Author: John R. Kemp

Abstract Narrative

Commemorative statues are everywhere in Louisiana. We have them for soldiers, explorers, musicians, sports figures, politicians and saintly people. Now, New Orleans has a new monument that celebrates the work of the nationally acclaimed New Orleans artist John Scott…

Louisianians of the Year

Each year, we comb the state in search of Louisianians who stand out in their professions, give back and represent what’s best about the Pelican State. From teachers and artists to culinary pros and conservationists, these are the individuals enhancing…

Weaving a Connection

Art & Culture Occupation: Artist - Hometown: Terrebonne Parish Janie Verret Luster Art can convey an emotion, perhaps tell a story or simply respond to the beauty of nature. To Janie Verret Luster, teacher, healer, practitioner of tribal ways and…

For the Good of the Hive

Select photos by John Dupre Have you seen those two gigantic bees painted on the side of a small building on the corner of Karlstein and River Road near Vacherie? RISE St. James, a faith-based advocacy group based in…

Electric Art

For over six decades, Monroe artist Don Cincone has been on a remarkable journey that has taken him from a sharecropper’s cabin in Richland Parish to San Francisco, New York’s fashion district, movie sets in Hollywood, down to Mexico…

Passing it On

With assimilation and time many of Louisiana’s Native American folkways faded into history. Handmade tribal crafts gave way to mass-produced items purchased at local box stores. But somewhere deep in the DNA of tribal members, the old ways remain…

The Beasts Will Teach You the Beauty of This Earth

The ancients believed birds were messengers of the gods linking humans to the supernatural world. Baton Rouge artist Mary Lee Eggart’s colorful drawings of various birds represent her deep spirituality, faith and love of nature. More recently, however, her…

Natural Science

Are science and art really that much different? Not to New Orleans artist and environmentalist Pippin Frisbie-Calder. Like many artists — including Leonardo da Vinci ­— who draw no distinction between art and science, Frisbie-Calder sees science as an…

Forces of Nature

  With dark memories of Hurricane Katrina still fresh in his mind, New Orleans artist Phil Sandusky packed up his brushes, paints and easel and headed out late last August into his Uptown New Orleans neighborhood to capture the…

Louisianians of the Year

Louisianians are a diverse bunch, but we have a few common traits. For example, many Louisianians, no matter how close we are to our family, have an independent streak. Strength and persistence also come to mind when you consider people…

Vitus Shell

Monroe artist Vitus Shell is a remarkable artist who explores the African-American experience through strong, compelling and often unsettling images of Black contemporary life in America. It is art driven by irony, activism and his notion of Black “coolness.” Monroe…

Art for the People

Photos by Ryan Hodgeson-Rigsbee The Rex Organization’s motto, “Pro Bono Publico,” has special meaning to New Orleans Mardi Gras float designer and painter Caroline Thomas.…

Magical Mystery

A visit to Paulo Dufour’s studio on Narrow Road in a wooded countryside north of Covington in St. Tammany Parish is like a walk through Tennessee Williams’ “Glass Menagerie,” a dreamlike place filled…

Art: Visual Music

Kaori Maeyama creates paintings based on blurred images snapped on her cell phone while driving through the streets of New Orleans. Is there music without sound? One only has to look at the paintings…

Art: Art Out of Chaos

  Shutdowns, quarantines, masks, vaccines, hope. While Louisianians and the world deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, artist Kathryn Keller is in the right place — the peace and solitude of her…

Art: Tragic Beauty

→ For more information, visit jsdart.com   New Orleans photographer, writer and freelance journalist Julie Dermansky is on a worldwide journey and mission to capture images of social…

Art: The Big Picture

  Artist Christiane Drieling is on an artistic and life-searching journey that has taken her from the dark childhood fairytales of her native Northwest Germany to North Louisiana and the social and spiritual issues facing Americans and the world…

Art: The Big Picture

  Artist Christiane Drieling is on an artistic and life-searching journey that has taken her from the dark childhood fairytales of her native Northwest Germany to North Louisiana and the social and spiritual issues facing Americans and the world…

Beading Rhythms

New Orleans is a gumbo of people of all different nationalities and races and all those people show a lot of love to each other,” says artist and Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief Demond Melancon. “I’m part of that gumbo.”…

Art Al Fresco

Are you tired of staying home watching the news? Do you need something uplifting? Try art. While COVID-19 has disrupted the schedules of art galleries and museums, Louisiana has…

Nature’s Exquisite Song

The celebrated 19th-century American artist James McNeill Whistler once wrote that nature “sings her exquisite song to the artist alone.” Many Louisiana landscape painters believe Whistler’s “exquisite song” is heard best by artists who paint outdoors in the natural landscape.…

Art: Chaos and Order

Randell Henry of Baton Rouge is a remarkable artist who creates vibrant and often cryptic paintings and collages that reflect an imagination and intellect drawn to the rhythms and cultures of Africa and the African-American experience. …

Art: Holding On

Louisiana photographer Cate Colvin Sampson, inspired by the writings of Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor, joins a growing chorus of artists and photographers raising warnings about South Louisiana’s endangered wetlands and a way of life for the people who have lived…

Art: Preserving (Art) History

The long-neglected and nearly-forgotten “Fountain of the Four Winds” — one of Louisiana’s most spectacular, yet controversial Great Depression-era New Deal works of art located at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport — is at last being restored to its former…