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Michele Basta
Michele Basta was born and raised in and around Baltimore City, Maryland, USA. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003 and her MFA from Tulane University in 2010. Michele has always had an interest in the strange beauty that can be found in the grotesque. Inspired by the relationship between our perceptions of the natural world and that of mythologies and story telling, she brings forth a new cavalcade of strange creatures from the dark corners of the psyche. It is this macabre interaction between man-made status symbols and suffering specimens of nature that make up her intricate body of work. Today, she lives and makes her art in New Orleans, LA.
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James
Taylor Bonds
Born in Alexandria, Louisiana in 1984, and raised mostly in Alabama,
James Taylor Bonds is a New Orleans based artist whose focus is painting.
James attended Auburn University at Montgomery from 2002 to 2006,
with four years on an art based tuition scholarship, and subsequently
graduated from Tulane University's M.F.A. program. James currently
teaches art to high school students at Lusher Charter School.
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Judith
Burks
Judith Burks is a New Orleanian who has painted for many years
in oil, acrylic, and encaustic. She earned an MFA in Painting from
Tulane University in 1987 and has exhibited her work in many galleries.
Only within the years since Katrina has she focused on encaustic-painting
with hot beeswax and pigment-a new medium to express new feelings
of loss and disorientation caused by the storm's effect on her 30+years
of working as an artist, art teacher, and arts administrator in the
city.
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Blaine
Capone
Blaine is a native New Orleanian who uses visual images to communicate
unfiltered contemplations of the environment and the society which
inhabits it. His medium includes oil, watercolor, acrylic, charcoal,
graphite, discarded objects, and earth's core resources. He is currently
homesteading in North Carolina where his primal relationship to
the earth and its animal kingdom sustains an artful life.
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Bruce
Davenport, Jr.
Bruce is a native New Orleanian who grew up in the Lafitte public
housing projects in the 6th ward. He started drawing stick men at
the age of five to entertain himself inside, sheltered from the fog
of crime outside the apartment. "My loving grandparents James
and Maritha Abrams raised me, and without their love and discipline
I wouldn't be here today." From those figures evolved the detailed,
colorful renderings of New Orleans public school marching bands which
led to Bruce's being selected as a Prospect.2 artist "The
art I create is unique, it's different…it's like Egyptian
hieroglyphics. I call my creations Bruce Art because no one else
does what I do with a pen and paper. I enjoy that people like Bruce
Art. This is why I always put on the bottom of my work: 'I see you
looking.'
The marching bands are a passion to me. I love the history and
culture. Without the band, a lot of kids wouldn't have a reason
or make the effort to graduate from high school and go on in life
to achieve goodness and stay focused.
I keep the FAITH. God is good all the TIME." |
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Rachel
David
Rachel is a blacksmith artist whose work combines ancient tools
and techniques with contemporary ideas, functions and aesthetics.
Practicing
environmental sustainability and low impact craftsmanship, she stretches
the boundaries of the metal to fulfill the less mundane, but essential
human need for objects of beauty. |
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Chris
Dennis
Chris was born and grew up in Bournemouth, England. At age 16
he was admitted to Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design
to study natural history illustration. This classical training is
evident in his current therianthropic work.
After completing his BA (Hons) at the University of Wolverhampton
he relocated to the United States, and in 2000 earned his MFA from
the University of Art in San Francisco.
His paintings, perhaps best described as "narrative expressionism"
or "internalized portraiture" have been exhibited and collected
across the United States and Europe. After six years in Louisiana
Chris is currently residing in Auckland, New Zealand. July (2010)
will find him traveling back to Europe as an artist in residency in
Berlin.
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Rex
Dingler
Rex Dingler is a New Orleans native with street art roots who believes
that the will of the people is the force of life. It is this philosophy
which propelled him to found NOLA Rising, a community art project
which delivered messages of hope across New Orleans in the post-Katrina
months. Rex's subsequent recognition in national and international
publications has resulted in the spread of his message of renewal,
rebirth, and faith to over 30 countries.
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Annie
Evelyn
Annie is a furniture artist, upholsterer, and teacher who holds a
masters degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. Inspired by
the egg, she
creates traditional furniture forms with a process of setting cracked
concrete to seating with a delicate appearance and feel, yet sturdy
and outdoor safe. |
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Sarah
Ferguson
Sarah was born in New Orleans in 1965. She earned a B.A. in art
and mathematics from Rice University and a Ph.D. in mathematics from
the University of Houston. Upon receiving tenure in 2002 from Wayne
State University in Detroit, she moved to New York City to begin her
career as a visual artist. In 2008 she earned her M.F.A. from the
School of Visual Arts in New York. She lives and works in Manhattan.
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Grissel
Giuliano
Grissel was born and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut. She received
a B. S. in Animal Science from the University of Vermont. Her work
revolves around her interest in science, dental hygiene, food, and
her love of horror movies. Grissel's quest for love and life led her
to New Orleans where she currently lives.
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Viorel
Hodre
Viorel was born in Romania where he trained as a sculptor. His designs
of sculptures of rice paper and wood which are lit from within declare
a boldness which calmly opposes the graceful forms of the materials.
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Joel
Kelly
Joel began his occupation with art, in fact, after a flight accident
outside of Tangier, Morocco, where he was traveling to seek out the
writer Paul Bowles. Unfortunately in his old age Bowles stopped taking
visitors. With little money and a lethal hole in his balloon, Joel
resorted to drawing portraits of tourists in front of the Gran Teatro
de Cervantes. This turned out to be a fateful event for he soon discovered
Cervantes' novel Don Quixote and then a little known poetry
collection written by the famous Spaniard on his deathbed. This book,
The Living End, is the inspiration for Joel's present paintings.
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Tony
Nozero
Tony's journey as a visual artist was validated by a residency for
emerging artists at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico after
hurricane Katrina. Before that, he used his painting for a decompression
between world-wide tours of his eclectic band Drums & Tuba. His
work embraces the improvisation of punk street energy, fantasy, and
jargon which has fired his life.
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Erica
Lambertson Philippe
A native Louisianan, Erica received her professional training at Maryland
Institute College of Art with a residency at the Center for Art and
Culture in Aix en Provence, France. Her paintings are mostly based
in representation with themes that are often grounded in stories,
ideas, moments, and feelings. Her work suggests a sense of the supernatural
or "uncanny" that lurks under the guise of day-to-day happenings.
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Patrick Sart
Pat describes his background as “vaganondic” a word which feels at home in his collections of fantastical prose. A native of Los Angeles, he obtained a BFA at UCLA where he studied under the internationally respected artist Richard Diebenkorn. From there he went on to Europe where he moved in high diplomatic circles and restored an 18th century atelier in Paris, moved on to Germany with his first retrospective in 1987 at the Galerie Altana in Hamburg, and completed a show with the then Ministry of Culture in East Berlin. As time dragged on, he drifted back and forth between Hollywood, Palm Springs, and New Orleans where he decided to plant roots and start an art complex in Bywater in 1995 which landed him on the front page of the Times Picayune. During this particularly fertile period, Sart continued to show in the Los Angeles area with themed exhibitions titled: Orientalis 1908, Madagascar Unmasked, and the Alan Hotel series which showcased Sart’s use of social realism in the demise of an old flophouse in downtown Little Tokyo. In a way, this interest in old and fading architecture drew him back to the Crescent City. He is unable to pinpoint the beginnings of his compulsion to render shoes, but the obsession has resulted in his being called a visionary in regards to his hundreds of drawings of bizarre shoe designs coupled with quixotic poetry in three published volumes. “It just doesn’t stop” he says as he readies his fourth volume opus for publication.
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Benjamin
Sklar
Benjamin Sklar, a Baton Rouge native, is a freelance photographer
based in Austin, Texas specializing in editorial, documentary, and
portrait photography. His photography has been recognized by the Society
of Professional Journalists, Photographer of the Year International
and the Gran Prix de Photographie Paris, among other organizations.
Most notably, in 2006 the Associated Press included his work from
Hurricane Katrina in a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize. His images
have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, National
Geographic Magazine, Newsweek, The London Sunday Times, and Time Magazine.
He earned a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Texas at
Austin.
Sklar began photographing the world around him at age 12 years
and was fortunate to have access to a darkroom at 14 years old.
Paralleling his career in photojournalism he has continued shooting
black and white film for making silver gelatin prints as demonstrated
in his Zulu 100 series celebrating the carnival organization's 100th
year.
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Eric
Eugene Smith
Eric's work is influenced by traditional blacksmithing techniques
fused with modern ideas and aesthetics. After attending Georgia Southern
University to study building and construction, he stumbled upon blacksmithing
and earned a BFA in metals at the Appalachian Center for Craft. This
body of work represents his constant evolution as a blacksmith, achieving
grace through force. |
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