Artebella On The Radio: May 6

Bette Levy & Kathleen Loomis are exhibiting new work together in PYRO Gallery’s new exhibition, "Reconfiguration". They joined us to talk about it on WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artfm.com.

Bette Levy views the creation of her art as a continuum where every work is influenced and enhanced by previous artwork. With each successive piece of art, she is incorporating gained knowledge and capabilities. She also believes her understanding of her artwork only becomes clear after the work is completed. Levy has no pre-conceived interpretation or meaning of her work other than its form. And this often changes over time as a result of life experiences and perceptions.

Kathleen Loomis thinks of “reconfiguration” slightly differently than Bette does – for her, it’s the finding of old things and giving them new life in art. She is a world-class pack rat, acquiring stuff from the street when she walks, checking out other people’s junk on trash pickup day, accepting discards from friends, even tearing apart old books that she knows nobody will ever want to read. Loomis likes to reassemble these disparate things and see what happens when they get into small groups and start to talk to one another.

PYRO’s new exhibition, RECONFIGURATION, featuring work by Bette Levy and Kathleen Loomis, opens on May 2 and runs through May 30. The gallery is open Friday and Saturday, from 12 to 6 PM and Sunday from 1 PM to 4 PM, and by appointment.

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.”