Baton Rouge Gallery features Cambric, Hunter, Finch and Walsh in September
Baton Rouge Gallery, a BREC facility, welcomes four of its artist members for an exciting multimedia exhibition Aug. 29 through Sept. 23, featuring the work of Leanne McClurg Cambric, Scott Finch, Kathryn Hunter and Michaelene Walsh.
The gallery will host a “First Wednesday” Opening Reception for this eclectic exhibition and the four featured artist members on Sept. 1 from 7-9 p.m.
Raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Leanne McClurg Cambric received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1997 and received a Master of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University in 2002. An artist member of the gallery since 2005, Cambric has exhibited her work across the country while completing residencies at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Watershed, Maine and the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena, Montana. The National Council on Education for the Ceramics Arts named Cambric the Emerging Artist of 2007. Cambric taught at Baton Rouge Community College, Southern University and LSU for more than 10 years. Cambric plans to open of Red Hot Center for Clay later this fall.
Cambric’s work consists of functional hand-built porcelain and earthenware pottery, decorative displays and imagery inspired by nature, grief and survival. Her newest exhibit, Reluctant Perseverance, explores what perseverance looks like to the artist. After personal and professional setbacks in the past few years, Cambric now uses narrative imagery as a way to express emotions of resilience, perseverance, loss and grief. Cambric uses metaphorical strengths and abilities of animals to show how she feels about herself and the characters in her life.
An artist member of Baton Rouge Gallery since 2002, Baton Rouge resident Scott Finch received a Bachelor of Fine Art from LSU in 1994 and a Master of Fine Art from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1996. Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Gallery, located in downtown Baton Rouge, and the Grand Contemporary in Lafayette displayed Finch’s work in recent years. The Second Annual Gulf South Regional Exhibition at BECA in New Orleans, the Critic’s Choice Exhibition at the Dallas Visual Art Center and the Art Challenge at the Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, Pa. selected his work. Finch taught at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond and BRCC.
Finch’s exhibit, Nothing Predetermined, includes large and medium-sized paintings featuring taught dichotomies between ancient and contemporary vantages on the human condition. After years of exhibiting large, photo-based, flatly-executed paintings on paper, gallery visitors noticed signs of a creative upheaval in Finch's snarky and poetically confessional drawings on inter-departmental envelopes last year. This year visitors will see a more thorough introduction of informal and spontaneous gesture into Finch's works on paper in painting and drawing media.
Kathryn Hunter grew up in Decatur, Ala. surrounded by north Alabama storytellers and embellishers. After one year of college, Hunter searched for adventure in the tall mountains of Montana and Wyoming where she lived for nearly 10 years. Hunter earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from Montana State University in 1999. After returning to the south in 2000, Hunter earned a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from LSU. A gallery artist member since 2008, Hunter is also a member of Amalgamated Printers’ Association and Ladies of Letterpress. Art Quilts at Play (published by C&T 2009) by Elin Waterston and Jane Davila recently published her work. In addition to operating Blackbird Letterpress, a custom letterpress printing business, Hunter teaches Introduction to Book Arts in LSU’s printmaking department and Drawing at Southern University.
Hunter’s exhibit, Menagerie, explores the idea of charting perceptions of existence through the imagery of animals. Using printmaking and mixed media, her work reflects the patterning of life, interdependence, cycles and the symbols of such ideas.
Michaelene “Mikey” Walsh grew up in Illinois, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Crafts from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred in 1995. Walsh taught at Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Georgia and the University of California-Davis. Walsh also teaches at several alternative-learning venues, for example, Arrowmont, the Haystack School of Crafts, the Anderson Ranch Arts Center and Santa Fe Clay. Currently Walsh is an Associate Professor of Art at LSU. Walsh’s sculptural ceramic work is exhibited internationally, most recently at the Icheon Ceramic Center in South Korea and the Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia. The Figure in Clay, by Lark Books, features Walsh’s work.
Walsh’s exhibit, Alight, Adrift, Aloft, mixes the metaphorical with the concreteness of forms. Walsh uses clay to make images of lightness, abundance and freedom, such as birds, ice cream cones, pregnancy and fertility. The intermingling of the images creates a sense of the absurd, or conveys weightier meaning to these carefree images.
For more information about these exhibits, visit call 225-383-1470.
Baton Rouge Gallery, a BREC facility, is supported in part by funds from the Louisiana State Arts Council and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge (through the Decentralized Arts Funding Program) and a grant from the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge through the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Gallery also receives support from the Community Fund for the Arts, WRKF, its Community Members and the late Paula Manship.
