Theatre + Art

Literary Louisiana: Books of Nostalgia and History

In “All the Places We Love Have Been Left In Ruins,” Ariel Francisco writes an elegy to his hometown of Miami that continues to be sunk by climate change, corruption, and of course, Margaritavilles. Francisco, who teaches at LSU, writes…

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…

LSU Museum of Art: Upcoming Exhibitions Preview

BATON ROUGE, La (press release) – LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge has announced upcoming events for the next year. EXHIBITION SCHEDULE FOR THE LSU MUSEUM OF ART Cherished: The Art of Clementine Hunter July 11–Oct. 13 A showcase…

Monroe Artist Jay Davis Returns Home

Novelist Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Well, that didn’t discourage Monroe artist Jay Davis who returned to his North Louisiana hometown after a long and successful career as an artist and animator that has taken him…

What We Were Reading 2024

September - October Misty Milioto “Brother Odd” by Dean Koontz. It’s a mix of supernatural and thriller genres, and the writing is superb. I just love how Koontz can turn a phrase to create the most interesting metaphors.   Jeffrey…

Dames de Perlage

  Seated in a rocking chair on South Carrollton Avenue in New Orleans, Carrie Fisher ponders her corset. In the past six months, she’s spent 100 hours beading the artwork she’ll eventually attach to it, and with 100 days until…

Celebration in Color

On Mardi Gras Day, La Société De Saint Anne parade revelers march on Royal Street in New Orleans making their way to the river to honor those who died the year prior.

Manuel Ponce

Except perhaps for Rio de Janeiro, there’s nothing like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It’s a visual orgy of brightly-colored floats drawn through city streets in the fiery glow of…

Museums Galore

When sprawling Houston comes to mind, you might think first of sporting events or rocket ships — even traffic. But in fact, the culturally-diverse city reigns as one of the world’s top destinations for arts lovers. With seven cultural districts…

Shannon Landis Hansen

A visit to Shannon Landis Hansen’s studio, a block from Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville, is a journey through an artist’s imagination, an imagination driven by the lives of inanimate objects as they pass…

Star Player

As long as Louisiana keeps producing world-class athletes, Chris Brown has a job, and what a job it is. He is the portrait artist to stars — Louisiana sports stars, that is. Since…

Repurposing with a Purpose

The 19th-century American artist James McNeill Whistler once wrote, “Nature sings her exquisite song to the artist alone.” Today, however, a growing number of passionate young Louisiana artists are hearing not nature’s “exquisite” song but one of ecological distress in…

Louisiana Artist of the Year Vitus Shell Presents "Gold Standard"

NEW ORLEANS (press release) – Vitus Shell, Louisiana mixed-media painter and black creative brings an impactful voice to contemporary figurative painting in his solo exhibition Gold Standard at IBIS Contemporary Art Gallery, New Orleans. Gold has been the metric for value in many societies…

Louisiana Love

A statement by the internationally acclaimed documentary photographer Carol Highsmith sets the tone for Louisiana Public Broadcasting’s recent four-hour TV documentary and Highsmith’s companion book exploring the people, towns, cities, customs and landscape across Louisiana today: "There are a…

Bicentennial Festivities

Lafayette’s year-long bicentennial revelries continue with the Celtic Bayou Festival bicentennial celebration March 17-18 (celticbayoufestival.com) followed by the March 26-30 Festival International de Louisiane bicentennial celebrations (festivalinternational.org). Chartered by the Louisiana Legislature in 1823 two years after its founding, the…

Literary Lovers Travel Guide

Marie-Madeleine Hachard arrived in New Orleans in the early 1700s with a group of Ursuline nuns. She wrote of her new home in the French colony and that collection of personal accounts would become one of the first books about…

Beach Reads

Coming of Age The Crocodile Bride “The Crocodile Bride” follows 11-year-old Sunshine Turner as she navigates the difficulties of growing up and the secrets of her family’s past in the tiny town of Fingertip, Louisiana. With the world around her…