Artists Talk with LVA: October 5, 2023

LVA will be featuring Tomisha Lovely-Allen in our booth at St.James Art Show and she is also our guest this week. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Tomisha Lovely-Allen is a self-taught artist from Louisville, KY.  She has been a passionate creator for as long as she can remember. She earned a full scholarship at Northern Kentucky University and graduated with a Bachelor's in Accounting and Associate in Business Administration in 1998 and earned a Certified Public Accountant license in 2002.  

She was chosen to illustrate a historic Kentuckian woman in the “Bluegrass Bold” children’s book project along with 35 other female artists, exhibit at the Arts Center of the Bluegrass Show “The Art of Being Black: Conversations and Experience,” and be grant recipient to the Fund for the Arts '“Black Artist Grant”. 

Artists Talk With LVA: September 29, 2022

Darrenn Canton talks about being with LVA at The St. James Art Fair this weekend & Vinhay Keo talks about his upcoming exhibit at Moremen Gallery. Tune in to WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com Thursdays at 10 am t hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Vinhay Keo, born in Cambodia and currently based in Los Angeles, is an interdisciplinary visual artist and researcher. He employs photography, installation, sculpture, performance, and writing as strategies to explore the persistent hauntings of violence. By reading intimately across archives, Keo examines the legacy of the Khmer Rouge Genocide, the Vietnam War, colonialism in Indochina, and queer erasure throughout history and its effects on contemporary diasporic lives.  

Keo earned an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts (2020) and a BFA from the Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University (2016). His work has been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, He is a recipient of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship, the Emergency Response Program Award from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), Louisville Visual Art's Rising Star Award, and a Great Meadows Foundation grant. He has participated in various residency programs in the U.S. and abroad, including: Yale at Norfolk (Connecticut), Anderson Ranch Art Center (Colorado), and Tropical Lab (Singapore).

Vinhay returns to Louisville to open a show of his most recent work at Moremen Gallery on October 14. To Carve A Constellation

Darrenn E. Canton is an artist from Washington, DC who specializes in fantasy art, childrens' illustration, and cartooning. His work emphasizes humor, wit and character. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BFA in Communication Arts, and now resides in Louisville, KY with his dog, Trumpet.

Darrenn and his work will be featured in the LVA Local Muse booth (#332) at St. James Court Art Show, September 30, October 1-2.

Vignette: Miranda Becht

"The sweet nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. (Order)" by Miranda Becht, 13x68x5in, tinted cast resin, flocking, lace, shelves (2016)

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“An imagination is a powerful tool. It can tint memories of the past, shade perceptions of the present, or paint a future so vivid that it can entice… or terrify, all depending on how we conduct ourselves today.”– Jim Davis, from Garfield “Alone,” October 23, 1989

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Artist, Miranda Becht

Miranda Becht is having a moment. One of only three students in the University of Louisville’s MFA program at the Hite Institute of Art, she is taking her three degrees and wasting no time positioning herself to have a positive impact in the Louisville and Southern Indiana arts community. This fall, she will be teaching foundation art courses as an Adjunct Professor at Bellarmine University, and be working as a instructor in LVA’s Academy program for high school students. She also has recently been offered an adjunct position at IUS. At the same time, she will a part of the St. James Court Art Show Emerging Artist Program and has been commissioned to create public art through the Jeffersonville Public Art Committee, Powering Creativity.

Becht’s work has largely been installation based, exploring how memory and nostalgia form our idea of the past: “I have always seemed to long for some sort of metaphorical home located somewhere in the past. Homesickness is defined as the longing for a particular home, nostalgia as a longing for a lost time. Nostalgia may carry with it a yearning for home, but it is a home faraway in time rather than space. Nostalgia, oftentimes used to refer to something sweet and pleasant, is bittersweet. It is the longing for something that is unattainable.”

"I can feel your sweet decay." by Miranda Becht, 38x73x73in, wood, sticker paper, acrylic paint, cast resiin, linoleum, found objects (2017)

“As a society we tend to idealize our vision of the past, particularly our vision of home. Our idealized notion of home presents itself as a supposedly traditional form of domestic life, but bears little relation to the way people actually lived. This concept of a cozy home full of family love is an invented tradition. Inevitable in our linear understanding of time, we are constantly being uprooted from home and from the past. Because of the fallibility of our memory, the past and home as we remember them, no longer exist. I mourn for a home that perhaps I never had.”

"The sweet nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. (Order) (detail)" by Miranda Becht

Becht cites “The pleasant, nostalgic sadness of something lovely and lost. I would sit and play with an odd, white vessel, full of wonder about its use and its origin. This vessel seemed so big, so white and pure, so curious. My grandmother told me it was a bedpan, but it wasn’t until much later in life that I realized just what a bedpan was. My most cherished childhood memory is soiled with urine and feces. Lost innocence often takes the guise of idealized memories. My work is a vehicle for my fetishized, fragile memories. I am pressured to be the object of desire… this untrue illusion, the ideal.”

Becht’s work is filled with mid-20th century design layered with a cotton-candy colors (she seems especially fond of pink), which adroitly captures the unique collective memory of what is arguably the most idealized period in modern American history, the 1950’s. The artist reminds us that what seems too good to have been true, often is.

Age: 31
Education: MFA Sculpture, University of Louisville, 2017; BFA Ceramics, Indiana University Southeast, 2012; BA Printmaking, Indiana University Southeast Minor Psychology, 2012
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Miranda.indiana/

"I can feel your sweet decay (detail)" by Miranda Becht

"In Hiding" by Miranda Becht, 119x64x24in, wood, cast resin, acrylic paint, shag carpet, embroidery floss, light fixture (2017)

"Underside" by Miranda Becht, 96x96x66in, wood, screenprint, cast resin, rug, embroidery floss (2016)

"What’s a dream and what is real? (Entropy)" by Miranda Becht, 84x54x6in, wood, cast resin, hydrocal, embroidery floss, lace (2016)

Written by Keith Waits. Entire contents copyright © 2017 Louisville Visual Art. All rights reserved.

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