish mother and a Cuban-American father. He grew up in Cuba and was educated in an academic style heavily influenced by the Russian Academy.  At age five, he determined, with absolute certainty, that he would be an artist. By the time he was fifteen, Gamez de Francisco was diligently painting 8 hours a day, every day. Today, he often spends 15 hours a day painting and feels “very blessed to do what I love.”

Highly awarded and exhibited, some of Carlos’ numerous awards include Fine Art Photographer of the Year, 2020, Moscow International Photo Awards, Moscow, Russia, Gold Award, 2020 Tokyo International Foto Awards, Tokyo, Japan, “Dreammakers” Artist in Residence at the Muhammad Museum, the Distinguished Scholarship from the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum Guild Purchase Award from Evansville Museum. He have had solo shows at 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and Bentonville, Arkansas, Monica Graham Fine Art in Carmel, CA, Miller Gallery in Cincinnati, OH, Portland Art Gallery in Portland, ME, Hardcore Art Contemporary Space in Miami, Florida, The Muhammad Ali Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Colonial Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. His work has been exhibited at Art Market San Francisco (2022), Scope-Art Basel, Miami (2021 and 2012), Art Palm Beach (2014), Art Southampton, New York (2015), and Context Art Miami (2016).

Ewa Perz was born in Gdansk, Poland. There she received a masters degree in biology, but found her true passion to be in fine art. She left her job as a scientist to pursue her desire to create art. Living in Europe and Latin America before coming to the United States, paired with worldwide travel and taking classes with contemporary masters (Felo Garcia in Costa Rica, David Laffel in Santa Fe), allow Ewa an extensive visual approach to her paintings. Global cultures, styles and trends strongly influence her choices in themes. Ordinary shapes and colors are manipulated by Ewa’s expressive realism into breathtaking compositions. Her works are unique and compelling.

Currently, Ewa lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Her works can be found in many private and corporate collections throughout the United States and Europe.

Jonathan Cherry is a stringer with Getty Images 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.

Recently, it was announced that he had been chosen for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photographer as part of the Getty Images team sent to Washington DC on January 6, 2022.

Artebella On The Radio: December 30

.Brigit Truex, Fayette, Enrolled Member (Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi [Vermont], and Fred Nez-Keams, Anderson, Enrolled Member (Navajo) are both in the Native Reflections exhibit now in Metro Hall. They speak about their work and Fred performs on the flute this Thursday at 10 am. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each week to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.

The Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Native American Heritage Commission and the Kentucky Heritage Council worked together to invite American Indians living in Kentucky to share their visual art. A panel of American Indians and experts on Native American heritage selected works to include and the result is this amazing collection.

As required by law and custom, the Native Reflections exhibit labels indicate whether an artist is an enrolled member of a state- or federally-recognized tribe, or if they are not currently enrolled or recognized. Each artist is listed as either “Enrolled Member” or “Native Inspired.”

To learn more about how American Indian people receive or apply for enrolled status, contact the Kentucky Heritage Council or find links and resources at http://heritage.ky.gov.

Artebella On The Radio: October 28

Ed "Nardie" White is our guest this week. Since retiring from River City Drum Corp he has been focusing on photography and is included in Through Their Eyes: Future, Present, Past: An LVA Exhibit for Louisville’s Metro Hall through November 23, 2021. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.

Edward “Nardie” White devoted his life to leading the African-American drum corps he co-founded with his wife, Zambia Nkrumah in Louisville, Kentucky three decades ago. Together they inspired youth from their West Louisville neighborhood to thrive by connecting them with the art and cultural traditions of their African ancestors. After leaving this legacy to his successor, Mr. White decided to pursue his lifelong passion for photography.

Mr. White’s first public photography exhibition, Edward “Ed” White - The Historian took place at the Kentucky College of Art + Design. He currently is a part of Through Their Eyes: Future, Present, Past: An LVA Exhibit for Louisville’s Metro Hall October 8 – November 23, 2021

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. 

Artebella On The Radio: December 12, 2019

Mountain Landscape. Breathitt County Kentucky, 2015. Bob Hower

Photographers Bob Hower & Ted Wathen were with us in the studio this week to talk about the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project and “Looking at Kentucky Anew…” the Louisville Visual Art exhibit at Metro Hall featuring that work. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to listen to Keith Waits talk with artists.

Bob Hower

The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project is the state’s third photographic recording done in 40-year increments. Taking inspiration from the work of the Farm Security Administration (1935–1943) and building on the success of the original Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project (1975–1977), which included Bob & Ted, The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project will go into each of the state’s 120 counties making a contemporary visual record of Kentucky. This will be the third time in an eighty year period that photographers have roamed the state recording the landscape and how Kentuckians live, work and play.

Bob & Ted’s Gallery Talk about the exhibit is Friday, December 13 at Noon in the 4th floor Mayor’s Gallery at Metro Hall, 527 West Jefferson Street, Louisville.

Ted Wathen

Bob Hower is a Louisville based photographer who was born in Boston and educated at Middlebury College. ... His work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The International Center of Photography, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Kentucky Historical Society, and The Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Ted Wathen was born in 1947 in Louisville, Kentucky. He graduated from St. Xavier High School in Louisville, received a BA in history at the University of Virginia, and an MFA in photography from the University of Florida. Prior to receiving his MFA, Wathen was a naval officer serving on the U.S.S. Yorktown.

Other photographers who have worked on this new phase of the project and are featured in the Metro Hall exhibit are Ross Gordon, Sarah Lyon, Zed Saeed, Alyssa Schukar, Brittany Greeson, Rachel Boillot, & Harrison Hill.