Artists Talk with LVA: May 2, 2024

KyCAD BFA Candidates Jesenia Avila-Ugalde, Kelsi Haberman, Lizzie Hill talk about their thesis exhibit.

On View: May 10-July 31, 2024 ,Opening Reception: May 10, 5pm -7:30 pm

849 Gallery 849 S.3rd Street 

Gallery visits are by appointment only Please email gallery@kycad.org

Jesenia Avila-Ugalde

Artist and designer, Born in Mexico City, raised in Louisville, KY

I like new technology and machine work, but I also enjoy analog work like painting, building, and working with people in the community— literally building community. It’s a multifaceted thing.
I also focus on certain colors, like CMYK vs RGB. I also work with fluorescents, which reflect more light than they absorb. I love that concept because I think as people we should reflect more light/positivity than we absorb.

​​Kelsi Haberman

Interdisciplinary Artist From Louisville, KY

Modifying found objects like etchings on windows. Experimentation and willingness to take a risk, not knowing if you’re going to fail There’s an element of play

Lizzie Hill

Artist From Elizabeth, Indiana (rural town)

I use a lot of accessible materials from my home, including repurposed materials, textiles, natural materials, plants, and items associated with comfort, home, and memories. I focus on tactile / textural memories of mundane things.

Artists Talk with LVA: January 18, 2024

Lori Larusso joined us in the studio this week to talk about her current exhibits in Dallas, TX and Danville, KY s well as the new monograph about her work, “Confected Landscapes”.

Lori Larusso is an American visual artist working primarily with themes of domesticity and foodways. Her body of work encompasses paintings and installations that explore issues of class, gender, and anthropocentrism, and how these practices both reflect and shape culture. Larusso’s work is exhibited widely in the US and is included in various public collections such as KMAC Contemporary Art Museum, 21c Museum, and other noteworthy private collections. She has been awarded numerous residency fellowships including Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Sam & Adele Golden Foundation, and MacDowell where she received a Milton and Sally Avery Fellowship. She is a recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Fellowship, Kentucky South Arts Fellowship, and multiple grants from the Great Meadows Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She currently lives and works in Louisville, Kentucky, and is represented by Rubine Red Gallery in Palm Springs, and Galleri Urbane in Dallas, TX.

Artists Talk with LVA: May 11, 2023

Kentucky College of Art + Design graduating seniors KeVon Dunbar, Kylie Hill, Alyx McClain, & Colin Shay join us this week, Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 1 to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Artists Talk with LVA: March 9, 2023

This week we talk with Sunyang Lim in South Korea about the Korea Fiber Art Forum and Feral Fagiola about the exhibit she has curated for the 849 Gallery, Solve et Coagula, opening Friday. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Sunyang Lim is a Professor, Dongduk Women’s University, Seoul, Korea Fiber Arts, and Textile Design. She earned both a BFA and MFA from Dongduk Women’s University, Seoul, Korea, BFA, and has also studied at SUNY and in France and received her Ph.D. from Hanyang University. She is just one of the many artists participating in the Korea Fiber Form Biennial in Louisville. Her work can be seen at KMAC.

Feral Fagiola is an interdisciplinary artist exploring desire, power, and fetish in their work. Feral’s practice engages industrial materials, processes, and spaces as refractions of physical and implied structures of power on the body. Their sculptural objects, installations, and performances fantasize bodily possibilities through erotic rituals and material transformations. They are now the studio manager at Kentucky College of Art + Design (KYCAD).

Solva et Cuaglia, curated by Feral Fagiola is at KYCAD’s 849 Gallery through the end of March

Feature: 2020 Academy at LVA Senior Recognition

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.

Brendan Taylor, “Kitchen Table”, acrylic

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Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2020 by 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.