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: September 26, 2024

Esther Callahan has juried the 2024 Ohio Valley Biennial for Louisville Visual Art (LVA) and talks about the exhibit with us this week. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

An independent curator, arts consultant, social and creative entrepreneur, Esther Callahan also organizes and manages various art projects around the Twin Cities. Over the past 20+ years, she has created and co-created various platforms for cultural production and dialogue rooted in interrogating the impact of racial and gender equity, and our future histories. Most recently, through her "Periphery of Power" exhibition in late 2023 at Gamut Gallery in Minneapolis, MN. She has held positions as Co-Director of the Emerging Curators Institute that builds the individual practices of emerging curators, Artistic Director of Arts and Rec US, Great Meadows Foundation Critic in Residence in 2021, and former Curatorial Fellow at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. From the beginning of her career, she has believed in working hand-in-hand with artists to facilitate their evolution, and in turn the advancement of their careers, growing together and finding common lines of investigation, reflected in a strong focus to create a space that builds dialogue among different communities. She believes in the power of art and in living a life that makes an impact.

The 2024 Ohio Valley Biennial is on view through October 24 at the LVA Gallery.

Artists Talk with LVA: July 18, 2024

Cyd Iyun & Mary Jefferson

Mary Jefferson is producing the 2024 Ken Clay Renaissance Awards on July 27 with an adjoining exhibit at the Louisville Free Public Library featuring 3 women including fabric artist Cyd Iyun. Mary & Cyd join us in the studio this week to talk about the event. Tune in to WXOX 97.1FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Mary E. Jefferson is a Louisville writer, talent producer, business leader and former Executive Director of the African American Women's Literary Series.  In partnership with Jamie Keith, she is also the former co-founder of The CERA Group, a boutique business development and management company.  A cultural arts and social justice advocate, the Appalachian native and UofL alumni, occasionally pens, researches and develops organizational grantmaking for talent management platforms and youth educational programs. In April, 2022, Mary established the, LOUISVILLE ORGANIZING ARTS GROUP as a public platform to highlight and pay tribute to Ken Clay, Louisville native, arts trailblazer, diversity gamechanger and the inaugural recipient of the, 2023 KEN CLAY RENAISSANCE HONOR AWARD.

Cyd Iyun is a New York native and has been a Louisville resident for 40 plus years.  As a designer, seamstress and fabric designer, Cyd owns and manages, Creating Beauty with Fabric where she imagines, designs and pieces together bold color-patterns and designs for utilitarian purposes such as dinner napkins and masks to uniquely amazing couture in the forms of casual and formal apparel.  Cyd will be the Artist-in-Residence for a children's interactive and hands-on arts workshop, Thursday July 25th from 2:30-3:45 at the historic Western Library, 610 So.10th Street.  The artist is part of a trio of collaborators in a new mixed media arts exhibit, DIVERSITY WOMEN'S ART ON CANVAS.  The installment opens Friday, July 26 from 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. @ Bernheim Gallery in the Main Library, 301 York Street.

Artists Talk with LVA: October 5, 2023

LVA will be featuring Tomisha Lovely-Allen in our booth at St.James Art Show and she is also our guest this week. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Tomisha Lovely-Allen is a self-taught artist from Louisville, KY.  She has been a passionate creator for as long as she can remember. She earned a full scholarship at Northern Kentucky University and graduated with a Bachelor's in Accounting and Associate in Business Administration in 1998 and earned a Certified Public Accountant license in 2002.  

She was chosen to illustrate a historic Kentuckian woman in the “Bluegrass Bold” children’s book project along with 35 other female artists, exhibit at the Arts Center of the Bluegrass Show “The Art of Being Black: Conversations and Experience,” and be grant recipient to the Fund for the Arts '“Black Artist Grant”. 

Artists Talk with LVA: September 20, 2023

Portland Museum opens the "Made in Portland" exhibition on September 23, which is part of the 2023 Portland Art & Heritage Fair, and 1 of the artists, Noah Howard & Shannon Delahanty, Creative Coordinator at the Museum joined us in the studio to talk about it. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.