St. Charles Parish Artist Nonney Oddlokken

People often travel the world looking for meaning and inspiration. St. Charles Parish artist Nonney Oddlokken found that inspiration at home in the marshes and culture of South Louisiana. It was an awakening for her.

The 60-year-old New Orleans native has been on a long, personal journey that has taken her from the city’s Mid- City neighborhood where she was born and raised to Oslo, Norway, back to New Orleans and finally to St. Rose in St. Charles Parish. A childhood growing up with her working mother and an agoraphobic aunt filled Oddlokken’s life “with daily magical creations and wonder, but with secrets.” Hers was not simply a physical journey about place but one of finding her voice through her art, which happened one day by accident in a local bookshop.

After high school, Oddlokken signed up for art classes at the University of New Orleans, where she met a friend who had been to Norway. That sounded interesting, so off she went for an extended vacation. While there, she enrolled at the Strykejernet Art School in Oslo, received a bachelor’s degree in art and met her to-be husband Ole Oddlokken, a Norwegian and fellow art student.

“In Norway,” she says, “I had an art history book and circled every painting I wanted to see in Europe. So, I ended up on an extended road trip to see all of the paintings. The only one I didn’t see was Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and that was on loan in Chicago.”

“Gods for People Like Us”

After six years in Northern Europe, Oddlokken and her family moved to New Orleans. Then Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. After traveling back and forth between Norway and New Orleans, they remained this time for good to help rebuild the city, purchasing a house in nearby St. Charles Parish with room for her family, her mother, visiting Norwegian family and her art studio.

Even in the turmoil, Oddlokken wasn’t sure of where her art would take her. She tried painting abstract images while in Norway, but that wasn’t it either. Back in Louisiana, she wasn’t interested in simply painting landscapes like other artists. She was at odds until that fateful moment in a bookstore when she picked up an art book by LSU art professor and storyteller Kelli Scott Kelley titled “Accalia and the Swamp Monster.” Oddlokken had found her voice.

“At that moment,” Oddlokken says, “it literally changed my life and how I view the world. Two things happened. I realized there are fascinating stories to tell about Louisiana, and you can tell them in an interesting way. You can tell stories about our land and our history.”

After that, Oddlokken was enamored with Louisiana’s history, culture and the marshes near her home.

“There’s a time of the year when the whole swamp has yellow flowers,” she says. “It looks like Oz, and it is magical. Now, everything I put in my art has to be from Louisiana. I realized the stories were not being told. If there is a butterfly in my piece, I have made sure the butterfly is from Louisiana. The white alligator for me is the unicorn of the swamp. It’s complete magic. I also did a lot of research into Cajun folklore. I don’t know it all, but it’s an exploration for me every time I make a new piece. It’s an endless source.”

“The Shadow of Hummingbirds”

Oddlokken has developed a unique style of telling visual stories. Her dreamlike compositions are not the typical paintbrush-and-canvas, but phantasmic images  she creates and sews to a background of handmade paper. Her palette is one of colorful threads that she applies with the precision of an artist’s brush. The resulting “paintings,” as she calls them, are filled with imagery she describes as “a mixture of my own childhood memories, Catholic references, Cajun folklore and a sprinkle of New Orleans voodoo.”

They are “always symbolic and allegorical fables that combine flora and fauna of Southern Louisiana, as well as physical elements such as above-ground cemeteries and tombs.” She ties these images with golden threads as a metaphor for the “energy that connects all of us together no matter what the narrative is.”

Those visual “symbolic and allegorical fables” have found their way into numerous public and private collections, including the State Library of Louisiana, which chose her entry “Magic in Bayou Antheneum” as the official poster for the 2022 Louisiana Book Festival.

Like the Louisiana Oddlokken portrays in her art, she says her technique takes on a life of its own, and she enjoys watching people discuss her work among themselves.

“My art is out there and people attach their own memories and stories to it,” she says. “I think that art is out in the world and has a life of its own.”

For more information, visit threadpaperglue.com

Cajun | Bending Lines: Robert Wiggs
Work by acclaimed University of Louisiana at Lafayette sculptor, who shaped the Acadiana aesthetic agenda, through Sept. 28. Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette. hilliardmuseum.org

Central | 37th Juried Competition

National and international art competition, through Sept. 28. Alexandria Museum of Art. themuseum.org

Plantation | Second Nature: Artwork by Chase Mullen
Contemporary work romanticizing nature, science and human impact on landscape, through Sept. 22. Louisiana Art and Science Museum, Baton Rouge. lasm.org

NOLA | Louisiana Contemporary
Annual juried art show featuring Louisiana artists, through Oct. 13. Ogden Museum of Southern Art. ogdenmuseum.org

North | The River is the Road: Paintings by George Rodrigue
Rodrigue’s use of the river as a metaphor for his Cajun heritage, through Oct. 19. Masur Museum of Art, Monroe. masurmuseum.org