Vignette: Tracey Ippolito

"I Only Have Today" by Tracy Ippolito, Acrylic on canvas, 24x30in, 2016, $850

The fantastical in art often exists in a gray area between fine art and genre, yet the Surrealists are a movement that reached farther than is often acknowledged. Everyone knows Salvador Dali, of course, but when looking at the work of Tracey Ippolito, we are reminded of less famous Surrealist painters such as Leonid Afremov and Jane Small. Ippolito, who is mostly self-trained, claims a different classification in describing her work, but the debt to Surrealism is clear.

“All my life, I have been an artist, thirsty for exploring, sharing, and making new discoveries,” explains Ippolito. “In the midst of creating my art, I began to gather a collection of ideas to bring something new to my images. This became a lifelong project, Universalism.”

“I have always utilized my own life as a medium in my art, using my own journey to punctuate and hopefully illuminate the journey for us all. I have always felt a strong, inherent responsibility to others to create experiences, such as I have had whether due to mental illnesses or spirituality, awakening us to something higher than what we know, or who we think we are.”

"The Angel and the Apparition" by Tracy Ippolito, Acrylic on canvas, 24x36in, 2016, $950

“I approach my canvasses as if they are open windows that anyone can look through to see into another world. The intention is for the viewer to see so deeply into the painting, that eventually, the line of sight reconnects with the individual. This is to bring about a unique, all-encompassing experience which not only heightens the personal notion of “self”, but increases the concept of oneness or co-consciousness through the merging of worlds. Through exploring a compendium of subjects on one visual plane at a time, we enter wholly into the pursuit of finding ourselves, remembering where we came from, and discovering what we mean.”

LIke so many artists, Ippolito is striving to communicate something so intensely individual in broad enough terms to connect the viewer’s own, equally individual spiritual sensibility.

Ippolito has exhibited in several local group exhibits in 2017, including Cherchez lez Femme,  at Prophecy Ink, and The Enduring Nude at Kaviar Gallery, both in Louisville.

Permanent Collections
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville KY
Nelson Atkins Museum, Rochester NY
Royal Palace, Kingdom of Bahrain, Middle East

Hometown: Gilford, NH
Education: Self-taught
Website: www.artofuniversalism.com
Instagram: /Artofuniversalism            

 Scroll down for more images

"Recluse" by Tracy Ippolito, Acrylic on canvas, 24x36in, 201*, NFS

"Ladyhead" by Tracy Ippolito, Oil on canvas, 16x20in, 2016, $675

"Chrysalis" by Tracy Ippolito, Oil on canvas, 30x40in, 2017, NFS

"The Battle for Sanity" by Tracy Ippolito, Oil on canvas, 22x26in, 2016, NFS

---

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

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

Vignette: Steven Cheek

"How are we as a society going to leave our mark on the world?" - Steven Cheek

"Killing Fields Bourbon Bottle Set" by Steven Cheek, Porcelain, 10x5x5in, 2016, POR

The allure of ceramics is so often in the holding of well-crafted functional objects; to wrap your hand around a favorite mug, warmed to the touch by the hot liquid contained within. The form and textures of hand made pottery are a visceral, sensual pleasure.

In his work, Steven Cheek anticipates that aspect of the work by populating his exquisite surfaces with unexpected motifs that express unsettling themes.

“My work is designed to challenge the viewer’s ideals and thoughts about what is beautiful,” Cheek explains in his Artist’s Statement, “and to encourage the viewer to contemplate issues that are taking place all around us, but which are often uncomfortable to discuss.”

“I strive to engage the viewer by juxtaposing beauty with the ugliness of the world in which we live. It is my intent to marry the beautiful classical vessel with imagery that subtly confronts the viewer to think about a deeper issue.  These issues include war, the impermanence of life, environmental destruction and man’s inhumanity to man and our response to these things.” 

“It is my goal to raise several questions; how do we mark or mourn the passing of lost ideals?  How are we as a society going to leave our mark on the world? Are we going to leave the world a better place? Will we learn from the mistakes of those that came before us?” 

"Car Bombing" by Steven Cheek, Porcelain, 4x3x3in, 2015, POR

Cheek has taught at the University of Louisville, Bellarmine University, Indiana University Southeast, and the University of Tennessee Chattanooga.

Cheek will be participating in first Southern Crossings Pottery Festival (SXPF), which he is coordinating with Amy Chase and Jason Bige Burnett. SXPF will take place March 2 & 3, 2018 at Copper & Kings in the Butchertown neighborhood of Louisvile. The event will showcase potters in the Ohio River Region, including Lexington, Cincinnati, and more. The festival will also include the Empty Bowls Benefit Dinner @PLAY Louisville on March 3, 2018.

Hometown: Born Hillsboro, OR
Education: BFA in Ceramics from the University of Evansville and an MFA in Ceramics from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Website: www.stevengcheek.com
Instagram:

Scroll down for more images

"Oak Leaf Bottle" by Steven Cheek, Porcelain, 8x6x6in, 2016, POR

"Whats In Your Water?" by Steven Cheek, Porcelain, 14x8x8in, 2006, POR

"Killing Fields Mug" by Steven Cheek, Porcelain, 4.5x3.5x4in, 2017, POR

---

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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

Vignette: Shawn Marshall

"Cabin View 1" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x40in, 2018, POR

When Shawn Marshall was inspired to paint the view from an airplane window, we might assume that it was a rainy flight, with hopefully not too much turbulence, because Marshall’s balance between abstract and representational might suggest an overhead perspective on landscape through a rain-smeared pane of glass: the details are blurred, and the contours defining the roads and fields below are elusive, hard to pin down.

Abstraction makes you look harder at things. The central question in the viewer’s mind becomes - what do I see? The more cynical might phrase the question differently: what am I looking at? Yet one might offer that to be demand that art explain itself to you is actually the lazy approach. Marshall challenges the viewer, enticing them with just enough discernible representation, but layering a veneer of abstract expressionism between them and her subject, built with a heavily textured impasto that forces an immediate visceral relationship with the surface. Paint is always seductive.

"Listless" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 24x24in, 2018, POR

“I create a three-dimensional surface on the canvas; always striving for balance between the layers of impasto and the underlying landscape beyond.” – Shawn Marshall

The bisected compositional structure, normally recognizing the natural horizon line encountered in the open, rural landscape, remains in these airborne point-of-view, Marshall’s eye always finding a road or river that cuts through the quadrants of fields and developments below.

Marshall was awarded First Place in the 2017 MAZIN Juried Art Exhibition that just closed at The Patio Gallery at the Jewish Community Center in Louisville, Kentucky, and she is about to open a solo show at Craft(s) Gallery & Mercantile in Louisville that will run from March 2 through 31, with an Opening Reception March 2 from 6:00-10:00pm.

Her work is in numerous private collections including PNC Bank, Pittsburgh, PA, Commonwealth Bank, Louisville, KY, and the University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, KY.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: 1992, Bachelor of Architecture, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; 1996, Master of Architecture, Minor Fine Arts, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; 2009, Master of Art in Teaching, Bellarmine University, Louisville, KY
Website: www.shawnlmarshall.com
Gallery Representation: Pyro Gallery (Louisville),  New Editions Gallery (Lexington), Yust Gallery (Cincinnati)

Scroll down for more images

"Cabin View 2" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x40in, 2018, POR

"The Passage" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x48in, 2017, POR

"Bleeding Rock" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 20x24in, 2017, POR

"Winter Field" by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 36x48in, 2018

---

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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

Legacy: Anna Huddleston (1913-1999)

On March 1, 2018, Louisville Visual Art will present WIlma Bethel with the Art Educator Award, in memory of Anna Huddleston. Former LVA director John Begley remembers the influential artist and educator.

“. . . (African American artists) run around, do good things and then disappear.” - Fred Bond, a Louisville Black artist, colleague, and friend of Anna Huddleston

Photo courtesy Ed Hamilton.

Anna Huddleston was a force for art education in Louisville for many years.  Beginning as a elementary art teacher in what were, in that period of segregation, referred to as Louisville’s "colored" schools, then as a middle school teacher at DuVall in the integrated Louisville Board of Education, and finally as the Resource Art Teacher for the Jefferson County Public School system, she mentored and encouraged many students, beginning instructors, and emerging artists.  She was also president of the Kentucky Art Education Association.

After retirement, she continued her community engagement in many ways, working to establish the Louisville Art Workshop with fellow Louisville artists G.C. Coxe, Fred Bond, and Ed Hamilton, and serving on various boards including the Bourgard College of Art and Music, and the Art Center Association (now the LVA) where she was deeply involved in expanding the free Children’s Fine Art Classes (CFAC) into new neighborhood venues, including the West End.

Generally working behind the scenes, she received deserved recognition in Black Kentucky artists: an exhibition of work by black artists living in Kentucky that was organized for the Kentucky Arts Commission and toured by them from June 1979 through January 1981, and shortly after when she was the first African American artist to be awarded the Kentucky Arts Council’s highest honor, the Milner Award, at that time the only Governor’s Award in the Arts in Kentucky.

Ed Hamilton, Anna Huddleston, Gretchen Bradleigh, William Duffy, & Sylvia Clay. Photo courtesy Ed Hamilton.

With the Stars Among Us luncheon on March 1, the LVA will again remember the important achievements of this landmark visual arts educator so that her contributions to following generations do not disappear.

---

John Begley is a Printmaker, Installation, and Video Artist. From 1975 to 2014 he was a Curator and Gallery Director, including 19 years as Executive Director of LVA and several years with the UofL’s Hite Art Institute, where he is now Coordinator of the IHQ Project.

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

Feature: Elmer Lucille Allen

On March 1, 2018, Louisville Visual Art will present Elmer Lucille Allen with the Legacy Award, in memory of Julius Friedman. This is a reprint of an Artebella Feature from February 2017. 

To purchase tickets, click here.

---

"I love the academic environment. I am a perpetual student." — Elmer Lucille Allen

---

Artist Elmer Lucille Allen (Photo by Tom LeGoff)

When Kentucky Center for African American Heritage Center Director Aukram Burton describes Elmer Lucille Allen as, “one of our Elders,” he is not just acknowledging that the ceramic and fiber artist is an Octogenarian. The term carries weight in various cultures, but in parts of Africa it specifically denotes a connection to ancestors, the dead who remain vested with mystical power in the kin-group, and the elder’s authority stems from the idea that they are representatives of the ancestors to the contemporary community.

Elmer Lucille Allen is as approachable and convivial as anyone you would ever meet, but she is a “senior” (the far less satisfying American appellation) who has never truly retired. She earned the gold watch, so to speak, after 31 years as a chemist at Brown-Forman, where she was the first African American chemist to be hired (in 1966). In the twenty years since she retired, she has established herself as one of the most important artists in Louisville and an important influence on succeeding generations.

In person, Ms. Allen is an archetypal matriarch, speaking in the unadorned but nurturing language you would expect from any great-grandmother. She exhibits little outward evidence of the depth of her academic background, the years spent as a community activist, and the position she occupies in local history; she never wears her ‘status’ on her sleeve. She puts it this way: “I take it as an honor because what I do is part of who I am.”

"Untitled ELA #5" by Elmer Lucille Allen, Shibori Wall Hanging Red Kona Cotton – Stitched Resist – Dyed Blue Price, $2000 | BUY NOW

“I became involved in the art scene in the early 1980s when Ken Clay, then head of Renaissance Development, held the first African American (AA) Arts Conference at the Galt House. After this conference, the Kentucky Coalition for Afro-American Arts, Inc. (KCAAA) was formed. I was the first and only president of this organization that lasted 10 years. When I decided that I did not want to continue as President, the treasury was donated to the Arts Council of Louisville. I was a charter member of the ACOL and a treasurer for four years.”

Ms. Allen states she has never felt a bias in the arts, but her history before she was an artist is another matter, and reflects the time. “Remember, I came up through a segregated system and did not have classes with a white person until I was a junior in college. I experienced racial difference when Nazareth College (now Spalding University) graduates in 1953 were looking for a place to host a graduation event. The event was eventually held at the Knights of Columbus Hall.”

“When I graduated I could not get a job as a chemist in Louisville. The only jobs available were teaching. My first job was as a clerk typist in Indianapolis, Indiana, at Fort Benjamin Harrison. There was bias on that job - one person from a city in Indiana had never been around a "colored" person, but you have to be who you are and stand up for what you believe. ‘Speak to a person even if the person does not acknowledge you.’” 

Allen took her first pottery class at Seneca High School in the late 1970’s after her children were all grown and out of the house. She never gave empty nest syndrome a chance, following up with mold ceramics or pottery classes through JCPS and New Albany adult education. But this was still just the beginning: “Then I enrolled in a ceramics class at Metro Arts Center where I studied with Melvin Rowe. Also, while I was a student there I had the pleasure to meet Laura Ross, a national ceramic artist who encouraged me to take classes at the University of Louisville with internationally recognized ceramicist Tom Marsh.”

But studying ad hoc wasn’t enough, and, after retiring she decided to seek a masters in ceramics at U of L. It was while studying for her master’s that she was introduced to a second art media - fiber/textiles. “My thesis exhibition consisted of stenciled wall hangings and over 200 reduction fired porcelain sculptural boxes that were placed on boards on the floor, which meant you had to view the pieces while standing.”

Lucille Allen in a workshop (Photo by Aron Conaway)

Whatever racial or gender restrictions she encountered in her earlier life, Allen’s first years in the art world were mostly lacking in such difficulties. “I have not experienced any discrimination as a woman artist or as an artist of color. My work does not depict any culture - it speaks for itself. I create work that I enjoy making. I do not do commissions. I have been fortunate because I did not have to depend on selling art for a living. I retired in 1997 and have been volunteering in some capacity ever since.”

Yet she is not blind that many artists of color find it a challenge to reach wider audiences and secure their place at the larger community table, particularly in the visual arts world. “I think that one organization needs to take control. At the present every organization's president has their own agenda and is not looking out for other persons or organizations, and small organizations normally do not have a specific place, computer equipment, or expertise for such large undertaking.” 

One of the values of being an Elder is that you have been a witness to the changes in the arts and cultural landscape that surrounds you. Allen can recount a time when there was much effort in the name of unity and inclusion. “Years ago, Louisville Visual Art had a large (non-digital) database of artists and arts organizations. The Kentucky Arts Council funded two directories of African American artists in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Two conferences were held, one in Lexington, and one in Louisville. They conducted free workshops for the community at the Chestnut Street YMCA, West End branch of the YWCA, as well as other venues. Bale McKnight, who conducted drum making at the YMCA, created a drum that was in Chickasaw Park, which was the first public art project in the West End. KCAAA was the fiscal agent for Educations Arts and the dance group founded by Harlina Churn.” You see, Elders know the history.

So how does Louisville recapture that level of motivation again? What actions need to be taken today to build a functional community network? Allen feels, “Everyone is waiting for someone else to do the hard work,” but individuals who want to be leaders need to focus on developing their game in crucial ways; Elders also get to give advice:

• Organizational and leadership skills are a must. 
• You have to show up and be willing to assume responsibilities. 
• You must not be afraid to fail. You learn from your mistakes.
• You, as a leader, must be presentable and responsible for your actions at all times. Remember the golden rule - Do unto others as you want others to do to you.
• You must be punctual.
• Respect the time of others. Meetings should have an agenda and should not exceed two hours.

Untitled ELA #2" by Elmer Lucille Allen, Stenciled Wall Hanging Black Polyester Fabric Price, $750 | BUY NOW

So how does this near-iconic status affect Elmer Lucille Allen’s work as an artist? Or does it? “My work is not impacted by my place in history,” states Allen. ”The work that I have done since 1981 speaks for itself. I have been the volunteer curator/director of Wayside Christian Mission's Wayside Expressions Gallery since 2005.  My goal is to showcase artists, some of which have never exhibited. My second goal has been to have an African American artist or artists for February. I have done the scheduling, press releases, fliers, finding new artists, etc., from my home. I think my presence in the art world has afforded me the opportunity to be asked to serve as judge for the 2016 Fund for Arts, as a panelist for Metro arts grants, etc.”

“I think that over the years, the community sees who is where and what you are doing. Action speaks louder then words.”

Recognitions/Awards: 
Louisville Defender – Lifetime Community Service Recognition Award (2016)
Outstanding Community Leader by Metro Council (2016) 
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft’s First Art and Advocacy Award – Bourbon Bash (2015) 
Parkland Rising Up Project (2015) 
Community Spirit Award given by the University of Louisville College of Arts and Science and the Yearlings Club (2015) 
Spalding University Caritas Medal (2011) - the highest honor awarded to an alumnus 

"Untitled ELA #4 – Shibori Wall Hanging" by Elmer Lucille Allen, Natural Silk Noil – Three Panels - Stitched Resist and Pole Wrapped – Dyed Blue, $1000 | BUY NOW

"Untitled ELA #1" by Elmer Lucille Allen, Stenciled Wall Hanging Black Polyester Fabric Price, $750 | BUY NOW

Written by Keith Waits.
In addition to his work at the LVA, Keith is also the Managing Editor of a website, www.Arts-Louisville.com, which covers local visual arts, theatre, and music in Louisville.

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

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