Louisville Visual Art Honors the Stars Among Us is an inaugural luncheon on March 1, 2018, 11:30am-1pm at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage. Join Louisville Visual Art in celebration of individuals that have made a significant impact in our visual art community. LVA has been improving lives through visual art education, community outreach, and artist support since 1909.
Purchase your ticket here now! Awards will be presented to those listed below:
Vinhay Keo - Rising Star Award
In Memory of Bob Thompson
Vinhay Keo is originally from Cambodia, where he spent his first 10 years. He earned his BFA from the Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University. A Great Meadows Foundation recipient, he received the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to study at Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art and participated in workshops such as Anderson Ranch Art Center and Anne West’s writing reflection. His work has been exhibited throughout galleries in Louisville, with a recent solo exhibition at Moremen Moloney Contemporary Gallery. That exhibit, Confront, was one of the more important exhibits of 2017, a commentary that spoke to the chaos in American society, the worth and importance of the immigrant in that chaos, and the very core value of diversity that lies at the heart of the United States of America.
Visual Art Educator Award - Wilma Bethel
In Memory of Anna Huddleston
Wilma Bethel graduated with a BFA from Morehead State University in 1971 and received her MAT in Art Education from the University of Louisville in 1975. She taught with JCPS at Crosby Middle School from 1971-2012 and Bellarmine University from 2008-2012. For Louisville Visual Art, she has taught in our CFAC program since 1973! Her goals as a teacher have always been for her students to take away an appreciation of the different genres of art. Through the use of different mediums, she imparts knowledge of the elements and principles of art and design, and the confidence to discover each young artists' creative potential.
Benefactor of the Year Award - Porter Watkins
In Memory of Charlotte Price
Porter Watkins is a Louisville native who inherited a strong sense of community involvement and philanthropy from her family. Her Grandmother, Nora Iasigi Bullitt, was President of the Ladies' Auxiliary in 1913, and her uncle, Eugene “Bud” Leake, was for a decade the director of The Art Center (now know as Louisville Visual Art). Porter was a precocious child whose upbringing was a mix of the rural and the urban, characterized by adventures on horseback up and down Lime Kiln Lane and exposure to an arts and culture scene experiencing tremendous growth. Porter and her husband, George Bailey, follow their passion when it comes to the arts, and Porter put her “time, talent, and treasure” to work for several organizations over many, many years, serving on the boards of Louisville Visual Art, Sister Cities of Louisville, English Speaking Union, The Zoo, Kentucky to the World and YouthBuild-Louisville, and she has been significantly involved with Food Literacy Project at Oxmoor Farm and has recently taken an interest in the Waterfront Botanical Garden.
Legacy Award - Elmer Lucille Allen
In Memory of Julius Friedman
photo by Tom LeGoff
Elmer Lucille Allen, born in Louisville, Kentucky, is a ceramic artist and chemist who graduated from Nazareth College (now Spalding University) in 1953. She became the first African-American chemist at Brown-Forman in 1966. Allen retired from Brown-Forman in 1997, after which she devoted more time to her art. Starting in 1981 she began to study art at the University of Louisville, receiving her Masters of Creative Arts with a focus in ceramics and fiber in 2002. Allen's textile work incorporates Japanese Shibori dyeing techniques. She states, "When I rented my first studio in 2005 at Mellwood, I knew that I was truly an artist." In 2011 Allen's work was included in the show Powering Creativity: Air, Fuel, Heat at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany, Indiana. Allen's work was part of the 2016 Women's Artist Exhibition: The African Heritage Experience at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.
