Artists Talk with LVA: August 22, 2024

Artist Dan Rhema & Outsider Museum director Alex Huninghake came to the studio to discuss Dan's exhibit at Outsider and the nature of "outsider" art. Tune in to 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Alex Huninghake is the founder and director of Outsider Art Museum & Gallery. Located in the historic Portland neighborhood of Louisville, just blocks from the Portland Museum and LVA, Outsider is a new space dedicated to the celebration of creative Outsiders - visual artists, musicians, writers, and performers who create outside cultural norms, the mainstream, or the realm of “fine art.” Individuals from diverse backgrounds who express themselves with pure, direct, uninhibited vision.

Outsider Art may encompass the following categories: American Contemporary Folk Art, Self-Taught Art, Art Brut, Visionary Art, and Naive Art.

Dan Rhema became an artist after contracting dengue fever (break-bone fever) and spinal meningitis while managing Intercultural Training and Retreat Center in Santiago Tuxla, Mexico. 

During his recuperation, Dan began to compulsively create multimedia collages, sculptures, and masks from found objects. He also began to paint, capturing the images flowing through him in a unique three-dimensional style.

Viewers of his paintings, sculptures, and masks began describing it as visionary art, outsider art, self-taught art, or shamanic art. Dan understood that these acts of creation were healing and re-creating him. He has taken this realization and made it the focus of his art; trauma can awaken creativity and, through creativity, healing can begin.

Artists Talk with LVA: August 15, 2024

Connor Stephenson & Allie Jensen joined us this week to discuss their concurrent solo exhibits at Kore Gallery. Tune in to 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Kore Gallery is exhibiting Time is a Mother by Allie Jensen and The Table by Connor Stephenson through September 1, 2024. A closing reception will be on Saturday, August 24, from 1- 3 pm.

Allie Jensen (they/them) is a Louisville-based artist practicing meditative mark-making techniques using repetitive line-work and dot-work. Like an emotional muscle, their patience and ability to live in the moment are strengthened by their regular use of these methods.

Primarily working in ink and acrylic, Jensen stacks and layers small components such as lines, dots, and circles, to create organic masses that reflect common design elements observed across diverse

natural, technological, and social complex systems.

Jensen’s art practice highlights the universe's astounding interconnectedness and allows them to participate as a co-creator within it. 

Born in 1995 in Monterey, CA, Connor Stephenson is a self-taught artist currently working and living in Louisville, KY. 

Stephenson’s practice imaginatively explores drawing and painting while using a primitive method of mark-making and paint application. His oeuvre consists of separate works such as his cityscape drawings, dinosaur paintings, and still lifes.  

This will be the second solo exhibition of the artist’s career.

Artists Talk with LVA: August 8, 2024

Larry Muhammad has written a new play, Who Killed Alberta Jones? and Brandi LaShay will play the title role in its world premiere from Redline Performing Arts at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Tune into WXOX 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

Larry Muhammad is an award-winning playwright and producing director of Kentucky Black Repertory Theatre. His plays have been performed in New York at New Federal Theatre; in Louisville, KY at Actors Theatre, Kentucky Center for the Arts, Speed Art Museum, and Muhammad Ali Center; in Cincinnati, OH at the Aronoff Center; and the National Black Theater Festival in Winston-Salem, NC. They include: Looking for Leroy, Last Night at Mikell’s, Derby Mine 4, Jockey Jim, Double V

Brandi LaShay, is a native of Orangeburg, South Carolina. Brandi is an Alumnus of Claflin University and the University of Louisville's Theatre Arts Program. She furthered her career as a resident performer and Education Assistant at the St. Louis Black Repertory Company. She is currently certified in African American Theatre and serves the Louisville Community and JCPS as a Performance Practitioner and Resident Teaching Artist. In addition to her career as a freelance artist and performance Practitioner,  Brandi also works as the Museum Theatre Director at Historic Locust Grove. Brandi has been an inaugural creative partner with IdeasXLabs and the (Un)Known Project, which she last performed as Beverly in Journey’s to Freedom. Brandi identifies herself as a Dope Black Female Artist. DBFA is a label which defines the layers of her authentic creativity and artistic edge.

Redline Performing Arts presents Who Killed Alberta Jones? by Larry Muhammad
August 8-10 in the Victor Jory Theatre at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Artists Talk with LVA: August 1, 2024

Susan Howe runs Mudpies Studio & Gallery and opens a solo exhibit at Revelry Boutique & Gallery on August 2. Tune in to 97.1 FM/Artxfm.com each Thursday at 10 am to hear Artists Talk with LVA.

In early 2016 Susan Howe began the portrait project, 100 Faces as an oil study. She chose local artists who were impacting the arts in Louisville as her muse. The project was meant to hone skills and grow as an artist. As the project grew, Susan began to include famous people who had impacted her life in some way through their work. Every portrait study became an intimate conversation. The result is a collection of Susan’s lifetime influences. Susan also owns and instructs at Mudpies Studio in Middletown. Her work is found in many corporate and private collections.

Susan has been showing at Revelry for many years. Through her classes, she has encouraged many of her students to become involved with Revelry, Louisville Visual Art, and other visual art organizations.

"Recollections" opens Friday, August 2 with a reception from 6-9 pm at Revelry Boutique & Gallery

Artists Talk with LVA: July 25, 2024

Kent Fielding (right) – educator, editor, poet, activist –  co-founded White Fields Press and the literary renaissance with Ron Whitehead in 1992. Fielding is an Honorary Kentucky Colonel, a BP Teacher of Excellence, an Alaska Teacher of the Year Finalist, 2021 Alaska Speech and Debate Coach of the Year. He has taught in the Marshall Islands, at Jefferson Community College, University of Alaska Southeast, Mt. Edgecumbe, Skagway High School, and at summer institutes in Turkey and Latvia.  Author of a book of poetry, Chief Iffuccan, a chapbook, The Revolution is About to Begin, and a broadside “Museums” (Cheek Press 2023), his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Asheville Poetry Review, The Jefferson Review, Pavement Saw, Modern Haiku, The Beat Scene, Frisk Magazine, Boog Literature, Night Owl Narrative: A Cajun Mutt Rag, and Tidal Echoes, among others. This will be his 11th Insomniacathon. 

Jackson Kinkead (left) is a Louisville native and the Executive Director of the Chapel Of St Philip Neri. He is an antidisiplinary creative entrepreneur and artist moving across mediums of independent film, experimental music, physical labor, cooperative institutions, commons-building social practice, and more. He received a project grant from The National Endowment of the Arts in 2022 with NAVEL LA for ASSEMBLIES, which were pod-based learning groups for artists. The Chapel Of St Philip Neri is currently his main project, a communally engaged process into meaning making in urban secular space through the transition and redevelopment of the dechurched cathedral on 236 Woodbine. He received a bachelor's of documentary Journalism from University of Missouri in 2020. 

The Chapel of St. Philip Neri, the global literary renaissance, and Ron Whitehead presents Insomniacathon 2024: The Last Insomniacathon – a 57-hour nonstop music, poetry, performance art festival, taking place at the Chapel of St. Philip Neri, 236 Woodbine Street Louisville, KY, from July 26th-July 28th, featuring over 100 poets, over 30 bands and musicians, and various art films, including performances by Lipstick Wars (more than slam poetry https://lipstickwars.com/), Lee Pennington (author of 21 books, nominated for 3 Pulitzers), Ashley Farmer (author of DEAR DAMAGE, winner of the International Rubery Book Award), Ron Whitehead (National Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate), Frank Messina (award-winning poet, artist, actor) and bands including Bill Clark & Route 15 Band, Creeps Incorporated, Shark Sandwich, Tall Squares, Lapsis, and many others from across the USA. For a full schedule and online tickets please see https://stphilipcampus.org/insomniacathon-2024/.