quappi projects

Public Radio

Artists Talk With LVA: May 26, 2022

This week Skylar Smith, Letitia Quesenberry, Gibbs Rounsavall, & Martin Benson talk about how their work communicates together in Not A Certainty But A Circumstance at Quappi Projects. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk With LVA.

Skylar Smith is an artist, curator, and educator. Her work deals with micro and macro perceptions of the natural world, and human-scale politics that influence perception.

Smith’s work has been exhibited regionally and internationally, including at Sanskriti Kendra Foundation, New Delhi, India; and at the Sanbarbh Residency, Partapur, India. She has completed Artist Residencies in India at Sanskriti Kendra and Sanbarbh Residency; and Colegio Trener, an elementary school in Lima, Peru. 

In 2020 Smith curated BallotBox, a contemporary art exhibition examining past and present voting rights with support from Kentucky Foundation for Women, Louisville Metro, Louisville Visual Art, and Great Meadows Foundation. BallotBox was on display in Louisville Metro Hall and at 21c Museum Louisville through March 2021. 

Letitia Quesenberry lives and works in Louisville Kentucky. Through the play of material, process, surface and technology, Quesenberry creates hypnotic objects that extend the boundaries of visual perception. Her bright amalgamations contain layers of vibratory and translucent elements: color correction film, tinted resin, mica dust, coal slag, sanded plexiglass, fluorescent paint, LEDs. She tempers the impulse to understand her work conclusively by focusing on visibility, bewilderment, and the desire to celebrate uncertainty.

Gibbs Rounsavall is a Louisville-based geometric abstract painter who was featured as one of 13 artists in Louisville Magazine’s, “13 Artists You Need to Know Now” issue. 

 His work has been included in academic presentations on subjects from abstract art to urban climate change. He has appeared in print, radio, and online interviews and feature articles. He has been invited as a guest artist to speak at events for arts organizations and academic settings. Most recently in 2017, he spoke on the subject of Serendipity for the Creative Mornings monthly lecture series titled, “How to Become a Serendipitous Learner.”

Martin L. Benson’s exploration of the healing power of art has its roots in personal experience. Born in Georgia and raised in Kentucky, Benson’s college education was temporarily interrupted when he became seriously ill and had to return home. “[That experience] opened up my world to my spirituality, which fostered a healthier relationship with myself and the world,” says Benson.

Benson’s hunger for greater understanding and meaning led him to the ancient science of Sacred Geometry –  the geometry used in the design of religious structures, sacred places, and religious art – and to the mathematical underpinnings of the cosmos. “Math’s universal language transcends linguistics, symbolism, and mythology, while at the same time remaining strongly connected to it,” says Benson. “Its inherent principles indicate the thumbprint of the creator.”

Not a Certainty But a Circumstance: April 29 - June 4
Letitia Quesenberry, Gibbs Rounsavall, Skylar Smith, & Martin Benson

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Public Radio

Artebella On The Radio: December 3

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Julien Robson has curated "The Shands Collection: New Directions" which opens at John Brooks' Quappi Projects this week. Both joined us this week to discuss this unprecedented exhibit. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com every Thursday at 10:00am to listen to LVA's Artebella On The Radio.

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Julien Robson is Director of Great Meadows Foundation, the INhouse Foundation, and Curator of the Shands Collection and the collection of Brook Smith. He also works as a project-based Independent Curator/Consultant. He is based in Louisville, Kentucky in the USA and Vienna, Austria.

Visual artist and poet John Brooks explores themes of identity, memory, death, place, and the transformative power and emotional resonance of particular experiences and what Max Beckmann described as “the deepest feeling about the mystery of being. he is the founder and director of Quappi Projects in Louisville, Kentucky.

The Shands Collection: New Directions is on exhibit December 4, 2020 through January 16, 2021.

Public Radio

Artebella On The Radio: October 1

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

Public Radio

Artebella On The Radio: May 14, 2020

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Visual artists John Brooks & Andrew Cozzens will be joining us this week to talk about the changing landscape of gallery exhibits in the age of COVID. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10:00 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists on LVA's Artebella On The Radio.

Visual artist and poet John Brooks explores themes of identity, memory, death, place, and the transformative power and emotional resonance of particular experiences and what Max Beckmann described as “the deepest feeling about the mystery of being. His Quappi Projects gallery is located in the NuLu neighborhood of Louisville.

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Andrew Cozzens is a visual artist who researches time subjectivity and its effect on human experience and aging. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally at Georgian in Ontario, Canada; the Arenes du Lutece in Paris, France; SCOPE at Art Basel in Miami Beach, FL; a solo exhibition during the Taipei Biennial in Taipei, Taiwan; and the Siena Art Institute in Siena, Italy.  In 2018 he received his second Artist Development Grant from the Great Meadows Foundation and in 2010 he was an Artist in Residence at the Cite’ Internationale Des in Paris, France. Recently Andrew has curated multiple exhibitions and his essay Simultaneity and the Parallax in Art: The Fallacy of Absolutes was published in the International Journal of Zizek Studies.

Andrew has taught Art History, Sculpture, Environmental Art, 3D Design, Field Study, Art Appreciation, and Drawing courses on the collegiate level. He is currently an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Center for the Environment at the Kentucky College of Art and Design.

Painting

Open Studio Weekend Spotlight: Megan Bickel

“You’re Put in A Place Where Everyone Has The Same Delusion” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 22x29in, 2019

“You’re Put in A Place Where Everyone Has The Same Delusion” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 22x29in, 2019

Sometimes artists can speak quite well for themselves, with an Artist’s Statement of such depth and detail that it can be difficult to make any comment on the work in question without seeming at best redundant and at worst meaningless. Megan Bickel is a contemporary Renaissance woman, a multidisciplinary artist who writes and thinks with precision and clarity so that her very thoughtful words are arguably insightful enough to challenge the need for further observation. Of her work in her upcoming exhibit at Quappi Projects, Bickel writes on allusion and illusion:

“Being primarily literary, an allusion can be commonly articulated as an expression designed to call a subject to mind without mentioning it explicitly. It can appear as an indirect or passing reference. The author is allowed freedom in the expectation that the reader is aware of the reference made in the “allusion;" but as an object of literature, it provides safety or security for the reader in requesting the use of the readers’ imagination. Thus, the readers are limited to their own experience or consumption— they are safe to play in deception or truth, because they know the origin of the falsity provided by an allusion.

An illusion —of course—is a trick. Perhaps it appears as camouflage, or perhaps it appears in the process of convincing a viewer that they are witnessing something. It can also appear in the cultivating of a false belief, but however it appears the one in control of the creation of an illusion is the maker. An illusion can be as benign as an illusionistic still life, or as malignant as propaganda. No matter the moral positioning, the illusion is an object of convincing.” 

You can read the full statement on her website, but Bickel appropriately places a burden of interpretative responsibility on the viewer before she concludes:

“Though my approach to media differs from object to object, I would generalize that this body of work utilizes haptic curiosity as a means with which to encourage visual, ethical, or empathic critique of contemporary media images. This skill of inviting curiosity into our daily consumption of images may become an important skill as we approach a period in history where we have to understand and decode how our images may be deceiving us— and just as quickly as we learn to create those deceptions.”

All of which seems to pose the question of how much trust we can place in Bickel’s images. Her work does not accommodate passivity, and we might go further and question the worth of any art that doesn’t provoke us to think differently.

“There Was No Template for His Perceptions” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

“There Was No Template for His Perceptions” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

Bickel is the embodiment of the restlessness of contemporary artists who are proactive in creating opportunities for themselves and others. In 2016 she co-created Five-Dots, a visual arts blog that covers the Midwest Region, and in 2017 she founded houseguest Gallery in Louisville, an example of the growing trend for non-traditional exhibition spaces. She most recently showed work in PLAY THAT ONE BACK, JOHNNY, Megan Bickel and Louis A. Edwards, Erie Art Gallery. Erie, Pennsylvania.

Bickel is an MFA candidate at the University of Louisville and will be participating in the Louisville Visual Art/ Hite Art Institute Open Studio Weekend November 2 and 3. She also is included in the Open Studio Weekend Juried Exhibit opening at U of L’s Cressman Center on November 1, 6-8pm.

Her new one-person show, We Are inside the Fire, runs November 15 through December 20 at Quappi Projects, 827 West Market Street in the NuLu neighborhood.

Education: University of Louisville, Master of Fine Arts Candidate, 2021
Art Academy of Cincinnati, BFA, Painting, Magna Cum Laude, 2012.
Website: www.meganbickel.com

Scroll down for more images

“TOO FLAT APARTMENT” by Megan Bickel,. Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 3x4ft, 2018

“TOO FLAT APARTMENT” by Megan Bickel,. Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 3x4ft, 2018

“To My UFO Friend” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

“To My UFO Friend” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

“Aesthetic Think Tanks” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 29x36in, 2019

“Aesthetic Think Tanks” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 29x36in, 2019


Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 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.

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