Brendan Taylor - Vision Award - $500 cash scholarship Elizabeth Hill - Portfolio Award - $75 Preston’s gift card Megan Smith - Community Award - $50 Preston’s gift card Claire Vicars - Inspiration Award - $25 Preston’s gift card
The journey from 14 to 18 years of age is a time of discovery and finding one’s self; identity forms but doesn’t ever finish. For artists, it is when the simple pleasure of drawing becomes a vital and intentional means of expression. A newly found focus on medium and technique points to the next level of growth and maturity.
As the greatly disrupted schoolyear came to a close, Louisville Visual Art is pleased to have finished out Academy classes online and is proud to recognize the accomplishments of four Academy Seniors.
Megan Smith graduated from DuPont Manual High School
Because of that interest in identity, self-portraits are common. Megan Smith’s “To The Center” highlights the Pop Art colors of a hard candy sucker in contact with analogously colored lips by allowing the face to remain in black and white. The image balances illusion and reality, surrealism and naturalism, and is striking, simple, declarative, and fun.
Megan will be studying at IUS this fall, majoring in Psychology.
Megan Smith, “To The Center”
Elizabeth Hill graduated from Corydon Central High School
Elizabeth Hill explores the fundamental relationship of structure in nature and how humankind has followed it in design and architecture. Every child anthropomorphizes their toys, seeing a giraffe in every crane, and an elephant or rhinoceros in every earthmover, because their perception remains intuitive. If the observation that adult artists are often trying to reconnect with the innocent perspective of childhood, The playful hybrids seen here suggest that Elizabeth hasn’t yet lost that vital connection, combining a solid design foundation with a fine conceptual wit.
Elizabeth will be a student at the Kentucky College of Art + Design.
Elizabeth Hill, “Mass Destruction”
Claire Vicars graduated from DuPont Manual
Design is prominent in Vicars’ work, most notably a poster for a theatrical production of Antigone that might be the envy of a professional. The imagery is highly evocative of Greek tragedy overlaid with romantic textures, and the visual detail of an errant black line extending up from the title is inspired in how it invited the viewer to complete the allusion to the fiery sun as a balloon, a motif that reflects the conflict between earthly and divine power in the play.
Claire will enter the Hite Art Institute BFA program at the University of Louisville.
Claire Vicars, “Antigone poster”
Brendan Taylor graduated from Eastern High School
Brendan offers evidence of one of the most crucial qualities for the young artist: observation. The detail of texture and color overlays a developing exploration of space and dimension. The connection between seeing and drawing can move to a profound level once the artist liberates themselves from a fixation on mark-making; the ability to get lost in the visceral reality of even a seemingly mundane subject such as a ceramic mug and some fruit. The relationships of the objects include the harsh contrast of very green bananas against the warm wood grain of the table and the analogous color of the mug and the table. The viewer can identify with Taylor’s absorption in the almost forensic study of all of these elements.
Brendan has applied and was accepted into the University of Louisville Hite Art Institute as a Studio Art Major.
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.
Shae Goodlett, Teri Dryden, & John Brooks are 3 of the Featured Artists for the June 25 Art[squared] Online Auction Fundraiser and they will be joining us this Thursday morning for LVA's Artebella On The Radio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com every Thursday to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.
Why you want to be there…The art[squared] Auction will be open to the public. Some of the most sought-after artists in Louisville have work available at art[squared]! In addition, there will be 6 featured artists this year who have each created a triptych (3 canvases) for the event! Featured Artists include: Teri Dryden, Ashley Cathey, Lori Larusso, Jaylin Stewart, Chip Calloway and Shae Goodlet.
Imagine the powerful sight of 100+ works of art displayed in support of scholarships for 1000+ young artists! Proceeds benefit all of LVA’s vital programming: from Children's Fine Art Classes and Open Doors outreach for at-risk youth; to the Mural Art Program and year-round exhibitions at Metro Hall & AC Hotel.
Teri Dryden’s piece in art[squared]
Shae Goodlett’s piece in art[squared]
Shae Goodlett is an artist and illustrator and graduate of Bellarmine University. He just completed the MFA program at the University of Louisville’s Hite Institute for Art.
Teri Dryden is a member of the Collage Artists of America, National Collage Society, and Women Painters West. Her work is included in many private and public collections and has been exhibited in numerous solo, group and juried exhibitions across the country.
Visual artist and poet John Brooks explores themes of identity, memory, death, place, and the transformative power and emotional resonance of particular experiences and what Max Beckmann described as “the deepest feeling about the mystery of being. He manages Quappi Projects in Louisville.
Lori Larusso is the recipient of the 2020 Bill Fischer Award for Visual Artists, and she will be our guest this week on LVA's Artebella On The Radio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.
Larusso earned an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a BFA from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). She has consistently exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally, and has been awarded, numerous residency fellowships. She is a recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, the Great Meadows Foundation Professional Development Grant, as well as numerous grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Lori is the 2019 Kentucky South Arts Fellow and received the 2020 Fischer Prize for Visual Artists. She currently lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, USA, and her work is represented by Skidmore Contemporary in Santa Monica, California, and Mulberry & Lime in Lexington, Kentucky.
Ashley Cathey, Jaylin Stewart, & Chip Kafale Calloway are 3 of the 7 artists who will be featured in LVA's art[squared] online fundraiser on June 25, and they also happen to be Black artists who have something to say in this moment. Listen to them on this extended edition of LVA's Artebella On The Radio. The interview runs for about 1 hour and 16 minutes. Tune in each Thursday) at 10:00 am on WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on ARTXFM.com.
Ashley Cathey is a Louisville native whose paintings have brought her to prominence in a fairly short time after moving back to Louisville from Chicago. When she returned, she quickly found her footing and exhibited work in a group show at the Louisville Community Center, one of the Metro Parks community centers overseen by Portia White. From there, Cathey caught the attention of ArtsReach’s Julia Youngblood, who commissioned Cathey to create a series of portraits, which ArtsReach used for posters for their annual Keepers of the Dream celebration at the Kentucky Center for the Arts.
Jaylin Stewart is an artist from West Louisville who has dedicated her talents to victims of violence & the community by creating therapeutic artwork. Through her non-profit company, Adah School of Art she provides visual art instruction to children. Although primarily a painter, her three-dimensional installation, God Rest America, was at Scheherezade Gallery in 2019. Since the stay-at-home quarantine, she has kept busy executing chalk sidewalk murals in tribute to health care workers.
Tiffany Ackerman Westmoreland talks about the resurgence of her stained-glass practice during self-isolation and how long it will take Flame Run, where she is the Gallery Director, to fire up their furnace again on this week's Artebella On The Radio. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM, or stream on Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10am to hear Keith Waits talk with artists.
On her Instagram page: tart_ackerart, Westmoreland describes herself as:
![John Brooks’ art[squared] piece](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54ef4d4ee4b002862ddb9057/1592507904961-HXY3IVSL1PWE0D0UZ8TC/IMG_8321_s550.jpeg)
![Teri Dryden’s piece in art[squared]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54ef4d4ee4b002862ddb9057/1592508141334-TVWAHU30VJZ7C1YWDZTM/teri_dryden_s550.jpeg)
![Shae Goodlett’s piece in art[squared]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54ef4d4ee4b002862ddb9057/1592508259205-NYFR3EUU524O6ZHWKWBC/IMG_8362_s550.jpeg)
