Artists Talk with LVA: April 24, 2025

Levi Justice & Christopher St. John open new exhibits at Galerie Hertz this weekend and join us in the studio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Levi Justice is a contemporary visual artist specializing in large-scale, hyper-realistic oil paintings. At age 12, he began working with wood & various metals, creating sculptures he sold to private collectors. Justice pursued fine art at Kentucky's Centre College.  After graduating, Levi moved to North Carolina, where he began managing art galleries & teaching artistic techniques to his community. Levi currently resides in Louisville, Kentucky.

Christopher St. John received his BFA from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and his MFA in ceramics from Ohio University. He served four years of active duty in the Army. Travel has informed his practice, both in choice of material, appreciation of light and landscape, and adaptability to changing conditions. Christopher has artwork in the permanent collections of both the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the Hawaii State Art Museum. He is always at home in a forest. 

Christopher began his journey with ceramics 5 years ago. He decided to return to graduate school to deepen his understanding of this field and devote himself fully to becoming a teaching artist. He is currently the Resident Artist at Indiana University Southeast. The values and goals of his work lie in support of the challenges human beings currently face on the only known planet that supports life. 

Two Approaches to Portraiture opens at Galerie Hertz Saturday, April 24 with a reception from 1 - 3 pm.

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: March 23, 2023

Jacque Parsley is being recognized for a lifetime of meaningful work at the 2023 LVA Honors and this week she joins us live in the studio to talk about that life. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Jacque Parsley is a Louisville-based artist with a lifelong passion for creativity. Her work incorporates a myriad of found or discarded objects, artifacts, ephemera, and vintage printed matter – presenting an iconography that creates a dialogue between the permanent and the transient.

Over the years, Jacque has established herself as a respected artist in the Louisville community and beyond. She earned a BFA, MA, and MFA in fine arts, and taught at the University of Louisville and Indiana University Southeast. For nearly 10 years, Jacque exhibited and mentored young artists at Liberty Gallery in Louisville, KY. She has exhibited her own work throughout the United States, Germany, and Mexico. Her work has received several awards, and can be seen in many private, corporate, and museum collections.

Artebella On The Radio: July 9, 2020

Rudolfo Salgado, jr. & Susanna Crum of Calliope Arts talk with us this week about a project called C19: Art Works for Kentucky. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday to hear Keith Waits speak with artists on LVA's Artebella On The Radio

Vignette: Gayle Cerlan

"Alice in Potterland" by Gayle Cerlan, Clay, glaze, 16.5x7x6.5in, 2018, $975

Gayle Cerlan is currently working on two different bodies of work for two different exhibits. Here we see work she will be showing in Louisville with Jacque Parsley in September 2018. 

Cerlan’s pieces are ceramic sculptures that capture an aesthetic from more than a century ago but also feel of a more recent time. “Alice in Potterland” is an obvious allusion to the Lewis Carroll classic, and could almost be an artifact from the late-Victorian period in England. Yet there is also a degree of American sensibility from 100 years later, a time when Carroll’s fantastical, hallucinatory imagery found purchase in the counter-culture. And what are we to make of the small skull tucked under the arm of this unique hare?

There is ample narrative in this body of work, and it seems likely that its full effect would be best experienced seeing them as a group, so that the characters are encountered in context and the viewer may find their own story. The bemused, slightly vacant gaze in the face of “Amelia” captures a surrealistic charm that causes us to ponder whether the flowers above her head are contained within the vase or are indeed growing directly from inside this baroque lady’s skull.

This work will be included in an exhibit at Craft(s) Gallery & Mercantile with Jacque Parsley entitled, Shared Vision. The show will run September 7 through 28 with an Artist Reception September 7, 6:00-9:00PM

"Amelia" by Gayle Cerlan, Clay, glaze, paint, found objects, 10x6x6.4,5in, 2018, $850

Cerlan has been an active member of the Kentucky arts community through her involvement as the creator and director of the Cityworks exhibition (1997-1998), and as curator of the DinnerWorks exhibition (1994-1997). She has served on the boards of Louisville Visual Art and the Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft and has been an Adjunct Professor of Ceramics at Indiana University Southeast, Bellarmine College, and the University of Louisville. She founded Cerlan Gallery in Lexington, Kentucky (1997-2007) and established a fine arts school for all ages, ArtStudio (1997-2014). Cerlan has exhibited her ceramic art nationally and internationally and has won many awards and grants. Her work can be found in numerous public collections.

Hometown: Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky
Education: BFA Louisville School of Art; MA, University of Louisville; Completed coursework at Alfred University in New York. 
Gallery Representative: Kentucky Artisan Center, Gayle Cerlan Hunt Art Studio & Classes (Lexington, Kentucky)

Scroll down for more images

"Grey Evening Gloves" by Gayle Cerlan, Clay, glaze, paint, gold leaf, 10x8x6.5in, 2018, $950

"Birds of A Feather" by Gayle Cerlan, Clay, glaze, glass, gold leaf, 11x5x5in, 2018, $950

"Garden of Eden" by Gayle Cerlan, Clay, glaze, paint, gold leaf, 9.5x7x5in, 2018, $900

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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