Vignette: Laurie White

“I find the practice of comic writing and drawing to be much more rigorous and to stretch my imagination further than my fine art pursuits.” - Laurie White

“The Biscuits” by Laurie White, Digital illustration, 12x16in, 2018

The line between “fine art” and “illustration” might be a slim divide when one focuses on technique, but there is often a qualitative distinction in which high-minded aesthetes choose to look down on the latter for its reliance on commerce-driven creation. Laurie White frequently confronted such attitudes in studio classes.

“In my undergraduate program, as a student seeking degrees in both painting and graphic design, I felt like a misfit. My painting classes sought a fine arts focus and my pieces were often critiqued as being too narrative and literal. I also struggled with the mastery of simple shapes necessary to communicate in my design program. After graduation, I realized that my true path was to explore and further my talents and propensities through illustration, comics, and political cartoons. Here is where my knack for narrative and my interest in design could harmonize.”

Artists as celebrated as N.C. Wyeth, Winslow Homer, and Andy Warhol occupy museum walls but were labeled illustrator earlier in their careers. The art of visual communication in advertising has grown more and more sophisticated moving into the 21st century, and there is a long tradition of book illustration that is well represented today in the variety of graphic novel concepts being published, so White’s ambitions lead her into a heady, competitive world.

“Part of my love of illustration rests in its intimate personal consumption and accessibility in print, book, or digital image forms,” she explains. “Specifically, I've found that comic work is much more evocative and emotive of a moment in time or relationship, than the mystique of a work created in the parameters of ‘fine arts’.”

“Benedict” by Laurie White, Digital Painting, 10x15in, 2016

“Displaying work in a gallery often made me feell out of sync with the public outside of the critical arts world. As someone with the pedigree to be considered an insider (both of White’s parents are artists), yet still feeling like an outsider, the type of post-undergraduate work that I produced made me want to bridge this alienating gap between gallery walls and the average art appreciator and consumer. My foray into illustrative work has been reaffirmed with individuals approaching me for a variety of personal commissions and freelance work ranging from tattoo design to pet memorial portraits to character style sheets.”

White recently participated in the Samhain exhibit at Tim Faulkner Gallery in October of 2019, but her more personal work still utilizes that communications design sensibility: “I produced a grid of almost sixty symbols that served as a self-portrait, representing both literal and metaphorical objects that commemorated memories, relationships, and lessons in my life (this work is featured next to me in my artist portrait). By returning all of this literal and specific imagery to the gallery walls, this piece represented the perfect marriage of my past artistic insecurities and showed my unabashed emotional and creative growth since my college graduation.“ 

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BFA in Painting and a BA in Graphic Design at WKU in 2014; also a graduate of WKU's Honors College.
Website: www.lauriemwhite.com
Instagram: laurie_m_white

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“Ruckus” by Laurie White, Mixed media, 14x19in, 2019

“Cat coloring book” by Laurie White, Digital drawing, 12x9in, 2018

“The Golden Compass” by Laurie White, Digital illustration, 10x15in, 2017

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 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.

Feature: "Looking At Kentucky Anew…The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project Exhibit" at Metro Hall

Mountain Landscape. Breathitt County Kentucky, 2015. Bob Hower

Kentucky is not just one thing, and this project shows how much lies behind the curtain of cliché and stereotype.

The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project (KDPP) is an ongoing visual history of Kentucky. The project investigates the whole state over a period of 120 years and captures the changes in: How we looked - What we wore - How we worked - What we made - How we used the Land - What we did for fun - How we worshipped - How we lived.

Taking inspiration from the work of the Farm Security Administration (1935–1943), this is the third time in an eighty-year period that photographers have roamed the state recording the landscape and how Kentuckians live, work, and play. - from the KDPP website.

It is frequently said that the strength and value of good photography is that it reveals something about the world around us that we might not otherwise comprehend. It most often exposes and only rarely covers up the truth. The work of the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project provides ample evidence of such exposure.

Brandon and Jammie (before Brandon went to Jail). Whitley City, McCreary County Kentucky 2019. Rachel Boillot

The project is ambitious. As Bill Burke, Bob Hower and Ted Wathen did during 1975-77, it seeks to send photographers into every one of Kentucky’s 120 counties. In the current exhibit Looking At Kentucky Anew…The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project: A Louisville Photo Biennial Exhibit at Metro Hall, we see mostly images that take us away from the cities like Louisville and Lexington that are photographed almost too much. Louisville, in particular, with the Kentucky Derby, hosts thousands of camera lenses each year. Whatever the reason, that search into so many rural areas discovers people who seem less guarded and more honest in how they accept having their picture being taken. Or perhaps it is the lack of big-city rhythms in which the common humanity gets lost that allows a young couple such as Brandon and Jamie to permit the camera into so intimate and relaxed a moment. The young man surrenders himself entirely to the young woman; both look directly into the camera but it is the easily commanding gaze of the woman that is so arresting. It forces the viewer to take the two on their own terms.

However, in another instance, the scrutiny of the camera lens is less welcome. Photographer Bob Hower describes one late night encounter:

Public Disturbance at a Motel 6. Paducah, McCracken County Kentucky, 2015. Bob Hower

“In the summer of 2015 I spent an afternoon and evening riding with the City of Paducah Police Department. Late in the shift, we were called to a Motel 6 to check on a public disturbance. During the time I spent with him Kelly Drew, the officer I was riding with, talked about how important it was to diffuse and calm tense situations. The man you see seated here was being very loud – he was intoxicated, yelling, and angry. With my back to the scene, I put the camera around my neck, set the proper exposure and angle of view, and then approached. Letting the camera hang on my chest with my hand on the shutter. I was hoping to photograph the events unobtrusively with no one noticing, not looking through the camera. I paused to capture the picture you see here, and immediately the man glared at me and started yelling, telling me not to take his picture, to stop approaching him aggressively and to leave him alone. Since there were all sorts of privacy issues involved and I was not supposed to photograph anyone without prior clearance, and since I didn’t want to make things more complicated for the police or the man involved, this is the only picture I took. Although he pushed the situation to the limit, eventually the man was persuaded by the officers, and by his more sober roommate, to go back inside and to bed, and not come out until morning – a very good resolution and impressive police work. Things don’t always end this well.”

Not surprisingly, the project also captures the green and mountainous landscape, both in its natural splendor and in the ravaged eastern regions that include Letcher County, where mountaintop removal has permanently scarred the rugged Appalachian beauty. “Black Mountain Surface Mines” (Ted Wathen)

Evidence of the inextricable relationship between people and the land is everywhere, from the Floyd County “Superintendent Waiting for the Shift to Come Out of the Mine” (Brittany Greeson) to the “Fishing for Asian Carp” (Bob Hower) in Marshall County.

Refugee Woman with Twins. Warren County Kentucky 2017. Zed Saeed

In the southwestern part of the state, change is also at work in the diversity of the population, as Warren County has become home to refugees from other parts of the world. According to WKYU, the Public Radio Service of Western Kentucky University, “Bowling Green is the sixth largest area for refugee resettlement in the nation, with communities of refugees from parts of Africa, the Balkans, and Southeast Asia.” Thus we see the wary face of a mother with two young children acclimating to a new community. The ease and acceptance of the native-born Bluegrass State residents is missing here.

To accomplish the project before the end of 2020 may feel akin to Sisyphus moving that stone uphill, and there is irony in the fact that, in a time when more people than ever can collect pictures on the ubiquitous mobile devices that are a social anchor, that goal should be so difficult.

It underscores that a good photographer is more than a technician; they bring a discerning eye and discriminating sensibility to the task, the outsider’s perspective that is removed from the hermetic community culture. The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project has recruited a team of photographers that represent a range of experience and points of view, drawing fresh and revelatory images from a Commonwealth built on deep-rooted traditions. Currently there is work from Ross Gordon, Sarah Lyon, Zed Saeed, Alyssa Schukar, Brittany Greeson, Rachel Boillot, Harrison Hill, Bob Hower, and Ted Wathen.

“Looking At Kentucky Anew…The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project”: A Louisville Visual Art /2019 Louisville Photo Biennial Exhibit at Metro Hall

Runs through February, 2020

Bob Hower and Ted Wathen will host a gallery talk for the exhibit 12-1 pm on Friday, December 13 in the Mayor’s Gallery at Metro Hall, 527 West Jefferson Street.

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Fishing for Asian Carp. Marshall County Kentucky, 2015. Bob Hower

Black Mountain Surface Mines. Letcher County Kentucky 2015. Ted Wathen

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 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.

Vignette: Shawn Marshall

“Autumn Skies” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 36x36in, 2019. Selected for the Mazin Juried Exhibit

Watching Shawn Marshall’s work over the last few years, it is interesting to observe that she has moved away from abstraction and into a sort of updated impressionism. Most artists move towards the abstract, finding that it emerges from the representational, yet Marshall has allowed a looser, more spontaneous approach to her mark making to embrace a more robust and muscular reading of the landscape.

Landscape has always been important to this artist: “ (It is) an outlet to let go of preconceived ideas and rules of how I interpret and portray the world,” she states. “Using palette knives and brushes, I work to create atmospheric depth on the canvas with a focus on the horizon. Though the horizon can never be truly be reached, it is a metaphor for hope, wonder, and perseverance.”

Where Marshall once isolated the horizon as a point between two adjacent fields of color and texture meant to show earth and sky, she now articulates detail in the ground plane that force depth and distance. Where we once read the surface texture in two dimensions, we are now welcomed into a definable space of rough and treacherous terrain. And the shift does not feel a repudiation of her previous exploration of the fundamentalism of identifying the geometry of natural forms; rather Marshall seems to be led by the medium and a new vigor in her practice that has enabled a retrograde point of view.

Marshall is a member of ENID, a collective of women sculptors named in honor of Enid Yandell. In recognition of her 150th birthday the group has participated in two recent exhibits. But that was only the beginning of what is clearly a fertile time in her practice, and her work will be available for viewing in several locations in the coming weeks:

October 2019 - September 2020 - Selected Artist "Art in City Hall", City Hall, Louisville, KY

June 2019 – December 31, 2019 - Selected Artist for the AC Hotel - Louisville, KY

November 3 – December 26, 2019 - Mazin Juried Exhibition, JGallery, JCC, Louisville, KY

 November 8-10, 2019 - A painting and photo exhibition of work by artist Shawn Marshall and Emmy Award winning filmmaker Michael Fitzer, Tim Faulkner Gallery, Louisville, KY.

November 14, 2019 – January 11, 2020 - 3rd Annual Small Works Juried Show - Art Room, Fort Worth, TX

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

“Northern Sea” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 48x48in, 2019

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
Instagram: shawlmarshall
Gallery Representation:
Moremen Contemporary (Louisville) www.moremengallery.com 
New Editions Gallery (Lexington),www.neweditionsgallery.com

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“Cool May Morning” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 30x48in, 2019. On exhibit at AC Hotel in NuLu, Louisville

“Dreamers” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 16x40in, 2019

“Crimson Fall” by Shawn Marshall, Oil on Canvas, 12x12in, 2019

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 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.

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

Open Studio Weekend Spotlight: Debby Stratford

“Untitled” by Debby Stratford, printmaking, 16x30in, linoprint, $175.00

Debby Stratford is an artist and living in Louisville, KY. She spent many years teaching art to public school students in Louisville (as well as a stint with Louisville Visual Art in 1980s), and is now printing full-time.

The journey of any individual artist to find the medium that offers them the most satisfaction is not always easy. For some, once a brush is picked up, the search has ended, but for others, it can be trial and error over a period of years. Debby Stratford is a printmaker, but her first efforts frustrated her and she turned to clay for many years until she was reunited with linocut in graduate school at the University of Louisville.

“The cuts on the plate contain my tears of joy and sorrow as I have traveled through my life,” explains Stratford. “My subject matter is life as I see it, feel it, and remember it. My hope is that those looking will find a common ground with me.”

That relationship with medium and, in the case of printmakers, process, is a crucial aspect of the artist’s identity: “I work in the printmaking process because it affirms my place as an observer and participant in life. Through printmaking, I can turn an image around and get another view. It is like looking in a mirror to see who you are. My conception of an image happens on the sheet of linoleum. I draw directly on the linoleum block; revising my image as I cut into the linoleum using a one millimeter gouge. The gouge is like my pencil or brush. I develop my image as I create the print. Because life moves on, my style is constantly evolving, much like a painter. I don’t concentrate on developing a style and then repeating that look time after time.”

“Untitled” by Debby Stratford, printmaking, 16x30in, linoprint, $175.00

Stratford’s images have the feel of storybook illustrations from far back in time, framing snatches of narrative from tales full of darkness and foreboding. Her forests are dense, she uses formal framing devices, and animals appear in symbolic and metaphorical roles, characteristic not the sanitized fairy tales of today but more the traditional European stories in which authentic threat and peril taught children a healthy respect for fear.

Debby Stratford will be participating in the Louisville Visual Art/ University of Louisville Hite Art Institute 2019 Open Studio Weekend on November 2 & 3. She also is included in the Open Studio Weekend Juried Exhibit at The Cressman Center, which opens November 1, from 6:00-8:00pm.

Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Education: BS Art Education, Edinboro University (Edinboro, Pennsylvania); MAT with Emphasis in Printmaking, University of Louisville, Kentucky
Website: debbystratfordartist.com

“Untitled” by Debby Stratford, printmaking, 16x30in, linoprint, $175.00

“Untitled” by Debby Stratford, printmaking, 16x30in, linoprint, $175.00

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 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.

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

Open Studio Weekend Spotlight: Megan Bickel

“You’re Put in A Place Where Everyone Has The Same Delusion” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 22x29in, 2019

Sometimes artists can speak quite well for themselves, with an Artist’s Statement of such depth and detail that it can be difficult to make any comment on the work in question without seeming at best redundant and at worst meaningless. Megan Bickel is a contemporary Renaissance woman, a multidisciplinary artist who writes and thinks with precision and clarity so that her very thoughtful words are arguably insightful enough to challenge the need for further observation. Of her work in her upcoming exhibit at Quappi Projects, Bickel writes on allusion and illusion:

“Being primarily literary, an allusion can be commonly articulated as an expression designed to call a subject to mind without mentioning it explicitly. It can appear as an indirect or passing reference. The author is allowed freedom in the expectation that the reader is aware of the reference made in the “allusion;" but as an object of literature, it provides safety or security for the reader in requesting the use of the readers’ imagination. Thus, the readers are limited to their own experience or consumption— they are safe to play in deception or truth, because they know the origin of the falsity provided by an allusion.

An illusion —of course—is a trick. Perhaps it appears as camouflage, or perhaps it appears in the process of convincing a viewer that they are witnessing something. It can also appear in the cultivating of a false belief, but however it appears the one in control of the creation of an illusion is the maker. An illusion can be as benign as an illusionistic still life, or as malignant as propaganda. No matter the moral positioning, the illusion is an object of convincing.” 

You can read the full statement on her website, but Bickel appropriately places a burden of interpretative responsibility on the viewer before she concludes:

“Though my approach to media differs from object to object, I would generalize that this body of work utilizes haptic curiosity as a means with which to encourage visual, ethical, or empathic critique of contemporary media images. This skill of inviting curiosity into our daily consumption of images may become an important skill as we approach a period in history where we have to understand and decode how our images may be deceiving us— and just as quickly as we learn to create those deceptions.”

All of which seems to pose the question of how much trust we can place in Bickel’s images. Her work does not accommodate passivity, and we might go further and question the worth of any art that doesn’t provoke us to think differently.

“There Was No Template for His Perceptions” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

Bickel is the embodiment of the restlessness of contemporary artists who are proactive in creating opportunities for themselves and others. In 2016 she co-created Five-Dots, a visual arts blog that covers the Midwest Region, and in 2017 she founded houseguest Gallery in Louisville, an example of the growing trend for non-traditional exhibition spaces. She most recently showed work in PLAY THAT ONE BACK, JOHNNY, Megan Bickel and Louis A. Edwards, Erie Art Gallery. Erie, Pennsylvania.

Bickel is an MFA candidate at the University of Louisville and will be participating in the Louisville Visual Art/ Hite Art Institute Open Studio Weekend November 2 and 3. She also is included in the Open Studio Weekend Juried Exhibit opening at U of L’s Cressman Center on November 1, 6-8pm.

Her new one-person show, We Are inside the Fire, runs November 15 through December 20 at Quappi Projects, 827 West Market Street in the NuLu neighborhood.

Education: University of Louisville, Master of Fine Arts Candidate, 2021
Art Academy of Cincinnati, BFA, Painting, Magna Cum Laude, 2012.
Website: www.meganbickel.com

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“TOO FLAT APARTMENT” by Megan Bickel,. Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 3x4ft, 2018

“To My UFO Friend” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 44x60in, 2019

“Aesthetic Think Tanks” by Megan Bickel, Acrylic on lycra with holographic inkjet print. 29x36in, 2019

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2019 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.

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