Artists Talk with LVA: April 18, 2024

Julie Leidner is one of the 2023 Curate Purchase Inspire (CPI) cohort and we talk to her as her curatorial project comes to fruition with a pop-up exhibit at LVA through April 19. Tune into Artists Talk with LVA every Thursday at 10 am on 97.1 WXOX-FM or stream on Artxfm.com

Julie Leidner is a Louisville native who has exhibited locally as well as in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. She has taught for Louisville Visual Art, The Speed Museum, Kentucky College of Art + Design, and was a Museum Educator at The Carnegie Center for Art & History in New Albany, IN. She was the recipient of the 2015 Mary Alice Hadley Prize for Visual Art and a 2018 Great Meadows Foundation Residency Grant. She is the recipient of a 2023 Curate Purchase Inspire Fellowship with Louisville Visual Art. For that fellowship she is creating an exhibit to be housed with Hildegard House.

Last Flowers, a Pop-Up Exhibit is at the LVA Gallery through April 19

Hildegard House is Kentucky's first and only comfort care home. Through the support of our community and with the help of many volunteers, we provide a home and compassionate care for individuals at the end of life who have no home or loved ones to care for them so that they may die with dignity.

Artists Talk with LVA: August 24, 2023

LVA staff members Grant Johnson & Kristian Anderson will be in the studio this week to talk about LVA's past, present, & future. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Kristian Anderson has 18+ years’ experience in the arts and culture sector, including as Senior Policy Advisor to the Mayor of Salt Lake City. Prior to that, Kristian was for four years the Executive Director of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Executive Director for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries in Seattle. He was the founder and host of “SLC Culture” – a weekly radio show highlighting arts, culture and social issues.

For the past 3 years he was the Executive Director of LVA where he achieved fiscal stability and growth during a time when a global pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to all non-profit arts organizations. He oversaw the first phase of renovations for the LVA facility in Portland, which focused on bringing the building up to code and giving it greater accessibility, developed the Artist Resource Series providing advice and instruction for practicing adult artists, and in partnership with artist and donor Clare Hirn initiated the Curate Purchase and Inspire (CPI) program designed to foster curatorial practice and install permanent exhibits of art purchased from local artists in community non-profits. 

Grant Johnson is Strategic Communications Coordinator for LVA. He holds an MFA in Printmaking from West Virginia University, and a BA in Religion from Williams College. His work life includes 13 years’ experience teaching all studio art disciplines, art history, film, and art education at the college level. He has also worked as a freelance graphic designer, in online retail, and in a variety of sales and management positions.

A working artist, Grant’s studio practice focuses on commissioned oil portraits, but also includes sculpture, video, printmaking, and drawing.

Grant’s passions for writing and for LVA’s mission find additional purpose in his role as the organization’s in-house Grants Administrator. His lifelong commitment to promoting the value of visual art and art education has never been more at home than it is at LVA.

Artists Talk With LVA: October 20, 2022

Shauntrice Martin & Ada Asenjo are part of the first Curate Purchase Inspire cohort with LVA and they talk about their projects as they reach their conclusion. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com Thursday at 10 am to hear all about it.

Shauntrice Martin is a mother, abolitionist, and artist. She was born and raised in Louisville, KY and currently serves as a lobbyist. Her artwork has reflected a tumultuous yet triumphant trajectory. The use of acrylics, textile, sculpture, and photography blend in her pieces to create sometimes haunting images of the lives Black and Indigenous people could have lived if white supremacy never existed. She created Chahta Noir as a resource & outlet for artists to develop, network, and BE.

Shauntrice is the inaugural Speed Art Museum Artist-In-Residence. Her photo journey is available via SPEEDxWEST. Shauntrice's museum solo exhibition "Something in the Water" opened at the Speed Art Museum in December 2021.

Her exhibit, Sweet Fire, is being installed at Play Cousins Collective and will officially open to the public in December 2022.

Ada Asenjo was born in the Dominican Republic where flowers bloom all throughout the year. Pressing flowers is something she has enjoyed doing most of her life! Pressed foliage has been used to elaborately embellish gifts and items for ages. Each petal and leaf is intricate beyond comparison, yet they are often overlooked. By juxtaposing different elements, their exquisite details become apparent.

Our existence is transient, and everything hinges on what or who came before. Nothing happens in isolation. I feel I must convey this hopeful message of the flowers: Today we live in Joy and Love.

Her exhibit ,Somo De Aqui y Afloramos, opens November 5 at La Casita Center

Artists Talk with LVA: March 17, 2022

Clare Hirn received a significant scholarship to attend the New York Academy of Art – Graduate School of Figurative Art, located in Manhattan. The curriculum continues to focus on strong foundational skills for working “realistically” from life and the figure.

After graduating with her masters in painting and drawing in 1990, Hirn worked for a mural design firm in NYC, learning the techniques of working large scale. Upon returning to her hometown of Louisville, KY she pursued both mural work and her personal painting, participating and receiving awards in many regional shows. Hirn’s fine art murals and paintings grace many homes, businesses, and public spaces and have appeared in numerous publications.

Shohei Katayama is a Japanese American artist who explores the space between light and dark, life and death, beauty and danger, nature and man. His work includes line drawings, sculpture, and installation art. ​

Katayama received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2019. He is the recipient of the Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award by the International Sculpture Center, the Frank-Ratchye Fund for the Art at the Frontier Award, and a finalist in the 21C Artadia award, among others. His work has been exhibited nationally, and internationally in Venice, Italy; New York; Portland, OR, and more. Katayama has participated in residencies in Norway; Brazil;  NJ; Tough Art Residency Program in Pittsburgh, PA, and at the Asia Institute Crane House in Louisville, KY.