Rebekah Calhoun, Josie Seymour, & Abi Womack are all graduating seniors at the Kentucky College of Art + Design and will join 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.

Abi Womack is an artist born in Bowling Green Kentucky. Abi has exhibited her work at Carbon Copy, Speed Mansion Solarium Gallery, 849 Studio Gallery all in Louisville, Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center (SKyPAC) in Bowling Green.

Rebekah Calhoun is a Kentucky-born mixed media artist based in Louisville. She was a member of the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts class of 2021. In 2022 she was a co-creator and artist in Creamy Dream at the Carbon Copy Gallery and has shown work at the Speed Mansion Solarium Gallery and 849 Gallery.

Josie Seymour is an American artist, born in Kentucky, but from all over. Josie returned to Kentucky and started creating music videos, and taking photos for clients. While attending college she worked as a Production Assistant on a variety of films and shows. Josie was a photographer for unpublished magazine having photos published in issues such as“flare” and “New beginnings” also having photos in the book “Archive: Summer 2021”

Installation

Vignette: Jada Lynn Dixon

Guest User · June 20, 2019

“Clothesline Spirit” by Jada Lynn Dixon, Mixed Media, 26x12in, 2019, $300

It may oversimplify to consider that so much of what adult artists search for is a rediscovery of the simple, pure artistic expression of childhood; to clear away the responsibilities of family, employment, debt and other impediments of adulthood. In her most recent Artist’s Statement Jada Lynn Dixon connects her practice to her childhood experiences with great deliberation:

“I have a longstanding fascination with the idea of ‘Safe Spaces.’ There are many different definitions for this title, frequently personal, and can shield an individual from an emotional trigger. Other people may consider it a public space to receive help. As for myself, my grandmother and her creativity defined my version of a ‘Safe Space.’ I grew up in a very volatile environment, but fortunately had a devoted mother who tried her best to compensate. My Granny was a source of comfort. She was not an artist in the traditional sense, but crafted a series of pillow forts, clothesline tents, and shoebox dollhouses that occupied me for hours. These spaces kept me safe from anger, sadness, and uncertainty. I would watch eagerly as Granny took a simple cardboard shoebox and turned the bottom into a dollhouse with furniture created from the lid. I’d escape with it to a tent made from sheets on her clothesline, and exist safe in a created world for hours.”

“Little Sanctuary” by Jada Lynn Dixon, Mixed Media, 16x12in, 2018, $150

“Today my adult self enjoys ‘Safe Spaces’ in my artwork. I use wooden boxes, large canvases, cast resin pieces, clay, and found objects instead of shoeboxes and sheets to make meditative areas. My recent work incorporates a peaceful palette of pale blues, yellows and greens. Natural elements appear reclusively in many of my pieces, such as leaves, small branches, moss, and crystals. These reference the settings I enjoyed with my shoebox dollhouse, and it’s adornments. I work in a space created long ago, an emotional area originated by my grandmother, and perpetuated by materials and symbols that I associate with safety and happiness. It is my hope and intention that my viewers will find a moment of comfort and sanctuary in my pieces.“

Selected Exhibitions:

2018 Safe Spaces Dual Exhibit – Art Sanctuary, Louisville, KY
2018 Lexington Art League: PRHBTN 2018 – The Loudoun House, Lexington, KY
2018 Art at the Old Capitol (Juried) Featured Gallery Artist – Corydon, IN
2018 Cosmic Revelation LAG Annual Exhibit – KORE Gallery, Louisville, KY
2017 Funny Little Things Solo Art Exhibit - Day’s Espresso, Louisville, KY 2017 Art at the Old Capitol (Juried) Featured Gallery Artist – Corydon, IN
2016 Scars Group Exhibit – Tim Faulkner Gallery, Louisville, KY
2016 Trees Are Poems Group Invitational Exhibit - Cook Studio and Gallery, Louisville, KY

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: Currently attending Kentucky College of Art + Design (KyCAD) for a BFA in Studio Art
Instagram: @jynnart

Scroll down for more images

“Cloud Birds” by Jada Lynn Dixon, Mixed Media, 26x12in, 2019, $350

“Luna Memory” by Jada Lynn Dixon, Mixed Media, 12x8in, 2018, $125

“Back Yard Spirit” by Jada Lynn Dixon, Mixed Media, 30x16in, 2019, $300

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved. In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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Mixed Media, Sculpture

Vignette: Miranda Becht

Josh Jenkins · July 28, 2017

*"The sweet nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. (Order)" by Miranda Becht, 13x68x5in, tinted cast resin, flocking, lace, shelves (2016)*

“An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice… or terrify, all depending on how we conduct ourselves today.”– Jim Davis, from Garfield “Alone,” October 23, 1989

Artist, Miranda Becht — *Artist, Miranda Becht*

Miranda Becht is having a moment. One of only three students in the University of Louisville’s MFA program at the Hite Institute of Art, she is taking her three degrees and wasting no time positioning herself to have a positive impact in the Louisville and Southern Indiana arts community. This fall, she will be teaching foundation art courses as an Adjunct Professor at Bellarmine University, and be working as a instructor in LVA’s Academy program for high school students. She also has recently been offered an adjunct position at IUS. At the same time, she will a part of the St. James Court Art Show Emerging Artist Program and has been commissioned to create public art through the Jeffersonville Public Art Committee, Powering Creativity.

Becht’s work has largely been installation based, exploring how memory and nostalgia form our idea of the past: “I have always seemed to long for some sort of metaphorical home located somewhere in the past. Homesickness is defined as the longing for a particular home, nostalgia as a longing for a lost time. Nostalgia may carry with it a yearning for home, but it is a home faraway in time rather than space. Nostalgia, oftentimes used to refer to something sweet and pleasant, is bittersweet. It is the longing for something that is unattainable.”

*"I can feel your sweet decay." by Miranda Becht, 38x73x73in, wood, sticker paper, acrylic paint, cast resiin, linoleum, found objects (2017)*

“As a society we tend to idealize our vision of the past, particularly our vision of home. Our idealized notion of home presents itself as a supposedly traditional form of domestic life, but bears little relation to the way people actually lived. This concept of a cozy home full of family love is an invented tradition. Inevitable in our linear understanding of time, we are constantly being uprooted from home and from the past. Because of the fallibility of our memory, the past and home as we remember them, no longer exist. I mourn for a home that perhaps I never had.”

*"The sweet nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. (Order) (detail)" by Miranda Becht*

Becht cites “The pleasant, nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. I would sit and play with an odd, white vessel, full of wonder about its use and its origin. This vessel seemed so big, so white and pure, so curious. My grandmother told me it was a bedpan, but it wasn’t until much later in life that I realized just what a bedpan was. My most cherished childhood memory is soiled with urine and feces. Lost innocence often takes the guise of idealized memories. My work is a vehicle for my fetishized, fragile memories. I am pressured to be the object of desire… this untrue illusion, the ideal.”

Becht’s work is filled with mid-20th century design layered with a cotton-candy colors (she seems especially fond of pink), which adroitly captures the unique collective memory of what is arguably the most idealized period in modern American history, the 1950’s. The artist reminds us that what seems too good to have been true, often is.

Age: 31
Education: MFA Sculpture, University of Louisville, 2017; BFA Ceramics, Indiana University Southeast, 2012; BA Printmaking, Indiana University Southeast Minor Psychology, 2012
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Miranda.indiana/

*"I can feel your sweet decay (detail)" by Miranda Becht*

*"In Hiding" by Miranda Becht, 119x64x24in, wood, cast resin, acrylic paint, shag carpet, embroidery floss, light fixture (2017)*

*"Underside" by Miranda Becht, 96x96x66in, wood, screenprint, cast resin, rug, embroidery floss (2016)*

*"What’s a dream and what is real? (Entropy)" by Miranda Becht, 84x54x6in, wood, cast resin, hydrocal, embroidery floss, lace (2016)*

Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more. — *Are you interested in being on Artebella? Click here to learn more.*

Photography

Vignette: Kevin Warth

Josh Jenkins · April 26, 2017

“Resisting normative constructions of time, I examine moments in which the past, present, and future collapse upon each other.” — Kevin Warth

When one says “digital” it tends to suggest clean, polished audio and visual product - the pristine clarity of the CD, or the magical ability to animate entire worlds in your favorite blockbuster movie. Yet there are legions devoted to the warmth and subdued crackle of analog technologies. Vinyl, for example is still first choice for many.

Kevin Warth’s photographs here are exposed and confessional self-portraits that have the feel of x-rays. The intentionally distressed images seem furtive and from a by-gone time, recalling vintage pornography and early experiments in multiple exposure techniques, so that we find Warth delivering a suitable marriage of theme and technique.

“My work explores temporality, memory, and the body through self-portraiture. Resisting normative constructions of time, I examine moments in which the past, present, and future collapse upon each other. My body becomes a vehicle for memory as the past haunts the present. These images are tangible yet insubstantial. I use alternative and historic photographic processes alongside current digital methods of image making to further complicate and queer linear time. Moments are not discrete or bound to sequential time; rather, they bleed into other timelines in unexpected, jarring ways.”

"Echoes" by Kevin Warth, dimensions variable, photo transfer on glass (2016), $500 | BUY NOW — *"Echoes" by Kevin Warth, dimensions variable, photo transfer on glass (2016), $500 | BUY NOW*

"I Am Consumed By Specters" by Kevin Warth, 16x20in, kallitype (2015), $400 | BUY NOW — *"I Am Consumed By Specters" by Kevin Warth, 16x20in, kallitype (2015), $400 | BUY NOW*

Warth is a recent graduate of the University of Louisville’s Allen R. Hite Institute, where he had received the Mary Spencer Nay Memorial Scholarship, the Allen R. Hite Scholarship, the Barbara Bullitt Christian Memorial Scholarship in Photography, and the Allen Memorial Prize in Creative Art.

On May 4th, Warth will be participating in Rainbows & Roses, a benefit show to raise money for Louisville's future LGBTQ+ Community Center. On June 2, he will organize/participate in Queer Voices, another charity show to be held at OPEN Community Arts Center in which a percentage of the work sold will be donated to a local LGBTQ charity in remembrance of those lost in the Orlando nightclub shooting.

Hometown: New Albany, Indiana
Age: 24
Education: BFA in 2D Studios and BA in Art History, University of Louisville, 2016
Website: http://www.kevinwarth.com
Gallery Representation: garner narrative contemporary

"Un" by by Kevin Warth, 7x7in, ambrotype (2015), $750 | BUY NOW — *"Un" by by Kevin Warth, 7x7in, ambrotype (2015), $750 | BUY NOW*

"I Am Consumed By Him" by Kevin Warth, 16x20in, kallitype (2015), $400 | BUY NOW — *"I Am Consumed By Him" by Kevin Warth, 16x20in, kallitype (2015), $400 | BUY NOW*

"Deux" by Kevin Warth, 7x7in, ambrotype (2015), $750 | BUY NOW — *"Deux" by Kevin Warth, 7x7in, ambrotype (2015), $750 | BUY NOW*

Drawing

Vignette: Barb McDevitt

Josh Jenkins · March 31, 2017

“Art enables us to finds ourselves. As an artist I try to interpret what I have seen in hope that others can see my vision.” — Barb McDevitt

"TAJI" by Barb McDevitt, 16x20in, pastel (2016) $700 | BUY NOW — *"TAJI" by Barb McDevitt, 16x20in, pastel (2016) $700 | BUY NOW*

Although she paints plein aire, Barb McDevitt also finds old architecture quite compelling. She sees the survival of venerable buildings from the past as inspirational, discovering the rich, earthy color of the brick, or the originally bright, albeit now somewhat dimmed colors of the signage and storefronts among the more modern buildings in the city.

“The TAJ was an old building bought back to life again,” says McDevitt. “I wanted to capture that rebirth. Conversely, The Phoenix Hill Tavern was a place of good times for many generations only to suffer a death by way of retirement. There is irony in the idea that a building with that name would not be born again from the ashes.”

These prosaic images tie present and past together in simple, honest, terms, but visual motifs are always loaded with more than the surface meaning; memory, history, and the passing of an age are at all at work in these paintings because those aspects are important to McDevitt. In her own way, like many other artist, she is a local historian and preservationist.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BA, Graphic Arts, University of Louisvill
Gallery Representative: Jane Morgan Gallery, Framer’s Express (Louisville)
Website: http://barbamcdevitt.webs.com/

"Spring Floyds Fork" by Barb McDevitt, 14x11in, pastel (2015) $350 | BUY NOW — *"Spring Floyds Fork" by Barb McDevitt, 14x11in, pastel (2015) $350 | BUY NOW*

"Coffee Talk" by Barb McDevitt, 12x16in, pastel (2016) $500 | BUY NOW — *"Coffee Talk" by Barb McDevitt, 12x16in, pastel (2016) $500 | BUY NOW*

"The Death of the Phoenix" by Barb McDevitt, 20x16in, pastel (2016) $700 | BUY NOW — "*The Death of the Phoenix" by Barb McDevitt, 20x16in, pastel (2016) $700 | BUY NOW*

memory

Artists Talk with LVA: May 15, 2025