Artists Talk with LVA: August 21, 2025

Indiana muralist Carrie Johns has been super busy, but found the time to join us this week in the studio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM / Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Carrie Johns has completed over a dozen murals in Southern Indiana, as well as several others in Louisville. All of them are designed for a specific location and purpose. Her largest mural, covering 3,700 square feet, is located on the Elsby East building just outside of her studio.  She has an Art History degree from the University of Louisville and has worked for the Weber Group before becoming a full-time mural artist.

Immediately after this interview, Carrie was off to Corydon, Indiana to put the finishing touches on her latest project for the Harrison County Public Library.

Artists Talk with LVA: February 13, 2025

Tonight (February 13, 2025)t Louisville Visual Art unveils the SPARK Sculpture and its designers, Laura Haddad & Tom Drugan joined us to talk about it live in the studio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Laura Haddad & Thomas Drugan specialize in conceptually driven public art that is often integrated into large-scale infrastructure projects. Past and current work includes art for roadways, bridges, transit stations, public utilities, architectural facades, industrial artifacts, museums, libraries, and urban plazas and parks. Working in the public realm, the artists pursue their interest in using site conditions as inspiration for art concepts. Haddad|Drugan strives to create poetic one-of-a-kind artworks that on one level act as place-making icons but on another are layered with subtler complexities that unfold over multiple viewings.

The studio’s site-specific approach to new projects includes research and investigations about a site’s physical, functional, natural, social, and historical aspects. 

From this the artists establish a conceptual framework for the art and develop specific forms and materials that best express the idea. Haddad|Drugan operates at the scale of both sculpture and planning and approach the thematic or sequential linking of individual artworks as a form of conceptual art unto itself.

Artists Talk with LVA: April 20, 2023

Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary artist, activist, and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. In 1989 he designed the "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" (...OBEY...) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Fairey designed the Barack Obama "Hope" poster for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has described him as one of the best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Louisville, Kentucky native Eddie Donaldson moved to Los Angeles in 1986 and became involved with the graffiti movement as an alternative to the turbulent gang activity of his generation. Immersed first as an artist amongst diverse L.A. crews like TCF, AWR, and The Seventh Letter, Donaldson had the vision to develop their homegrown graffiti movement into something beyond the streets. His loyalty and business sensibility transformed the graffiti scene and he evolved into the point person for producing art events and exhibitions that inspire and spread the stylistic of southern California art into the world. In 2000, his groundbreaking website GuerillaOne became the first online graffiti portal, uniting the growing subculture globally and changing the landscape for connection amongst artists, fans, and collectors. By inspiring value in artists as influencers and activists, he has the unique ability to put together the right artists with the right projects to promote next-level visual expression. Communicating through fine art online, in galleries, at events, and on the street, Donaldson inspires his culture to grow and shine all over the world.

Artebella On The Radio: June 17

The (Un)Known Project is a collaborative, two-year initiative led by IDEAS xLab to tell the stories of both known and unknown Black men, women, and children that were formerly enslaved and hidden figures in Louisville, Kentucky. This week we talk with old friends William Duffy & Dave Caudill, the two sculptors working ion this project, which will be unveiled Saturday, June 19.

William Duffy was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Always having a special talent for painting and drawing, Duffy graduated from the Louisville School of Art with a BFA in painting.

Duffy’s work can be found in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, including Phillip Morris USA, Brown-Forman Corporation, Kentucky Fried Chicken (now YUM! Brands, Inc.), Humana Inc., The Louisville Orchestra, and the J.B. Speed Art Museum.

David Caudill creates artworks for public, corporate and private collections. His larger public works are found at Louisiana’s Rip Van Winkle Gardens, East Tennessee’s Horizon Center park, the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts, and the University of Louisville School of Music. Corporate collections include Brown-Forman Corporation and Fire King International. Individual collectors across America have acquired his work.

He is also one of the few sculptors in the world who have created an environmental undersea sculpture. Caudill’s artwork was placed on the seabed near Nassau, The Bahamas.

The {Un) Known Project’s first public art installation "On the Banks of Freedom" gets unveiled June 19 as part of Juneteenth: Past, Present, Future.

Artebella On The Radio: June 25, 2020

Public art and public spaces are an important part of the changes happening in our world right now, and Curator Eileen Yanoviak and Artist Brianna Harlan will be talking about these issues this week with Keith Waits. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear artists talk about their work.

Dr. Eileen Yanoviak has sixteen years of museum experience in development, marketing, curatorial, education, and guest relations. She has worked at the Speed Art Museum and Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (also known as KMAC Museum), both in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. She has had a parallel career in higher education as a teacher and administrator for more than a decade at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Louisville, among others. She received her doctorate in Art History from the University of Louisville in 2017. Her area of expertise is nineteenth-century American landscape painting, and she is particularly interested in environmental history, American studies, and museum studies. She has presented and published her research nation-wide and is a regular contributor to Burnaway: The Voice of Art in the South.

Brianna Harlan is a multidisciplinary artist and organizer. She works conceptually in multiform, socially engaged art. Her work is driven by an obsession with interpersonal culture and how that influences quality of life, health, and habits. Brianna is a Hadley Creative and Kentucky Foundation for Women Fire Starter awardee. Her most recent residencies were at Oxbow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, Materia Abierta in Mexico City, and Makers Circle in North Carolina. She also leads community experiences and presentations, has been a speaker for organizations like For Freedoms, 21C Museum Hotels, and the KY ACLU. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Art and Social Action at Queens College, CUNY.