Artists Talk with LVA: February 15, 2024

Paul Lenzi & Geraldine Ann Snyder will be honored with the Kathi E.B. Ellis Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Arts-Louisville Theatre Awards and they were in the WXOX studios to talk about their work. Tune into Artists Talk with LVA every Thursday at 10 am on 97.1 WXOX-FM or stream on Artxfm.com

Paul Lenzi and Geraldine Ann Snyder returned to Louisville where they were hired by the Louisville Children’s Theater (now Stage One) to develop new musical programming for pre-schoolers while Paul ultimately became executive director. In 1976, the couple broke away to form the Blue Apple Players, continuing for a time a weekly children’s program on WAVE-TV. Blue Apple, for the first decade, operated on a “for profit” business model, performing locally and regionally for children sometimes in large halls or occasionally developing a didactic performance for a corporation. After becoming a non-profit, the theater company focused exclusively on creating musicals on cutting-edge social topics for Kentucky school groups. Blue Apple merged in 2015 with the Walden Theatre to form the Commonwealth Theatre Center.

Artists Talk with LVA: February 8, 2024

This week on Artists Talk with LVA Maureen Lane and Heather Potter joined us in the studio to talk about curatorial mission and practice with the Filson Historical Society.

Maureen Lane is the Curator of Museum Collections & Exhibits Coordinator at The Filson.

“I’m interested in collecting strategies that develop culturally diverse collections and better represent previously marginalized individuals in our communities; new ways to engage and collaborate with visitors in object based learning; multiple points of view in the interpretation of history, culture, and art; collaborative storytelling; and helping people discover and preserve their family and community history.”

Curator of Photographs and Prints Heather J. Potter received a BA degree from Washburn University and a MLS from Indiana University Bloomington.

Since its founding in 1884, The Filson Historical Society has preserved the region's collective memory, not only of Kentucky but also of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South. The Filson continues to collect and share the significant stories of the region. An independent historical society, The Filson serves the public through its extensive research collections and numerous educational opportunities. The Filson is headquartered in the Ferguson Mansion in Old Louisville and offers research facilities, event, and rental space.

Artists Talk with LVA: February 1, 2024

The Blazing World, a new solo exhibit from Megan Bickel opens at Wheelhouse Art February 2 and continues through March 16, 2024.

Megan Bickel is an artist, writer, and educator currently working out of Louisville, Kentucky. Her work considers and utilizes various approaches and technologies such as painting, data manipulation, digital collage, database reconfiguration, and poetry. 

Bickel recently received her Master of Arts in Digital Studies in Language, Culture, and History at the University of Chicago. Her thesis research assessed how Google Vision API and other related APIs would impact the fate of climate reporting due to their current labeling production design. She is currently working on expanding this data set and expanding the research into a book with coauthor Joseph Solis. 

Bickel is the proud founder and organizer of houseguest gallery (Est. 2018) where she organizes and curates works by emerging and underserved artists and curators. She’s had arts criticism, science fiction, and images published in Burnaway, Anarchist Review of Books, Ruckus, NEWCITY, Sixty-Inches from Center, and others. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Louisville, Bellarmine, and Indiana University Southeast where she teaches Painting, Video Production, and Web Design. 

Her work has been exhibited at the Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY), University of Chicago Logan Center (Chicago, IL), LADIES' ROOM LA (Los Angeles, California), KMAC Museum (Louisville, KY), Georgetown College (Georgetown, KY), QUAPPI Projects (Louisville, KY), Art Academy of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH), and MADS Mixed Reality Gallery (Milan, Italy). 

Artists Talk with LVA: January 25, 2024

Tricia Siegwald Senior Director, Festivals and Special Programs, Trager Family JCC has been overseeing the Jewish Film Festival for 3 years now. In her role, she coordinates the work of the film festival committee watching many, many films and cultivating ones for the event each year. The film festival is among many of the events and programs that Tricia oversees at the Trager Family JCC each year that also include the Israeli Street Fair. 

Tricia comes to the Trager Family JCC following her role as vice president at the Kentucky Derby Festival. She spent 25 years managing the Pegasus Parade, the Basketball Classic, Kroger’s Fest-a-Ville and the Great Steamboat Race.

Tricia grew up in Louisville and is a graduate of the University of Louisville.

Cantor David A. Lipp currently leads worship services at Congregation Adath Jeshurun, and directs the Adath Jeshurun Adult Choir. He was the featured soloist for one of Louisville's finest volunteer choruses, Voces Novae, on their first CD, Soul of the Synagogue. Cantor Lipp is currently the immediate past president of the Cantors Assembly.

Before embarking on his current career, Cantor Lipp was an actor performing in local and regional theater in the Midwest. 

The Louisville Jewish Film Festival will open on Feb. 3 and run through Feb. 18. This is the 26th year of the festival and as well as offering live movies at Baxter Theatre, Speed Museum and our own Trager Family JCC,  and films that can be viewed at home. This has been a popular addition since COVID and the at home movie options have been very popular

Artists Talk with LVA: January 18, 2024

Lori Larusso joined us in the studio this week to talk about her current exhibits in Dallas, TX and Danville, KY s well as the new monograph about her work, “Confected Landscapes”.

Lori Larusso is an American visual artist working primarily with themes of domesticity and foodways. Her body of work encompasses paintings and installations that explore issues of class, gender, and anthropocentrism, and how these practices both reflect and shape culture. Larusso’s work is exhibited widely in the US and is included in various public collections such as KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, 21c Museum, and other noteworthy private collections. She has been awarded numerous residency fellowships including Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Sam & Adele Golden Foundation, and MacDowell where she received a Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship. She is a recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, Kentucky South Arts Fellowship, and multiple grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She currently lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, and is represented by Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs, and Galleri Urbane in Dallas, TX.