*"Braid Boy #3" by Jessica Booker, 1920x1080px, digital illustration (2016)*

One can see the influence of contemporary illustration and animation in the work of Jessica Booker; that there is a good measure of manga seems obvious, but is there not a also a bit of Margaret Keane, whose “Big Eye” paintings were the source of controversy and an important progenitor of the mass market merchandising of art almost a century ago?

*"Braid Boy #2" by Jessica Booker, 1920x1080px, digital illustration (2016)*

Such a thought is what makes the work of so young an artist interesting. Would Ms. Booker even know Keane, whose court case to claim authorship of her work is now seen as a feminist victory for a female artist so subservient to her husband’s will as to feel it appropriate to bury her creative identity? If time is a river, perhaps artists are unknowingly being caught up in themes and influences like eddies and currents along the way, forever being swept downstream.

*"Braid Boy 2.5" by Jessica Booker, 1080x1920px, digital illustration (2016)*

Booker works mostly from her imagination, but is inspired by people in her life, a blending of source and sensibility that asks questions about identity in an overly homogenized, culture saturated by digital media.

She finds the approach somewhat liberating, “…not worrying about getting an exact likeness to someone makes creating more open. They are like idealized caricatures of different persona and personalities I encounter every day. Each face is different in the moment, but similarities start to show and imaginary bonds between these total strangers start to emerge.

Playing with color, composition, shapes of features - even what they wear, tells what they might be like. Experimenting, for me, is important. Much like actual people, there are similarities and differences. I like to play with the details to make each person unique.”

In high school, Booker received a Scholastic Gold Key Award for Art and Writing. Last year she helped paint a mural on a Spalding University building for SoBro in Louisville.

Age: 21
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BFA candidate, Painting and Drawing, Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky

*"Braid Boy #1" by Jessica Booker, 1920x1080px, digital illustration (2016)*

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Digital, Illustration

Q&A: Monica Beavers

Josh Jenkins · December 20, 2016

“Rabbits are a lot smarter and tougher than most people give them credit for.”
– Monica Laake Beavers

*"Big, Brown Bunny That Can't (Won't) Hop" by Monica Beavers, 8x10in, mixed media/illustrated book (2016)*

Monica Laake Beavers was born and raised in the rolling hills of Northern Kentucky. She has always had a love for art and believes creativity is the spice of life. Monica received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, focusing in Graphic Design & Drawing, from Xavier University, and was at one time the Design Coordinator for Louisville Visual Art. She recently finished writing and illustrating her second children's book, "The Big, Brown Bunny Huh?".

When did you first think you would be an artist?

I’m pretty sure I was in kindergarten. The teacher pretty much wasn’t able to take the pencil away from me. I just kept drawing rabbits on everything – my fascination with rabbits started very young.

Who or what inspires you now?

My main inspirations are:

Walt Disney: say what you will about him, but I’ve always been a Disney kid from an early age. I respect his creative genius, ambition and persistence he carried throughout his career. He failed so many times early on in his career, but he kept on going.
Movies, specifically Indiana Jones. I want my art to be able to force people to take a breather from the seriousness and monotony of life and just enjoy a moment, even if it’s fleeting.
Saul Bass inspires me artistically. (Bass 1920 – 1996) was an American graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, best known for his design of motion-picture title sequences, film posters, and corporate logos). He always focused on the communication of design and art. He was able to take complex opening scenes to films and simplify them to their bare minimum. When creating my books, I’ll try to start with a complex idea and try to simplistically break it down using a rabbit or other animals to typically convey the message in a lighthearted manner.
I’m very much fueled by quotes as well, specifically Charles Bukowski and Rudyard Kipling.

Why rabbits? Tell us about the real-life “Bun.”

The bun, the myth, the legend! I’ve loved rabbits as long as I can remember.

I chose rabbits because of my own pet rabbit, Grumpy, as well as my love for personification. Grumpy has a unique personality and had a very rough upbringing. I wanted to bring this personality to life. Grumpy may appear crotchety and not very trusting of those who first meet him, but he has a heart of gold!

Grumpy, aka “Bertie McBean” (his stage name for the books), is a French lop by nature and a bunny jam packed with disdain. Hailing from Cleveland, OH, he was saved from a hoarding situation and relocated to Indyclaw Rescue in Indianapolis, IN. One fateful day, he was adopted by a lady (me!) and meandered to Louisville, KY. His knack for traveling and zest for life blew him upstream to Bellevue, KY where he currently resides. He is a free-range rabbit who loves acoustic music (especially Eddie Vedder), the smell of feet, and apples.

You also are heavily into sharks, and there is at least one shark painting on your website. These two animals wouldn’t seem to be a natural match, yet they dominate your unique sensibility. Why is that?

I think from both sides of the spectrum, they are extremely misunderstood animals and ridiculously interesting. Rabbits are a lot smarter and tougher than most people give them credit for. They have a lot of admirable qualities and unique habits (thumping, chinning, binkying, etc.). On the shark end, I’ve always been fascinated knowing they have been in existence practically since the beginning of time and yet have never had to evolve nearly as much as most animals have. Again, they are extremely misunderstood animals but carry a very weighty reputation.

Additionally, both animals have such unique characteristics they’re a lot of fun to play around with and personify.

You can draw and paint old school, but why do the two books you have published rely on computer graphics?

I think this stems from my college Graphic Design professor Jonathan Gibson. He very much emphasized the importance of keeping a human touch when creating a design piece. He stressed the importance of texture and use of mixed media when designing. Too often people rely on a computer to create textures/effects and as a result, a lot of art can begin to look monotonous and generic and lack personality.

*"Big, Brown Bunny That Can't (Won't) Hop" by Monica Beavers, book marks, mixed media/illustrated book (2016)*

My love of art began with drawing and transitioned into graphic design, but I like to use the two interchangeably. When creating my illustrations, I actually start by sketching them all out on a notepad. I then take photographs of textures that have personal meaning to me. For example, I’m a Red’s fan, so a lot of the grass used is from the Red’s stadium. Additionally, the furs used for Grumpy/Bertie McBean are actual photographs of his fur.

Additionally, depending on the project I first start with the idea and what my main message is. From there I select the medium to work in accordance to the theme of the piece. My current style wouldn’t necessarily be used if the message were different. I felt like this style captured the personality of Bertie McBean and what I was trying to convey.

If you could do anything else but make art, what would it be?

I would be a marine biologist or zoologist, travel the world and study sharks.

What frightens you the most?

I hate caterpillars - really, …I do. In all seriousness though, my biggest fear is losing the ones I love the most and not following my dreams and looking back years from now and asking “what if…?”

What challenges you more than anything?

The question “what if?”

What is your favorite music to listen to when making art?

I typically mix it up between Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam, Pokey LaFarge, Jim Croce, or the Eagles.

I usually listen to pretty chill music when making art. I’ve been listening to the Into the Wild soundtrack a lot lately.

**Favorite movie? Besides Jaws, that is?**

Ha! I think, “I’m going to need a bigger boat” for that question (wokka wokka). Although it is hard to beat, Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade is my favorite. In my eyes, it’s the perfect storyline and end to a trilogy (the fourth movie didn’t happen). It includes a just the right amount of campiness, wit and quirk that separates it from a standard action/adventure movie.

What are you reading right now?

I’m in between three books, “Ham on Rye” by Charles Bukowski, “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, and David Sedaris’ “Chipmunk Seeks Squirrel.”

What advice would you give a young artist just out of college?

Don’t get frustrated. Each path and experience will lead you where you want to be as long as you don’t lose sight of where you intend to go. After graduating you leave feeling like you’re on top of the world and reality starts to sink in with work, but remember, you chose art for a reason. You always have options and you chose art because you didn’t want a boring life.

If you were given a $100,000 what would do with it?

Start my own company full time and work on branding The Big, Brown Bunny. Start up my own rabbit rescue and probably travel to Egypt, Greece or South Africa- great shark diving area.

**What does art mean to you?**

Art means happiness. It’s my escape. It allows me to take a break from the real world and just create. It means taking a closer look at things and not accepting things as they are, it means endless possibilities.

If you could meet any celebrity who would it be and what would you ask them?

Walt Disney – What inspired you? What would you hope people remembered you for? What kept you going on the hard days?

Harrison Ford – I would have to ask about Indiana Jones.

Hometown: Villa Hills, Kentucky
Age: 28
Education: BFA, Xavier University
Website: http://www.bigbrownbun.com

*"Big Brown Huh?" by Monica Beavers, 8x10in, mixed media/illustrated book (2015)*

Photography, Fiber, Installation

Vignette: Sarah Kinslow

Josh Jenkins · December 16, 2016

"Parachute Room" by Sarah Kinslow, 25x14in, still frame of cinemagraph (2016), $100 | BUY NOW — *"Parachute Room" by Sarah Kinslow, 25x14in, still frame of cinemagraph (2016), $100 | BUY NOW*

Artists change over time. As a student in LVA’s Children’s Fine Art Classes, Sarah Kinslow was adept at highly detailed pen & ink drawings, the highlight of a portfolio that earned her a scholarship. Now in art school, she has shifted into fiber as a medium: “From a young age I was introduced to the art world via textile crafts such as crocheting, knitting, embroidery, cross-stitch, and many other processes. This was part of my everyday life and it impacted the trajectory of my career path early on. Through these processes I have been able to express myself and look to other artists following the same lines.”

Like many artists that work with fiber, Kinslow has an acute awareness of the history and heritage of these techniques as, "woman's work" or as menial household activities that, however important to daily life they might have once been, they were not by any means considered art.

“I want my work with textiles to give the viewer a different perspective, and provide them a place visually or physically to see that these realities are not what we may perceive them to be. They are to question what impact they themselves have on to the pieces, such as my installation work, and what their presence does to the work and their impact on their own reality.”

Who wouldn’t welcome the opportunity to revisit the tent forts of their childhood? Kinslow’s installations are at once modern and traditional, anachronistic yet cozy. By building space that invites a viewer to sit in quiet contemplation, she explores the layers of meaning in the word “comfort” and reconnects us to the fundamental touchstones of family with a sure sense of place. The larger cultural associations can run even deeper, with the universality of a tented enclosure found in enough history to provide a common thread of understanding.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Age: 20
Education: Currently a student at the Kentucky College of Art and Design at Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky for a BFA in Painting/Drawing and Pre-Art Therapy.

*"A Place For Contemplation #2" by Sarah Kinslow, 30x20in, digital photo of installation (2016)*

*"Exploration #4" by Sarah Kinslow, 6x10in, monotype dry point print (2016)*

"Fluidity" by Sarah Kinslow, 20x14in, digital print (2016) — *"Fluidity" by Sarah Kinslow, 20x14in, digital print (2016)*

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Installation, Mixed Media

Vignette: Wendi Smith

Josh Jenkins · December 14, 2016

“Chapel is my expression of the sacred quality of the beauty and power of Nature.”
– Wendi Smith

*Artist Wendi Smith talking about her work.*

In her most recent show, EX-FACULTY (at PYRO Gallery in Louisville), Wendi Smith exhibited an installation called Chapel. The result of five years of work that the artist describes as an ”obsession,” it powerfully merges her themes of ritual and ritual objects with Nature. The installation incorporates forms she has explored for years, such as mandalas, with pattern and placement crucial in unifying the various elements in the complex construction. In her artist’s statement for the work, Smith explains:

“In Chapel, the deep appreciation of the Natural world, the complexity and interconnection of elements, species, and environments of the Earth are presented in a traditional form. The choice to make an altarpiece and altar is my expression of the sacred quality of the beauty and power of Nature.

Regardless of the other spiritual connections we have in our lives, we are all connected by the place in the universe that we call our own.”

The central panel of the altarpiece is a visual progression from Earth to water, to one-celled microbes, to protozoa, to amphibians and reptiles, to birds. The central mandala is a camellia, whose symmetry mirrors the perfection of the Earth. At the top, the Milky Way spins, an illustration of our small place in a huge network of stars.

The left panel is the sea, a huge portion of the planet - birthplace and sustainer of life. The right panel is the land, and all that it produces. The lower panels are a nod to the tradition of Renaissance artists of the inclusion of patrons of their work as portraits.

The altar is a combination of created and collected elements. Each component is integrated stylistically through the use of pattern, metallic leaf, and a palette rooted in nature.

The candlesticks are painted on wood boxes combined with turned tops and bases. One is painted depictions of galaxies, stars, and nebulae, all based on photographs from the Hubble telescope. This is the macro, the all-encompassing elements, and the stardust of which all the rest of universe is composed. The second is cells, including plant cells, animal cells, and brain cells, the micro. This is the biological material that composes organic life. They each have a serene beauty, a power, and the potential of all creation. They work in the same direction; create a balance, a fine symmetry.”

The formal structure of Smith’s altar is much like others we find in many religions. The severity of the symmetry forces us to position ourselves in a specific relationship to the divine, with design and symbols that provide a touchstone for connecting our faith and belief to something outside of ourselves. It is how we find our place in the world and make sense of our existence. For Smith, that seems to require we recognize our place in the complex web of nature.

"Chapel" by Wendi Smith, Altarpiece: 73.5"H x 86"W (installed), Altar table: 36"H x 72"W x 24"D (2016), $15,000 for the entire installation | BUY NOW — *"Chapel" by Wendi Smith, Altarpiece: 73.5"H x 86"W (installed), Altar table: 36"H x 72"W x 24"D (2016), $15,000 for the entire installation | BUY NOW*

She uses an array of created and collected objects. The found items are mostly organic specimens: rocks, seeds, feathers, nests, bones, and a few books about Nature. Some of the motifs are simple and specific: an acorn, a flower, a mushroom, while the most dominant images speak to a universality that humbles us as simply one more of these items. They speak to the elemental aspect of the spiritual message she seeks to impart. No more or no less important in the largest scheme of things.

Selected Permanent Collections:

Waterfront Park Place, Louisville, KY
Commonwealth Bank and Trust, Louisville, KY
Mayan Gypsy Restaurant, Louisville, KY
Citizens Fidelity Bank, Louisville, KY
Colwell Financial Corporation, Louisville, KY
John Graham Brown Cancer Center, Louisville, KY
Kentucky Foundation for Women, Louisville, KY
First National Bank, Glasgow, KY
Red Geranium Restaurant, New Harmony, IN
Johnson and Higgins Insurance, Louisville, KY
Bristol Myers Squib Corporation, Evansville, IN
Milner Library, Normal, IL
Tolentine Center, Olympia Fields, IL
Kentucky Center for the Arts, Louisville, KY
Glenview Trust, Corporation, Louisville, KY

Hometown: Corydon, Indiana
Education: MS Painting, Illinois State University, 1975
Gallery Representation: PYRO Gallery (Louisville)

Painting

Vignette: Benjamin Duke

Josh Jenkins · December 13, 2016

“How much monster, Duke’s Paintings ask us, are we willing to feel in ourselves, to accept, to affirm? What are the limits to which our egos restrict us, and what attractions and sensations liberate us from the cage of self? What aspirations and endeavors, Ben Duke’s paintings keep asking, lead beyond all compromises and reveal to us, finally what a body can think and do and feel.” — From Brian Kubarycz’s introductory essay to the catalogue entitled: Benjamin Duke 2001-2010: Ten years of Work with essays by Brian Kubarycz, and Su YuAnn, published by Garden City Publishing.

"Persistent Remainders" by Benjamin Duke, 60x65in, oil (2016), $8500 | BUY NOW — *"Persistent Remainders" by Benjamin Duke, 60x65in, oil (2016), $8500 | BUY NOW*

Benjamin Duke returns to exhibit in Louisville 11 months after presenting his painting “Louisville 2015: Full of Life, Now” (2015), to Metro Hall. He was Louisville’s first participant in a visiting artist initiative, introduced in 2015 as part of the Mayor’s Music & Art Series. The painting is on display in the Mayor’s Conference Room at Metro Hall.

Duke’s work takes our recognizable existence and twists it with pretzel logic. It is immediately accessible yet touches upon deeper currents: “In my paintings I ask myself “Is this the way the world is?’ I reshape and retool my painting experience to answer that question. But while the question begins with the world, it ends with the work itself: “Is this the way the world is in this work?”

The search is for the world in painting and painting in the world (painting worlds / painting’s world). Am I in the world or is the world in me? I allude to my life, to writers works, to imagery and it is my hope that this record of allusion conjures and creates the same. I am referring to text, theory, idea but I am also finding myself already there, looking out to see in.”

"Awakening as Self-Identity Matrix #2" by Benjamin Duke, 60x60in, oil, $8500 | BUY NOW — *"Awakening as Self-Identity Matrix #2" by Benjamin Duke, 60x60in, oil, $8500 | BUY NOW*

It wasn't a Dream, It was a Real Place, Duke’s new exhibit, will run December 16, 2016 through January 27, 2017 in University of Louisville’s Cressman Center for Visual Arts at 100 East Main Street. There will be an Artist’s Reception open to the public December 16 from 6 pm to 8 pm.

"Lingua Franca #2" by Benjamin Duke, 60x72in, oil (2016), $10,000 | BUY NOW — *"Lingua Franca #2" by Benjamin Duke, 60x72in, oil (2016), $10,000 | BUY NOW*

Duke is Associate Professor of painting at Michigan State University. Born in Louisville, Kentucky, he received his Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art Hoffberger School of Painting. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions from Chicago to Taiwan. Duke has also been awarded international residencies at Bamboo Curtain Studios, The Kuandu Museum of Fine Art at Taipei National University of the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Hometown: Louisville, KY
Education: BFA, University of Utah, Painting and Drawing Emphasis, 2002; MFA, Maryland Institute College of Art, Hoffberger School of Painting, 2006.
Website: http://www.bendukeart.com/
Gallery Representative: Ann Nathan Gallery (Chicago), A Gallery (Salt Lake City)

"TXT" by Benjamin Duke, 65x87in, oil (2016), $10,000 | BUY NOW — *"TXT" by Benjamin Duke, 65x87in, oil (2016), $10,000 | BUY NOW*

"Awakening as Self-Identity Matrix #4" by Benjamin Duke, 65x72in, oil (2016), $8500  | BUY NOW — *"Awakening as Self-Identity Matrix #4" by Benjamin Duke, 65x72in, oil (2016), $8500 | BUY NOW*

"Lingua Franca" by Benjamin Duke, 44x54in, oil (2016), $8500 | BUY NOW — *"Lingua Franca" by Benjamin Duke, 44x54in, oil (2016), $8500 | BUY NOW*

Vignette: Jessica Booker