Growing up in Sana'a, Yemen, I remember my mother always saying to us that education wasn't only what we read, but what we saw, touched, tasted, and smelled. Many of my early memories are of travelling with her and and visiting the local markets.

Octavia Art Gallery presents LOVERS, an exhibition of sculptures and drawings by Art Deco artist Enrique Alférez. The gallery is proud to represent the Estate of Enrique Alférez, and to host the first solo exhibition for the artist in the gallery. This retrospective has been assembled 25 years since the passing of the artist. 

When, at the age of eleven, I picked up my first potsherds, hidden in the ground for centuries in the street, I was unaware that these relics would not only guide my life through history but also eventually lead me to the path of painting.

The “Lovers” exhibit at Octavia Art Gallery on Magazine Street is a classy collection of art deco erotica, including steamy female goddesses, angular Mexican cowboys and romantically entwined couples. The alluring artworks were modeled by the hands of the late, great Enrique Alférez, an immigrant who gave us some of New Orleans’ most iconic sculptures.

Including nearly 100 dramatic black-and-white photographs installed in three distinct spaces of the museum, In Light of Everything is the first career retrospective for the important Louisiana-born photographer Debbie Fleming Caffery. The exhibition presents examples from her most important series made in the American South, Mexico, and France, from the 1970s to the present.

Scott Andresen is a New Orleans-based artist and Fall/Winter 2022 Artist-in-Residence at the Joan Mitchell Center. This interview was filmed at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, December 2022.

Alia Ali is Yemeni-Bosnian-US multi-media artist. She strongly believes that textile is significant to us all. We are born into it, we sleep in it, we eat on it, we define ourselves by it, we shield ourselves with it, and eventually, we die in it. For her site-specific installation, Ali activates the three-storied stairwell drawing special attention to the areas in between. Along with 52 collaborating Master Artisans from New Orleans, Paris and Jaipur, the artist threads together twelve of her photographic sculptures, in custom frames upholstered by the artist, herself. They are hung within in a reimagined environment using Rajasthani handblocked textiles with hand embroidered elements that cover the surfaces of the building. All aspects are carefully drawn together into a visual narrative of multi-layered experience, practice, and imagination, together manifesting into a journey of identity and collectivity.

Endless amounts of paintbrushes, sketches, photographs, and worn books line the walls of Adrian Deckbar’s in-home gallery.  Observing Adrian’s intricately-decorated living room filled with delicate furniture, large wall paintings, and other nostalgic tchotchkes, it was clear to see how much attention to detail Adrian puts into absolutely everything she does. One cloudy afternoon in Uptown, New Orleans, I got the chance to visit former Tulane art professor (one of my current teacher’s former professors) Deckbar just a few streets down from my own home. Upon arriving, Adrian greeted me, filling her front doorway with ambient music playing from a speaker behind, with her kind smile.

Excepts from an eight page feature on the work of Pierre Bergian, The World of Interiors, July 2022
Growing up in Bruges and Ghent, the young Pierre had the curiosity of an archaeologist.  Later, that was what he became. At 11, he was picking his way through broken Medieval houses that stood unrestored and empty along the water ways, finding fragments of tiles and mouldings among the brambled courtyards. Ancient pottery, turned over in the light from fragile old glass windows, disclosed details of a Vermeerish world discovered by the silent canals at dusk, inspiring him then as they do now.

Later, he would identify the fresh originals of his shards meticulously represented in the floors and rooms of the paintings of Van Eyck, Memling and others in the museums that preserve their works in Belgium. By now in his twenties, he was collector of many things; above all, of the insights and memories that were to furnish his artistic endeavours.

Rather than cry over spilled paint, East Hampton–based artist Gustavo Bonevardi has learned how to “embrace the accident,” incorporating and even encouraging natural drips and dribbles into his recent watercolors on paper. “It’s very exciting when I see something that is not what I had intended or that seems wrong when it first happens,” says Bonevardi. “In a way, I learn from the works. They are telling me how they want to be.”

Texas-born artist, Wayne Pate, is prolific and seemingly unstoppable, applying his masterful hand to painting, collage, illustration, fabrics, wallpapers, tiles and lampshades. Currently based in New Zealand - after living in Brooklyn and Paris - Wayne has a strong visual language, informed by his former life as a graphic designer. His much-lauded projects include a long-standing collaboration with Atelier Vime, for whom he has hand-painted lampshades, murals, frescos and furniture, a collection of hand-painted tiles with Balineum in London and three fabric and wallpaper collections for Studio Four NYC.

The new art installation at Dearborn's Arab American National Museum, "al-Falaq," defies any easy explanation. Looking like a cross between a spaceship and an octopus, the sculpture's 35-foot tentacles twist across multiple floors of the museum, with computer screens in the place of suction cups. Its glowing "head" is suspended 20 feet above the ground in the museum's atrium.

It really has to be seen to be believed — and to be fully understood.

Its creator, Alia Ali, recently gave a tour of the installation — which she describes as a "museum within a museum" — when it made its debut last month.

Artist Wayne Pate and his family had plans to relocate from NYC for New Zealand, where his wife, fashion designer Rebecca Taylor, is from. But before making that leap, the couple and their three kids spent a year living in Paris, starting in the summer of 2018. It was a heady, productive time for Wayne, who filled his sketchbooks—and delighted his fans on Instagram (@waynepate)—with his outpouring.

Is it any wonder why the shelter community has embraced Wayne Pate as a kind of interior design darling? There’s the textural richness of his paintings: the impasto from Pate’s brushstrokes and the materiality of his media—acrylic thick on Arches, French writing paper, or linen. There’s the occasional whisper of a pattern—reminiscent of a Sister Parish spice—crawling up a wall in the background, the urn he’s been iterating on since the aughts, and the wide stripes. He works within a classical palette that makes itself quite at home in a room. He renders his still lives of ceramics and vases with such delicacy, I worry I might still knock them over if I lumber by his canvas with too heavy a footfall.

Stop by Octavia Art Gallery this month to see Inner Worlds / Outer Worlds featuring paintings by Ann Marie Auricchio and sculptures by Sherry Owens. The exhibition opens on Saturday, February 5 with an opening reception from 4 to 7 p.m.

“My work is dedicated to those hidden in plain sight: the migrants,” said Alia Ali, reading to me over Zoom from a moving open letter she has written, an extended poem that will accompany all of her forthcoming exhibitions. “If we are not honored by others then we have the power to honor each other,” she continued.

“Art is like an antidote,” proclaimed Pamela Bryan, owner and founder of Octavia Art Gallery. “I feel that art has played a major role in taking out some of the anxiety and sadness that the pandemic has brought into people’s lives.”

The notion of art as a healing force is woven throughout Bryan’s story. Coming from the unusual background of having a Master’s in Art History and an accounting degree, she first entered the business side of the art world via artists who were her accounting clients. This led to some initial thoughts about opening a gallery."

"Regina, your paintings are beautiful. For me, they each depict different worlds you travel to and explore, a brave pioneer bringing back information on faraway worlds. Is this how you see them as well?"
 

Hamptons Fine Art Fair
September 2 - 5, 2021
Southampton Arts Center
25 Jobs Lane, Southhampton, NY 11968
hamptonsfineartfair.com

"Originally from New York, Ann Marie landed in New Orleans six years ago after living in cities around the country. She is currently represented by Octavia Art Gallery and is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Center 2021 Artist-in-Residence program. For nearly 28 years, Ann Marie has worked nationally as a scenic artist from major film and television sets to theater and opera stages. Since moving here, she has carved a niche as a muralist and decorative finish artisan for both residential and commercial spaces, including a large custom mural for the new Hotel St. Vincent located in the Lower Garden District."

The Octavia Art Gallery presents Speaking in Hues, an exhibition that features colorful, abstract paintings by three North Eastern based artists. Among them, is Francine Tint.

According to the gallery press release, Tint's work is informed and influenced by the color field movement. “She is a colorist first and foremost. She works instinctively, creating expressive pieces, which convey a unique engagement with light, color, and surface. She integrates mixed media within her paintings, including hand-drawn elements, poured washes, and collage. Her paintings are the result of a process of disclosure, drawn from her own life events, dreams, and literature.”

Throughout history, countless ethnic groups and marginalized people have not been given the attention they deserve from the art world. This slideshow is dedicated to black, contemporary artists that we believe our readers should know more about. Many of these artists' works both acknowledge the art world's exclusionary history and subvert it. The artworks highlighted here span drawing, painting, quilting, and sculptural practice.

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Philemona Williamson
Philemona Williamson's paintings often read as childhood or adolescent memories captured with vibrant oils on linen. The artist is not afraid to operate outside of the art critic's desire for work that is easy to interpret or easily categorized as 'black artwork.' Despite exhibitng with big-name contemporaries including Kerry James Marshall, Kara Walker, and Whitfield Lovell, her work is not as well-known as it should be.
 

Fritz Bultman, a first-generation Abstract Expressionist painter, sculptor,and collagist, went his own way and is now coming our way.

The January 15, 1951, issue of Life magazine featured a photograph of 15 American artists. Formally dressed in their best, carefully stage-managed into a group pose, they glared into photographer Nina Leen’s lens with severe expressions well befitting the moniker the magazine gave them: “The Irascibles.” The reason for their irascibility—and the reason they were in Life at all—was that they had recently sent an open letter of protest, dated May 20, 1950, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, slamming the venerable institution for what they considered the retrograde policies behind the selections for its exhibition “American Painting Today – 1950.” The juries had largely ignored the abstractionist avant-garde that would soon be known as the New York School or Abstract Expressionism in favor of more traditional and figurative work. The scorching letter was published in the New York Times, and the artists who signed it—including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, and Ad Reinhardt—had a major media moment.

Along the dirt trails of the West Texas Chihuahuan Desert, Suzi Davidoff takes a hike. With her hands, she collects earth and plant matter that she’ll later press into the surfaces of her drawings and prints, and with her eyes, she collects impressions of the many birds that call this environment home. The El Paso artist has lived in this part of the American Southwest all her life, and her passion for the land and its living creatures runs deep.

Political cartoonist, John Slade, discussed his new exhibit currently on view at Octavia Art Gallery.

A few years ago when I was in New Orleans, by chance, I roamed into the Arts District of New Orleans (ADNO). It was a Tuesday and almost every gallery was closed. I spotted a very cool piece in one of the open galleries and sent my client photos on the spot and suggested we commission a companion piece for an adjoining wall. My client was excited and the gallery reached out to the artist who welcomed the prospect. When I returned from the trip, my team and I mocked up a drawing showing the art as we envisioned it, along with a concept for a companion piece. The results are a colorful focal point to the space in our Skyscape45 project. 

Gil Bruvel has spent 40 years practicing vipassanā meditation, an introspective practice that invites judgment-free observation of the mind. The Australia-born artist infuses the philosophies of this decades-long ritual into his variegated sculptures as he forms a series of faces in deep thought. With eyes and mouths closed, the figures project serenity and calmness, serving as “a reminder of what it looks like to be centered and at peace,” Bruvel says of The Mask Series. 

"After a three-month hiatus, galleries in the Arts District are reopening and the traditional First Saturday Art Walk has become a day-long event to accommodate the rules of distancing with a predictable outcome: more time to contemplate, less time to socialize.
My first visit was at Octavia Art Gallery where four artists are featured for the exhibition Conceptual Creations: Collage and Assemblage. The bold red color from the objects on display in the window was an irresistible invitation to walk-in."

Four highly acclaimed local artists are transforming ordinary materials into surprising works as they headline a new exhibit at Octavia Art Gallery.  The group exhibition is called Conceptual Creations: Collage and Assemblage. Diane Mack talks with gallery owner Pamela Bryan.

“Conceptual Creations: Collage and Assemblage” is a group exhibition featuring New Orleans based artists who create work through transformative materiality. Collage has continued to be an important means of expression throughout art history and is particularly relevant during times of social unrest. The artists included in this exhibition experiment by embracing chance, accident, and improvisation to create works that are surprising and unanticipated. Drawing on such methods, each artist makes unique contributions to the show, which includes works by Scott Andresen, James Henderson, Regina Scully and Robert Tannen.

Pamela Bryan, owner of Octavia Art Gallery on Magazine Street, believes that art eases stress and anxiety. Her gallery reopened May 16, after closing for nearly two months because of the novel coronavirus.

The vast, colorful space is well over 3,000 feet and conducive to social distancing. “We are seeing some traffic inside the gallery, which is exciting,” Bryan said. “I'm optimistic. We're entering the summer, which is historically slow, but I feel like there's a lot of pent-up energy around, and people want to get out.”

"It’s a simple thing: just a garden hose with a sprinkler nozzle and two pieces of corrugated sheet metal for privacy.

But for the homeless men and women who happen upon artist William Monaghan’s coronavirus-era public shower stall on Erato Street, it’s a godsend."

Pierre Bergian and Christian Hootsell: Linear Interplay concentrates on line as a distinct medium, which can transcend the limitations of two-dimensional forms. Bergian’s lines form the architectural structure of Neoclassic interiors by using graphite markings to enhance adorned details such as Corinthian columns, Greek keys, and carved ornamental moulding. Hootsell’s lines are created out of metal, forming identifiable compositions and paths through space. As they lead the viewer’s eye around the object, they also communicate the character of the form.

"Fritz Bultman: 100 Years is both a celebration and an important retrospective, with examples of sculptures and his later works utilizing paper collage.  The exhibition offered a glimpse of how Bultman's style and technique developed rapidly and evolved faithfully with the times."

"It is unusual to encounter a body of work by any artist that touches on the extremes of existence, from the macro to the micro, from the cosmos to the human form, all coexisting together. The phrase, “As above, so below,” was employed by ancient sages, alchemists and astrologers to explain how universal patterns repeat in ways that could apply equally to earthly minutiae and human destiny. This is not taught in art school."

"The first clue that Gil Bruvel is preoccupied with what’s going on in our heads is the stainless steel human skull sitting outside his Texas home and studio.
Unlike the quintessential sun-bleached steer skull from Western lore, Bruvel’s sculpture is formed from ribbon-thick lines of steel that reflect the Texas rays, appearing to move while remaining perfectly still."

"To some give insight to the creative process that makes Gil Bruvel accessible, Pat Green, a three-time Grammy-nominated Texas musician and close friend to Gil joined him for lunch and an interview at Bruvels home."

KIKUO SAITO (1939–2016) had two métiers, as an abstract painter and as a creator of experimental theater performances. These co-existed in a state of fruitful tension for much of his life, representing two aspects of his being, the public and the private, the active and the reflective. These polarities can also be seen clearly in his paintings, which unite the contemplative coolness of Color Field with the energetic gestures of Abstract Expressionism. Establishing himself in the New York art world in the late ’60s and early ’70s, Saito bucked the Pop and Minimalist trends to chart his own course, moving back and forth between the theater and the studio.

For years Betsy Eby has painted ambient encaustic paintings that depict petals strewn about her canvases.  Her more recent work is bolder and has a focus on the ocean.  It is a change that was born unintentionally from recent experiences and reflections on the world around her. 

American artist Betsy Eby, whose work is included in the Art in Embassies exhibition at the residence of Ambassador Ebert-Gray in Port Moresby, traveled from Columbus, Georgia, to Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and Honiara, Solomon Islands, to conduct a series of artist exchanges with artists in both cities. The goal of this cultural exchange was to demonstrate and encourage female empowerment through art.

"Octavia Art Gallery is presenting Leslie Wilkes: Central Tendencies. This is Wilkes’ first solo exhibition at Octavia Art Gallery. The works exhibited in Central Tendencies include her gouache on paper and oil on canvas paintings from 2011 through 2018."

"Eric Fischl is something of an oddity. He wandered into an art world dominated by academic theories that ignored the personal side of the human condition and eventually found success as a painter of unsettling human quirks. In retrospect, Fischl seems to have had perfect pitch when capturing the apprehensive psyche of latter-day America as seen in his favorite subjects: Long Island, New York suburbanites lounging around comfortable homes crackling with uncomfortable secrets, or furtively cavorting on the beach in search of elusive pleasures."

“The New Orleans-based artist possesses the increasingly rare skills of a highly trained artisan and the eye of an experienced scavenger, as is evident in a new museum exhibition and in his own Crescent City home.”

"While working with Build Now to construct durable, efficient, aesthetically traditional, and—crucially—affordable homes in washed-out neighborhoods, Monaghan has continued to make art that engages symbolically with issues relevant to the city ravaged by that 2006 storm. To put it most simply, the paintings are junk. No, literally—Monaghan travels to local recycling yards to collect scrap metal materials which he then attaches to his canvases. This material presence alludes to waste, industry, the death of industry, post-Apocalypse, post-Katrina, and the like, but the works also make clear their formalist aspirations. The paintings (and especially the more recent ones) are what one might reasonably call “beautiful” objects: objects that belong not in junkyards or factories but in insulated, immaculate spaces—spaces like the cac New Orleans."

"There are few US cities more familiar with migration, environmental catastrophe, industrial development and its postindustrial collapse than New Orleans. William Monaghan, born in the Crescent City, has consistently brought the materials of industry into his hybrid sculptural-painterly reliefs. His exhibition “I–Object,” on view through February 10 at the Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, brings together two eras of his practice separated by forty years. Using the historical materials of labor, Monaghan elegizes the hopes and failures of the modern manufacturing era."

"The homing instinct of certain creatures, such as swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano, California, is legendary, and Louisianans are no exception. Childhood impressions count, and New Orleans native William Monaghan was fascinated by the machinery where his father worked at Reily Coffee Company.

After studying architecture and art at Harvard and Yale universities, his interest in machinery continued through his years as a builder and a sculptor in the Northeast. He moved back to New Orleans five years ago, but his most dramatic visit was just after Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures when he searched for his mother in waist-deep floodwaters."

Artist Aaron Collier speaks about his abstract paintings and his exhibition Of Rocks and Ruins.

"I first “met” Regina through Facebook. Her posts of her paintings kept popping up in my feed and grabbing my attention and I was so happy to finally meet her in person last year. Her work sits in that really lovely space between abstraction and representation where at first glance it can appear one or the other, and you’re left spending time visually navigating the space, enjoying each brushstroke for just that, in addition to how it has created this alternate world for you to get lost in."

"The parallels between visual art and music always have hidden in plain sight, yet that topic rarely is mentioned in art history books. Like music, visual art can resonate harmonically, or not, and even some carefully curated exhibitions can come across as tone deaf. Others maximize visual polyphony in ways that enhance how we experience even very diverse works, as we see in this 10th anniversary exhibition at Octavia Art Gallery featuring work by 10 artists."

International Art Exhibitions is a non-commercial, non-proftmaking resource designed for students and lecturers involved in art education at university level. They have over the course of the past eight years produced ‘announcements' for approximately 900 exhibitions and collaborated with the press departments of around 250 museums and galleries worldwide. The intention is to draw attention to artists, their works and the galleries that enable the work to be seen and enjoyed.

"Octavia Art Gallery is presenting 10 Years 10 Artists, a group exhiOctavia Art Gallery is presenting 10 Years 10 Artists, a group exhibition including works by Gil Bruvel, Jerry Cabrera, James Henderson, Bradley Kerl, Jeffrey Pitt, Mason Saltarrelli, Regina Scully, Anne Senstad, Ken Tate, and Philemona Williamson. In celebration of the gallery's 10-year anniversary this exhibition celebrates the past, present, and future of Octavia Art Gallery."

"In "Constructing Worlds" at Octavia, Greta Can Campen's Kansas, Stop in Colby has the iconic force of a William Christenberry photograph.  It's a tiny building facade that signifies distinctive culture - in this instance, a culture seeksing to blend vernacular architecture with modernism."

The stunning painting entitled Quenka by abstract expressionist artist Kikuo Saito (1939-2016), has been acquired for the permanent collection at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The museum is now among the many others that have included Saito's works into their programs. Among some of the others are The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut; Duke University Museum of Art, North Carolina; AT&T Collection, New York; Estee Lauder Collection, New York; J.P. Morgan Chase Collection, New York and the World Bank, Washington, D.C.

"We spend much of our time in rooms and buildings, in places that support the professional and social relationships that enable us to lead meaningful lives. Our relationships with those buildings themselves are subtle, yet keen observers who have looked beyond their facades have noted how the lives of structures sometimes parallel the lives of those they shelter. The Constructing Worlds expo at Octavia Art Gallery features the work of four painters who explore how buildings are situated not only on streets, but also in our minds and imaginations, where they function like opera sets for our daily dramas even as, over time, they seem to take on an inner life of their own."

"Carmen Almon has led a peripatetic life. She was born in Guatemala to an American diplomat father and Spanish mother and grew up traveling extensively. Throughout her travels, there has always been one constant: Her love for flowers. After studying at three art schools in Europe, she moved to Los Angeles and painted urban landscapes. This work was exhibited, at the time, at the first gallery of a young dealer named Larry Gagosian. After relocating to New York, Carmen was the first employee hired by New York interior designer Howard Slatkin in the 1990s. Her title was art director, her job painting everything from silk fabrics to furniture. Slatkin often called her a “charming Bohemian.” It was there that she met socialite Deeda Blair, who asked Carmen to repair some metal flowers created by Mary Munnecke, a fifties artist who worked in the Chicago area. It was Carmen’s first exposure to tole. Captivated by their beauty, she decided to create her own floral sculptures."

"Octavia Art Gallery presents Bellwether, an exhibition of new abstract encaustic paintings by Betsy Eby. This body of work continues to draw from the rhythms and resonances in nature and music, while also capturing Eby’s impressions of the cultural and physical climate today."

Please enjoy this video portrait of Betsy Eby and her work.

"The gravity of all that is ... there is an enormity to it and it can be buoyant, it can be painful, it can be exalting. If we take the expression of how we feel individually as we travel along this life. And we gather it all up, and press it thru our own filter and express it out the other side, I think that is where poetry lives."  --Betsy Eby

The Octavia Art Gallery held an opening for an exhibition of the work of Fritz Bultman (1919-1985) a New Orleans native and important American abstract impressionist artist whose work ranks with that of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. The show will be up through Feb. 24.

"A new show at Octavia Gallery is giving Fritz Bultman more of the posthumous attention he deserves.

Not that Bultman has ever been completely forgotten, especially in his native city. Born in 1919 to a prominent New Orleans family — the Bultman Funeral Home on St. Charles Avenue was a civic institution for more than a century — Bultman studied art in Germany and Chicago before establishing himself in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he died in 1985.

During his lifetime, Bultman was regarded as one of the most important members of the group of postwar abstract artists known as the New York School, members of which also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning."

"Octavia Art Gallery presents an exhibition of work by historic American Abstract Expressionist Fritz Bultman (1919-1985). Exploring a body of work that spanned four decades, the exhibition includes Bultman’s paintings and large-scale collages."

Scott Andresen is an artist who lives and works in New Orleans, LA. His collage and mixed media based works explore themes of repair and the joining of the unlikely. He received his MFA from Yale University and BA from Hunter College and has over 50 group and solo exhibitions to his name including the Jack Tilton Gallery, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Exit Art, Naples Museum of Art and The Bronx Museum. He has attended residencies at Socrates Sculpture Park and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council while also receiving grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, and the Jacob Javits Fellowship. Scott is an Assistant Professor at the LSU School of Art where he oversees the Foundations program.

"THE STUPENDOUS BEAUTY of the land that holds us in limbo is anticipated when hearing the word “Marfa” included in an exhibition. The last time I visited Marfa, Texas was in the early years of the Chinati Foundation. I was impressed with the isolation of the town and the open environments that the Chinati Foundation afforded its art as opposed to the confinement of a typical gallery. Art in the latter milieu can become devoid of origin whereas art in Marfa becomes a part of the space rather than an addition. Octavia Art Gallery’s “Marfa Intrigue,” a group exhibit of six Marfa-based artists, presents something of a time warp and strongly recalls the nonrepresentational styles of the Sixties in which light, space and air helped mold both image and artist."

"ARE ADVANCES IN materials and our access to these materials governing the modus operandi of contemporary artists? Or, are artists consciously using nontraditional media to reflect the ever-increasing din of corporate infiltration? Perhaps they are simply acknowledging the ever-diminishing line that separates one thing from another. Whatever the case, the very premise of Houston-based Joseph Cohen’s “Ode to A Flower” at Octavia Art Gallery, recalls an NPR Radiolab segment about a carefully dissected caterpillar revealing the makings of a butterfly, pre chrysalis."

"REGINA SCULLY’S FORTE is her sovereign brushstroke. It steers her art — and fairly epitomizes it. At first glance, the method seems freewheeling: all gesture and dash and images of clotted incident. But at core, there is a veiled rigor or, at least, a strategy beneath the teeming surfaces."

"One of the focuses of Octavia Art Gallery is emphasizing the preservation and conservation of unique and authentic cultures worldwide. In continuing this mission, we are pleased to present Art Knows No Boundaries: Cuban Art in the US. This exhibition explores the notion that through creative expression, each artist’s work unifies and transcends borders. Artworks featured in this exhibition are by Cuban artists: Alexandre Arrechea, Neisys González, Roberto Diago, Alex Hernández Dueñas, José Emilio Fuentes Fonseca (JEFF), Kcho (Alexis Leyva Machado), The Merger, and Adislén Reyes."

"In 1979, the great minimalist sculptor Donald Judd bought a derelict army base near Marfa, Texas, so he would have space for his work. After his death, Marfa became an unlikely art community despite its remote desert location. Minimalist art can be elusive — I mostly ignored it until I worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a fascinating city so crowded, noisy and convoluted that it made me crave space and simplicity. I suddenly came to appreciate minimalist art."

"For as far back as she can remember, Regina Scully was making art. Growing up in Norfolk, Virginia, she always considered herself an artist—even before she took her first formal class at the local YMCA when she was six. Thus, it made sense to take the same journey as many of America’s artists before her: she left her hometown, studied at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, and then headed to one of the world’s meccas for visual arts, New York City. She went there because, as she says, “every [artist] is supposed to go there”; however, she couldn’t produce the pieces she wanted or get it out to audiences because she was working all the time to make ends meet. After four years, she was done with NYC.  In 2004, she moved to New Orleans."

"A new exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art complements traditional Japanese art with the contemporary work of New Orleans painter Regina Scully.  WWNO's Eileen Fleming talks with NOMA's Lisa Rotondo-McCord and the artist herself about the unexpected connection of styles."

Regina Scully starts at minute 7:00 in the episode.

"Japonism is the term used to describe Japanese influence on European art. It flourished in the mid-nineteenth century due to a renewed trade between Japan and the continent following the seclusion era. Artists like Claude Monet with his famous painting The Water Lily-Pond, 1899, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh who collected Japanese prints with his brother Theo, and other Impressionist painters, were inspired by Japanese art.
The New Orleans Museum of Art just opened an exhibition: Regina Scully | Japanese Painting: Inner Journeys featuring works of the local artist presented along selected pieces of the museum's Japanese collection."

"Where does art originate? Art schools teach techniques, theories, trends and history, but most of the artworks that survive the test of time have something mysterious or ineffable about them that can't be taught in school. Such art transcends time and space — where did the Mona Lisa's elusively beatific smirk come from and why does it affect us? Closer to home, there always has been something inexplicably Japanese about Regina Scully's complexly lyrical abstract paintings, yet the University of New Orleans graduate never studied Japanese art and has no explanation for their Asian tone. The recent acquisition of several of her canvases by the New Orleans Museum of Art inspired further interest in the parallels between her work and the museum's stellar collection of 18th- and 19th-century Japanese paintings and drawings, and the result is this unusual side-by-side expo."

Please enjoy this video portrait where artist Regina Scully speaks about the commonality between her abstract works and the paintings of the 18th and 19th century Edo-period Japanese artists. Her current exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art is on view through October 8th, 2017.

American sculptor, illustrator and self-described maker Tom Nussbaum has a remarkable way of using positive/negative space and color. His breadth of abstract paintings and sculptures are intriguing for both their spontaneity and their subtle orderliness.

"In her paintings, Betsy Eby fuses the line between the musical and the visual composition. A classically trained pianist, she seeks in her work what Rothko described as “the place where music lives.” The layers and gestures of her paintings evoke musical spaces and rhythms while drawing on patterns found in nature. From her early childhood, musical and natural rhythms blended in Eby’s sensibility. She spent her first years of life in a small town on the Oregon coast, practicing at the family piano by the age of five. Today her work reveals that interconnected sensitivity: her delicate, organic compositions become synesthesias of sound and image."

"It was not until artist Regina Scully had the opportunity to closely explore the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA)’s collection of Japanese paintings that she realized the parallels between the art she was creating, and Chinese and Japanese antecedents. In Regina Scully | Japanese Landscape: Inner Journeys, on view April 7 – October 8, 2017, paintings from throughout Scully’s career are presented with a selection of Japanese works from NOMA’s renowned permanent collection, highlighting the apparent, yet unintentional, stylistic coincidences between the American artist and 18th and 19th century Asian art."

"There are concrete examples of the real/unreal present in an exhibition of digital photographs mounted for PhotoNOLA, the annual festival of photography in the city, at Octavia Gallery. The title, “SurREAL,” indicates emphasis on the actual presence of unbelievable parts of the images, which may appear new to the imagination of the viewer. Images by Tina Freeman, Irby Pace, Kenny Morrison, and Chuck Ramirez fill the walls of the airy rooms of the gallery. They show considerations of space, whether flattened or consciously expanded, which explore the traditional three-dimensional illusion in the two-dimensional plane of the documentary photograph; and the seams in documented reality, pieced together like a patchwork of experiences – much like recent events have seemed."
 

Pierre Bergian paints empty rooms. Sometimes there is a ladder, a picture frame, a table, but these seem to do little more than add to the emptiness. 'My paintings are a little similar to still lives,' he says. 'Emptiness fascinates me.' They are about light in space. 'I never paint artificial light. I love sunshine coming into a room with a lot of shadow. I make a difference between morning and afternoon light or evening light. I also like the light of the winter sun, coming in very deeply. Moonlight is fascinating! Especially in old houses, when this light reflects on the walls, floor and ceiling. Light in a building can be so delicate.'

Bergian’s rooms are a composite of spaces which have attracted him. 'Some of the painted interiors are quite realistic. Others are compilations of what I have seen – impressions of reality.'
 

"Kikuo Saito's paintings at Octavia Art Gallery reflect the Tokyo native's flair for floating, gestural brushstrokes inflected with a prismatic bravura derived from his deep understanding of great abstract painters such as Helen Frankenthaler, with whom he once worked. These paintings are from 2010 to 2015, his final years, and are so pristine we only can wonder what would have come next."

"At Octavia, it feels like a rush of colors when going through the entrance. An exuberant mixture of warm oranges, yellows, reds, moody greens or blues, covers the canvasses displayed along the walls. The late paintings of Kikuo Saito have the gestural quality of expressionism, with a twist."

"Octavia Art Gallery will present a selection of works from the late artist Kikuo Saito. The exhibition focuses on Saito’s work from 2010 – 2015, the artist’s final years. This will be the second solo exhibition of Saito’s work at the gallery."

"NOMA acquired its first painting by Regina Scully in 2014 and added another this past year. Since then, the museum’s ties to this young New Orleans painter have grown even closer thanks to a collaboration initiated by Lisa Rotondo-McCord, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Asian Art."

"Octavia Art Gallery presenting SurREAL, featuring photographs by Tina Freeman, Kenny Morrison, Irby Pace, and Chuck Ramirez. This exhibition explores the interconnections between the real, imagined and simulated."

"I seem to love polar and almost polar places, and Iceland is one of my favorites. I have always been fascinated by what one sees from the air, but I had never before had the opportunity to shoot from a small plane. Iceland is full of glaciers, and glacial water is a milky color. The earth in many places in Iceland is black due to the amount of volcanic activity, hence the unusual contrast of light water and dark earth. There are other colors in the water and land that I can’t account for—turquoise water and café-au-lait-colored water—but that is some of the fascination."

"The cities with the most interesting art scenes usually have unique visual identities. Miami can be notoriously crass, but it's also dynamic and colorful thanks to Hispanic and Caribbean influences, which are seen in its art. If older Miami artists evoked the soulful sensibilities of their homelands, more recent arrivals like Brazilian native Rubem Robierb often embody a mix of tropical color and global pop culture. His big War-Hol Flowers painting recalls Andy Warhol's classic 1960s flower graphics, but it is based on the florid patterns made by hollow-point bullets on impact. Rose Bouquet, a painting of a hand grenade in a floral arrangement, is similarly ballistic. Ditto Butterfly II (pictured), a blood orange butterfly that is actually a bullet depicted against a blue background, and Love Changes Everything is a 3-foot-tall sculpture of a bullet with a tip covered in Swarovski crystals. Beautiful but creepy, these colorful, crisply executed works could be seen as glamorizing weaponry, but presumably were intended as critiques of pop culture's incessant fetishization of violence."

After more than 30 years as an actress, Houston native Lois Chiles knows the feeling of being observed.

She was, perhaps, most watched for her turn as a Bond girl - she portrayed Holly Goodhead opposite Roger Moore in the 1979 James Bond film "Moonraker" - but also had feature roles in other notable films, including "The Great Gatsby," "The Way We Were" and "Broadcast News."

Although Chiles is still naturally gorgeous at 69, these days she prefers to be the observer. She spends as much as five hours, five days a week, in her New York studio, painting. Her subjects, most often, are nudes - a practice necessary to understanding what's underneath clothing when one paints.

"As Miami fair week approaches and galleries from around the globe begin to fill tents and convention centers all over the city, it’s important to strategically approach your itinerary. How else can you hit all the fairs—and artworks—you hope to see? Beyond the main event, Art Basel in Miami Beach, a crop of satellite fairs offer the opportunity to discover even more work, often by younger artists and at a lower price point. We’ve scoured the previews of Miami’s six strongest satellite fairs—UNTITLED, Art Miami, NADA, PULSE, CONTEXT, and Miami Project—to bring you 50 artworks you won’t want to miss on your 2016 tour."

CONTEXT Art Miami
November 29 - December 4, 2016
118 NE 34th Street
Miami, FL 33127
www.contextartmiami.com

"New Orleans native Fritz Bultman was one of the founders of the modern art movement known as abstract expressionism. Nicknamed "The Irascibles," its godfather was German expressionist Hans Hofmann, with whom Bultman studied as a precocious teenager in Munich in 1935. Both eventually became New York art stars, but Bultman's oeuvre is characterized by the warmer, more lyrical qualities seen in works like his circa 1974 canvas Intrusion of Blue, with its serpentine interplay of colors."

"The world is full of beauty and there are few things more beautiful than flowers." begins photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo in her new book, In Bloom: Creating and Living with Flowers, which steps inside the studios and homes of 12 artists and designers who look to botanicals as their muse. 

"Carmen has a real appreciation for plants, observing them in great detail.  Although she's not scientific in her representations, the plants are immediately recognizable: They feel alive," Ngo says.
 

"Scully's exhibition, "Horizons in Space," includes a short video in which she explains her process and subject matter under a variety of categories: geography, intuition, and color.  She begins by saying that "Painting is very powerful.  It's its own reality."  This statement about the autonomy of painting sets the tone for the Abstract Expressionist methodology she employs in her work, beginning each painting via intuition."

"Octavia Art Gallery is presenting Pop Abstraction, a marriage of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. This exhibition characterizes the meeting of the two movements in the second half of the 20th century, during what is known as the post-war period."

 

"Henry Shane and Wayne Amedee stood on the Power Boulevard median in Kenner watching the crane operator slowly move his precious cargo. It was a special day for both Kenner businessman.

Shane and local artist Amedee's cooperative effort was coming to fruition. They watched as the 16-foot sculpture "Consolations - Lessons Learned" landed in its resting place to beautify the area, which is viewed by thousands of travelers every day."

Artist Regina Scully speaks about her abstract paintings and her creative process.

"Two new pieces of artwork were installed in the median of Power Boulevard today between 37th and 39th streets.  "Consolations - Lessons Learned" was created by local artist Wayne Amedee. It is 8-feet high, 7-feet-2 inches wide and weighs 1,000 pounds. It is made of automotive painted aluminum.

The artwork was donated by Henry and Pat Shane. The City of Kenner says it is part of its 2030 plan to beautify and improve major corridors."

"It ain't necessarily so," goes the George Gershwin song, one of the most lyrical takedowns of traditional wisdom ever penned. More recently, cognitive scientists have asserted that what we think we see "ain't necessarily so" either, but is more like a dumbed-down version of the swirling molecules described by modern physics — in the way a map simplifies the more complex reality of the landscape it represents. Some poets and artists explore the subtle mysteries below the outer facade, and this Horizons in Space expo is Regina Scully's most recent reflection on the inner life of the world around us."

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to announce Lucy Thorp as Houston’s new gallery Director.

Lucy Thorp was born and raised in Houston, Texas. She earned her BA in Art History and Spanish, graduating with High Honors from the University of Texas at Austin and has completed graduate studies at the University of Houston. Lucy has worked for the Examiner, Houston, and most recently with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Lucy has also been involved in the New Orleans art scene and was a committee member for Prospect.3, one of the largest non-profit biennial of global contemporary art in the United States.

Please welcome Lucy to her role at Octavia Art Gallery.

The recently revitalized New Orleans Warehouse District is home to many of the city’s best galleries, museums, and restaurants. The Contemporary Arts Center opened in the neighborhood in 1976. In 1984, the World’s Fair in New Orleans, which took place largely in the Warehouse District, further helped to cement the area’s reputation as a cultural center.

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to be included in the top 10!
 

Octavia Art Gallery is very proud to annouce that Regina Scully's Cosmographia has been acquired by the New Orleans Museum of Art.  The piece is currently on view in the Modern and Contemporary Art Wing.

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to announce that Kristina Larson has joined the gallery team as the new gallery Co-Director.

Kristina is a graduate of Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and earned a Mater’s degree in Arts Administration from The Savanna College of Art and Design. Kristina has worked for the Ministry of Artisana in Morocco, as a United States Peace Corps volunteer, for the Contemporary Arts Center as the Development Specialist for the Whitney White Linen Night fundraiser, and most recently as a Senior Fine Art Consultant with Martin Lawrence Galleries.

Please welcome Kristina to her role at Octavia Art Gallery.

"An abstractionist in the truest form, Pelias works intuitively to render canvases that capture moments and places she has experienced. Using oil paint, gesso, turpentine and gravity, Pelias develops layers of rich color – from dense saturations to lightly veiled washes – with gestural marks that contribute to the palpable energy emitted from each canvas."

Octavia Art Gallery - Houston is excited to announce that we will be a FotoFest 2016 Participating Space featuring a solo exhibition by guest artist Irby Pace.  The exhibition will run from March 11th to April 9th with an opening reception on March 12th from 6pm - 8pm.

"Octavia Art Gallery’s press release tells us that the three artists included in “Symmetric Equivalence” seek to “explore organic and geometric forms whose patterns have an underlying symmetry or synchronicity.” Sculptor Gil Bruvel, originally from France but now living in Texas, is represented with freestanding stainless steel heads and framed wood and resin faces that recall Jacques Lipchitz’s brand of sculpture. Bruvel’s loosely arranged carved blocks, painted in white shaded with graphite, make-up the harlequin face in Cubist #8 while Leslie Wilkes’ tightly orchestrated paintings are kaleidoscopic compositions of polygons."

Thank you New Orleans Magazine for including Octavia in the 2016 Tops of the Town as Favorite Art Gallery.  For a list of all the winners, please click the link below.

"One of Alabama’s most widely known and respected artists is back home. Known throughout the state and worldwide as Nall, the Troy native recently unveiled a massive mosaic, “Sunrise Pensee,” at the Renaissance Montgomery Hotel and Convention Center. The mosaic will permanently reside at the hotel and comes to Montgomery from Paris, where it was originally exhibited for Christian Dior Perfumes at the Grand Palais."

In her new book, Alphabet, Debbie Fleming Caffery chose twenty-six black and white photographs, each corresponding with letters of the alphabet, from her extensive archive along with some images she created that were inspired by her granddaughter. Fall Line Press publisher, William Boling, says it is “a children’s book disguised into an art book.”

Beginning November 13, 2015, the Mobile Museum of Art will present an exhibition expanding on a theme introduced in the museum’s first floor exhibition, 150 Years of American Art (ca. 1795- 1945). While that exhibition provides a visual narrative of emerging American identity as seen through art, this exhibition features art and decorative arts created since World War II, as American art emerged as a major force in the global art world.

Saturday, October 24, 2015 - 4 pm
Contemporary Arts Center
900 Camp Street | 3rd Floor

Painter explores the illusive mystery of the process of making art.  From his studio on the Italian coast, the contemporary American painter Caio Fonseca conjures whimsically arresting works of abstract art.

From September 21, 2015 through February 5, 2016, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art will present an exhibition of recent additions to the museum’s growing collection of Southern art. Often on view for the first time in the museum, these paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture represent the depth and breadth of the museum’s collection practices.

The exhibition includes Betsy Stewart's Bioverse No. 3 and Jeffrey Pitt's Dead as a Dinosaur.

Texas Contemporary Art Fair
October 1 - 4, 2015
George R. Brown Convention Center - Hall A3
1001 Avenida De Las Americas
Houston, Texas 77010
txcontemporary.com

"For a glimpse of some dangerously political work, veiled as Americana with a touch of saccharine, be sure to check out Jin Joo Chae’s piece, The Sweet Taste of Capitalism with Communist Cream III in The Spaces We Know exhibit at Octavia Art Gallery, a group show featuring works by emerging Asian artists."

"Independently and almost simultaneously, five artists and architects — John Bennett, Gustavo Bonevardi, Richard Nash Gould, Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda — came up with roughly the same idea in the autumn of 2001. The Municipal Art Society helped harness and meld their visions and make the project a reality, working with the lighting designer Paul Marantz and with Michael Ahern, an events producer."

The annual LOVE in the Garden event at the New Orleans Museum of Art honors local artists whose work and lives have made a contribution to the city of New Orleans. This year's honorees include Octavia artist Tina Freeman.

"Urbane geometry is the order of the day at Octavia Art Gallery, where Leslie Wilkes' geometric paintings evoke a kaleidoscopic sensibility employing opaquely vibrant colors reminiscent of jade, amethyst, sandstone and the like."

"With the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, area museums and libraries are commemorating the event with photography exhibits of the storm’s devastation and its aftermath. One new exhibit looks at what happened in Baton Rouge when the hurricane hit.

The LSU Museum of Art in the Shaw Center for the Arts, 100 Lafayette St., is showing “Debbie Fleming Caffery: Baton Rouge After the Storm” through Aug. 30.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Caffery, a Louisiana photographer, created a powerful series of photographs of Baton Rouge’s River Center, where the National Guard had been called to manage the surge of people from New Orleans seeking shelter after the storm."

Debbie Fleming Caffery
Southern Work
Octavia Art Gallery

"Two somber, absorbing photographs, Junior and Sarah, are exemplars of the contemplative portrait - the soul-searching, soul-revealing portrait.  And, for the viewer, it's often a markedly painful kind.  But it discloses human truth as few other genres can.  The two images are part of Debbie Fleming Caffery's "Southern Work" (on view at Octavia Art Gallery), a strong, if unwieldly, exhibition chronicling her efforts over the past several years.  Caffery has long been a master of the contemplative portrait, most notably featuring the working people of rural Louisiana.  This display has but a few examples, but they dominate..."

Seattle Art Fair
July 30 - August 2, 2015
CenturyLink Field Event Center
800 Occidental Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98134
seattleartfair.com

ALEX HERNÁNDEZ DUEÑAS AND ARIAMNA CONTINO MENDOZA

Collaborating on work for the Biennial and a show at Havana's prestigious art gallery, Galería Habana, the young couple, in their early 30s, fuse their artistic skill with a social and political awareness.

 

Gordon Mott visits studios of Cuban artists in Havana:

"No visitors can escape the palpable excitement in the Cuban artistic community . Three young artists- Frank Mujica, Adrián Fernández, and Alex Hernández - have set up a communal studio and gallery in a house on broad avenue in Havana, a kind of four-lane street dividing two city neighborhoods. The signs of decay so prevalent throughout the city are absent inside the gate of the house. The building is whitewashed and protected by a modern alram system box on the door, and inside the marble floors gleam below the large works of each artist hanging  on the walls..."

"Growing up in south Louisiana's sugar cane country, Debbie Fleming Caffery was immersed in the area's annual harvest rituals. Although increasingly mechanized, sugar cane farming still features dramatic events like the pre-harvest burning of the fields to remove leaves from the stalks prior to processing. When seen from above, swaths of Acadiana resemble a fiery apocalypse."

"Debbie Fleming Caffery’s black-and-white photography, at its most basic, is about contrast. In “Southern Work,” her poignant rendering of the Mississippi Delta, Caffery portrays Southern landscapes and their stewards."

By Marian S. McLellan

"Downtown on Julia Street at Octavia Art Gallery, more rectilinear forms are found in the two and three-dimensional works of artist Wayne Amedee, 2014 recipient of the Artist of the Year Award given by the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development and creator of the red and green sculpture in City Park, Grateful Labors."

Presented by The Helis Foundation and Sculpture for New Orleans, the Poydras Corridor Scupture Exhibition is comprised of 22 contemporary-style giant sculptures between Interstate 10 and Convention Center Boulevard.

Artwork is rotated onto the neutral ground on a regular basis, chosen by sculptor Michael Manjarris, of Sculpture for New Orleans, and Bradley Sumrall, chief curator of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

Octavia Art Gallery is very excited about the installations, and Feuerman has received a great deal of press surrounding the works.  Please see the links to press below:

The Times Picayune
The Advocate
GoNOLA
WWNO

Octavia Art Gallery presents their first solo exhibition with Louisiana-based artist Debbie Fleming Caffery. Southern Work will bring together two distinct series that have been pivotal subjects for Caffery throughout her career as well as a recent project inspired by her grandchildren.

"The winner of the first local arts-oriented pitch contest was announced this morning at New Orleans Entrepreneur Week. New Orleans native and fine arts photographer Michel Varisco was named winner of the Living With Water Civic Arts Design Pitch for her project Turning.

The $25,000 prize was decided by an audience text-in vote at The Chicory, following commentary from a critical feedback panel consisting of Sophie Harris, Executive Director of Friends of Lafitte Corridor; David Waggonner, principal of Waggonner & Ball Architects; Councilmember Susan Guidry; and Bill Gilchrist, Director of Place-Based Planning for the City of New Orleans."

With this body of photographs, and the accompanying book, Octavia artist Tina Freeman documents the working spaces of twenty-one New Orleans artists. This series sheds new light on the artists' work and process. From George Dureau to Willie Birch, each of the artists included invested their aesthetic into the spaces where they work.  Ranging from established masters to a young graffiti artist, these images give insight into process and personality, providing the viewer glimpses into the creative process.

Freeman's book, Artist Spaces: New Orleans, is available for sale at the gallery.
 

"As an expression of lived experience, all art is a form of autobiography. In Wayne Amedee's show of new work at Octavia Gallery, however, that autobiographical self-expression has taken an even more intimate turn."

"In "Alluvial Constructs," curator Laura Sandoval considers the curious paradox of present-day New Orleans—a city simultaneously undergoing rapid construction and degradation. The exhibition brings together new and existing works by a selection of local and international artists. The result is a visually varied, richly layered exploration that allows for larger themes of transformation and transcendence in the city’s history to emerge."

We're happy to announce that artist Michel Varisco has been selected to participate in the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, FL.

"Artist Ayo Scott says that he began his series of post-modern digital drawings, now on display at Octavia art gallery, somewhat casually. In a classic post-modern mode, the 34-year-old artist set out to toy with the meaning of some of western art's best known images, including Grant Wood's "American Gothic," Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker," Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel."

Texas Contemporary
September 4 - 7, 2014
George R. Brown Convention Center - Hall D
1001 Avenida De Las Americas
Houston, TX 77010
txcontemporary.com

"In Ayo Scott's solo show at Octavia Gallery, mythic beings and modern technology populate a dramatic array of collages and digital drawings."

"If Kandinsky, Rosenquist, and Lichtenstein morphed into one, the resultant painter might be [Regina Scully] whose acrylic paintings of shattered landscapes appear abstract and impenetrable, a fantasia of abbreviated strokes of color."

BY TINA COPLAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG R. STALEY

MAY/JUNE 2014

At a local gathering of The Explorers Club, Washington painter Betsy Stewart chatted with a group of scientists. When they asked how her work was going, she reached for her iPhone and pulled up a photo of her newest painting. Against a midnight-blue background, the image showed brilliant bursts of orange that appeared to drift forward and vanish back into dark obscurity.

Octavia Art Gallery is excited to announce that artist Wayne Amedee has been selected by the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development to receive the award for Artist of the Year! Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne and the Office of Cultural Development are recognizing 17 honorees at the 2014 Louisiana Culture Awards reception at the Capitol Park Museum on Tuesday, April 22.

We are honored for Amedee to be included in this list of distinguished individuals and organizations that will be recognized for their efforts to highlight and cultivate our state's cultural resources.

Each year, the American Art Awards, with an intent to introduce the best American galleries to unknown artists worldwide, selects their top 25 picks for popular and accomplished galleries, only one per state. President of AAA, Thom Bierdz, shared with me why AAA has selected Octavia above the many other Louisiana galleries.

To read the full article online, please click here.

"Here Pitt's related holistic sensibilities appear in colorful canvases deploying abstract patterns to suggest the formal similarities between nature's biggest and tiniest structures."

To read the full article online, please click here.

Octavia Art Gallery currently has three large Walter Anderson works on paper in inventory. Anderson's depictions of the plants, animals, and people of the Gulf Coast have placed him in the forefront of American painters of the Twentieth Century. These three larger scale works from his Oldfields period reflect his training, innovation and thorough understanding of the history of art.

Images and details on the works are available upon request.

"One might say abstraction is quietly making a comeback today, but it's been alive and well all along. Fashions change, but most artists remain somewhat consistent. That said, there is indeed a new breed of abstraction that reflects 21st century consciousness. Regina Scully's Terra Incognita expo at Octavia Art Gallery is a case in point."

To read the full article online, please click here.

"Anastasia Pelias's Art is as much about the pleasure of process as it is about any further idea she attempts to convey. Process is what strikes you first. A second, and allusive, layer soon emerges."

To read the full article online, please click here.

To read the full article online, please click here.

"Serendipity drew Octavia Art Gallery president Pamela Bryan to her new Julia Street location."

To read the full article, please click here.

"So much of color field painting—the work of Ellsworth Kelly, Kenneth Noland, Mark Rothko—has been read in terms of purity of expression, an attempt to grasp sublimity through color. Despite its critics past and present, the aesthetic ideals continue to resonate today, as seen in Anastasia Pelias’ show “Ritual Devotion” on view at Octavia Art Gallery."

To read the full article online, please click here.

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to be partnering with the New Orleans BioInnovation Center to facilitate a rotating exhibition of artwork in their new location.

The New Orleans BioInnovation Center, a Gold LEED certified facility, offers 66,000 square feet of lab, office, and conference space needed to cultivate life science startups in New Orleans. The Center is part of a new wave of advancements in Louisiana which are at the forefront of today's biotechnology surge. As a cornerstone of Louisiana's commitment to nurturing biotechnology within the state, the Center is a technology business incubator that aims to stimulate bioscience entrepreneurship in the New Orleans area.

The annual LOVE in the Garden event at the New Orleans Museum of Art honors local artists whose work and lives have made a contribution to the city of New Orleans. This year's honorees include Octavia artist Grover Mouton.

"At the Bordeaux apartment of the American artist Carmen Almon, palest blue morning glories twine up a bamboo trellis, bosomy peonies preen their ruffled edges, and exuberant cherry blossoms stretch their branches toward the sky, proof spring has finally arrived. Not made by nature, but rather by Almon, these hand-sculptured and painted tole botanical compositions seem to defy their sheet-metal origins to come alive. Branches bend, vines loop, leaves twist, and a few surprising bugs, from butterflies to beetles, drop in to colonize her plants."

"Octavia Gallery's expansive new Julia Street location in a superbly restored 19th-century building has got to be one of the most impressive new exhibition spaces in the region. The gallery's current Home group expo is also impressive with its array of work by top-rank Louisiana-born New York art stars like Lynda Benglis, Keith Sonnier and Rashaad Newsome."

To read the full article online, please click here.

"Who made the creepy-cute stuffed spiders? I visited Octavia Gallery’s new spot on Julia Street, where I encountered a swarm of charming soft sculpture arachnids in a sunny corner. The glistening spiders, composed of clear vinyl and patterned fabric, were a showstopper,"

To read the full article online, please click here.

Recognizing the need to engage a contemporary audience that appreciates the vibrant visual culture of Louisiana and the role of New Orleans as a rising, international art center, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art has organized the second annual Louisiana Contemporary presented by Regions Bank.

Octavia artists E2 (Epaul Julian and Elizabeth Kleinveld) and Wayne Amedee have been selected to be included in the exhibition. The exhibition runs from August 3 - September 22, 2013.

"New Orleans native and ascendant New York art-star Rashaad Newsome has been merging high art and street culture in a trajectory that included the 2010 Whitney Biennial, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and now NOMA, where his King of Arms sculptural collages appear downstairs."

To read the full article online, please click here.

Rashaad Newsome's work will be included in the upcoming exhibition Home at Octavia Art Gallery.

Mary Fitzpatrick's article covers the history and restoration of 800 Magazine Street - the incredible building which will be home to Octavia Art Gallery's new space, opening on White Linen Night (August 3, 2013).

View Article

Octavia Art Gallery is very proud to announce that The Ogden Museum of Southern Art has acquired a work by Jeffrey Pitt for their permanent collection. The painting comes from the Living with Pop exhibition (Octavia Art Gallery, Fall 2012).