Artists Talk with LVA: July 24, 2025

Dr. Eileen Yanoviak discusses her book, The Tenacious Nurse Nichols, this week. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Eileen Yanoviak holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Louisville. She is the former Director of the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany, Indiana. Yanoviak is the coeditor of a collection of essays entitled Formations of Identity: Society, Politics, and Landscape and the author of Gaela Erwin: Reframing the Past.

She teaches for Northern Kentucky University and the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, and is now a Program Officer with the J. Graham Brown Foundation. Her new book is The Tenacious Nurse Nichols: An Unsung African American Civil War Hero

Artists Talk with LVA: July 17, 2025

Jessica, Claire, & Lindsey

Curator Lindsey Cummins cut the ribbon on her CPI Fellowship project, "What We Need is Here: Finding Hope in Gathering Together in Places We Call Home", and she joins us with two of the participating artists, Jessica Chao & Claire Krüeger. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Lindsey Cummins (she/her) is a Louisville-based Independent Curator, Collections Manager, & Community Arts Organizer. As the Founder of AVID Collectors, she strives to impact local arts communities by uplifting artists, patrons, and private collections. Lindsey is the Curator & Collections Manager of the SNAP Art Collection Lindsey received her education at Louisville’s Hite Art Institute with a degree in Studio Art, Art History, and Modern Culture. She currently serves on the Board of the Portland Museum, the SNAP Art Foundation, and is a member of the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art. 

Jessica Chao is a native to New Mexico and currently based in Louisville, Kentucky, earned a Bachelors in studio arts at UNM with a focus on lithography, sculpture, and painting. Jessica presented work at the Harwood Art Center, 516 Art, the New Mexico Cancer Center Foundation Gallery where she received “Curator’s Choice” presented by Regina Held, a field mural designed with the Bosque biologist team at Valle De Oro National Wildlife Refuge, and a large-scale art installation at the the National Hispanic Cultural Center Museum as an homage to her Chinese and Korean heritage. She has presented lithographs at the Chicago Art Department, and featured at Louisville Visual Art and Carbon Copy Gallery in Kentucky.   

Claire Krüeger received an MFA in Photography & Film from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. In 2021, she was a COLLIDER Artist-in-Residence at Louisville Free Public Library, and in 2024 was an Artist-in-Residence at Bernheim Forest in Clermont, Kentucky. Krüeger runs Take Shape Artlab, a set of creative programs designed to boost growth, problem solving, creative thinking, and collaboration through hands-on art making. Krüeger is the Creative Director of Spidertown, a collaborative zine project with Sean Rose.

Artists Talk with LVA: July 10, 2025

This week, we talked with Licia Priest, the winner of the 2025 Bill Fischer Award for Visual Art. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Licia Priest: I Am We Crafting Community in Paper Tole is at KMAC Museum through August 17th, 2025

Priest is a bold interdisciplinary artist whose work blends painting, photography, digital media, sculpture, and even scent and sound. Rooted in personal reflection and cultural reclamation, her vibrant, layered pieces draw on childhood memories, travels to Zimbabwe, and a deep connection to textiles.

This body of work is an ongoing investigation into identifying and analyzing African & African-American cultural similarities & differences due to the African Diaspora.  Priest’s artistic practice explores perceived views versus the realities of Africa. Through an onsite immersion in African culture, similarities & differences are captured through photography.

Intrigued by traditional “craft” techniques, Priest utilizes them to express ideas, feelings and vision thereby creating “fine art” that appeals to the mind and touches the emotions . African art does not draw such a clear delineation & thus she, of African roots seems more drawn inherently to that way of viewing art, despite being a product of African-American heritage.

The process used in this body of art is called, Paper Tole. First comes  photographs, then manipulation of the imagery through color changes, merging imagery, altering line, space & shape. Next duplicates of the image & use of up to 40 layers occurs, cutting each layer out by hand , stacking shaping & coloring the edges & then assembling the work. This is a fresh new approach to a very old “craft”,  to create a level of depth & complexity in the work that echoes the depth & complexities of African & African-American cultural norms.

Artists Talk with LVA: July 3, 2025

Artistas Cubanos Chévere opens at Louisville Visual Art on July 11th. Two of the artists, Carlos Gamez De Francisco & Julio Cesar joined us in the studio this week. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

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.”His exceptional talent, hard work, and perseverance led him to earn artistic commissions and recognition.

Julio Cesar Rodríguez Aguilar was born in 1976 in Holguin, Cuba. From a very early age, he was enthusiastic about drawing. As an adolescent, he entered the Vocational School of Art Raúl Gómez Garcia, and later he entered the Professional Academy of Visual Arts in his city, graduating in the specialty of Painting, Drawing, Photography, and Artistic Weaving in 1995. Julio also went on to be a professor of the arts and involved himself in book illustration, stage and costume design, muralism, and more. 

He specifically found fascination in surrealism, which provided him with the necessary vision of what he most identified with: the mystical, the surreal, and the poetic.

Artists Talk with LVA: June 26, 2025

The 30th Anniversary exhibit of LAFTA (Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Artists) will open at Pyro Gallery on July 5. Kathy Loomis, Jessica Beels, and Casey Dressel discuss it on Artists Talk with LVA. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artx.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Jessica Beels holds a BA in Art History (Harvard University, 1985) and a Masters in Early American Decorative Arts (Winterthur Program, University of Delaware, 1992). Her crafts background includes many self-taught techniques. More formal training includes classes in metalwork (Penland School of Crafts, NC, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, ME), papermaking (Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, ME), and stone carving (Corcoran School of Art, DC). Recently, she has been making ungalvanized steel armatures and experimenting with sealing in the rust resulting from the metal's contact with the wet paper and ambient humidity.

Casey Dressel’s artistic mediums are painting, installation, and craft based mediums. She is the owner/proprietor of Capacity Contemporary Exchange Gallery on Main Street in Louisville.

Kathy Loomis learned sewing, embroidery and other kinds of handwork from her grandmothers and made her own clothes for 30 years. She is a self-taught quilter, starting my first quilt in high school using leftovers from garment sewing. Her work has been shown in both quilt and all-media shows in the US and Europe. Since 2016 she has been a member of PYRO Gallery, a cooperative enterprise in Louisville. 

Jessica and Casey are also a part of Anne Border’s LVA/CPI Fellowship project at the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, Pathways to Presence, a permanent group of outdoor installations.