Making Music On Canvas
On the cover of zydeco musician Keith Frank’s 2021 album “The Resurrection of the Creole Connection” is a painted scene of an African-American Creole family sitting out in the front yard. The woman…
Art
Catch And Release
Lafayette nature photographer Gary Meyers gives new meaning to the old sportsman adage, “catch and release.” With his camera and kayak, Meyers — dressed in camouflage — moves quietly through the swamps and bayous of Louisiana’s Acadian parishes, capturing…
Lost and Found
Historians love to write about the Acadian diaspora, and Longfellow tells us of their “wonder and sadness.” Now, Lafayette artist Cecilia O’Keefe Neustrom shows us the faces of their “Cajun” descendants who live across the prairies and along…
Habitats of Humanity
I’ve heard it a thousand times when someone leans in after learning I am a custom residential designer: “I always wanted to be an architect! Like Art Vandelay, you know, from Seinfeld.” This declaration is typically followed with an explanation…
Building on the Past
Dale Pierrottie is an artist, musician, preservationist, teacher and sometimes actor from Lafayette, but more importantly he is a master of an ancient Native American building technique that helped 18th-century French settlers build their homes in colonial Louisiana.…
"Relentless Painter” from Lafayette Celebrated in Major Exhibition at AcA
LAFAYETTE, La (press release) – AcA launches a retrospective exhibition of Olin John “Leroy” Evans (b.1951). An artist in the Lafayette community who rarely pursued attention for his works but ceaselessly painted, Evans passed away in Lafayette on September 9,…
Visual Vocabulary
To see more of dusty reed’s work visit cajunpicasso.com “One look at Dusty Reed’s paintings filled with fragmented, angular imagery and you’ll know why he’s called the Cajun Picasso. Like Pablo Picasso, who drew inspiration from African tribal…
Teaching Artists
There are so many reasons to love you, Acadiana. I love the food and the festivals (I’ve danced my heart out at several recently). I love the natural beauty that surrounds us,…
Medicinal Artistry
“Art for art’s sake” is a popular trope in the art world, but to Lafayette artist Gwendolyn Alexis Richard, art is a place of solace that awakens the imagination to help heal the minds of troubled children and adults.…
Naturally Surreal
Lafayette artist Amy Michelle Guidry has much in common with the 19th-century French Impressionist painter Edgar Degas. To Degas, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Guidry paints “not just to bring attention to issues…
Vulnerable Landscape
The 18th century German poet Goethe is said to have quipped, “music is liquid architecture” and “architecture is frozen music.” To South Louisiana architect and landscape artist Claude Ellender, painting is music on canvas. Born in New Orleans…
Bright Lights, Bigger City
As a kid growing up in the small, rural town of Mamou, I had huge aspirations of starting my own business one day. At least once every couple of months, my mother and I would come to Lafayette to go…
Brown Cotton
Long forgotten due to its low commercial value, brown cotton is experiencing a renaissance in popularity among those who want to rediscover the "home-made" aesthetic. Not as commercially coveted as white cotton, its cultivation has long been a family affair.…
The Sacred and the Profane
On the 15-mile drive south from Houma to Chauvin, if we weren’t paying attention, we might have missed the plot of land on our right as we rode along the appropriately named Bayouside Drive. We noticed an incongruous-looking lighthouse on…
Common Bond
Having been born from the union of a Cormier and a Prudhomme there is no question about the legitimacy of my Louisiana nature. Still, a sense of soulful belonging tended to evade me as a child and teenager. In south Louisiana,…
Shades of Gray
Life in Louisiana’s Acadian parishes is colorful, yet, the internationally acclaimed Lafayette photographer Lucius Fontenot is an artist who sees timeless spiritual rhythms and beauty in the gray shadows of Louisiana’s Cajun culture. “I love how unique, beautiful, strange,…
Nouvelles de villes
Win Summer in Nova Scotia Vermilion Parish The Centre acadien (historicnovascotia.ca) and the Abbeville Cultural and Historical Alliance (vermilionchamber.org) jointly announce the availability of the Russell Gaspard French Immersion Scholarship, to be awarded to Vermilion Parish high school students for…
Nouvelles de villes
Win Summer in Nova Scotia Vermilion Parish The Centre acadien (historicnovascotia.ca) and the Abbeville Cultural and Historical Alliance (vermilionchamber.org) jointly announce the availability of the Russell Gaspard French Immersion Scholarship, to be awarded to Vermilion Parish high school students for…
The Rougarou: The Wild Man of the Bayous
The legend of the werewolf, member of the pantheon of movie monsters like the Mummy, Dracula, or Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, is found across multiple eras and diverse countries. We know the basic facts: the transformation from human to wolf during…
Plus ça change:
Quo Vadis Arte? Where does the Acadiana Center for the Arts go from here? What happens to the arts when public assemblies are restricted? Where does the local art scene go? An interview with Acadiana Center of the Arts’ Executive…
L'art: Family of Man
Over the last four decades, the acclaimed Lafayette photographer Philip Gould has traveled the cultural and spiritual byways of South Louisiana with his camera and imagination in search for what the Swiss-born American photographer Robert Frank described as “the humanity…
Prayerful Painting
The Bible tells us the prayer “of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Now witness “soulful impressions” and prayerful paintings by St. Martinville artist Dennis Paul Williams, a righteous man. The Louisiana music world knows Williams as the guitarist…
Musical Magic
Festivals Acadiens et Créoles is usually the highlight of the region’s fall festival season. As both temperatures and the likelihood of hurricanes drop, lovers of Cajun and creole music flock from around the world to Girard Park in Lafayette. Things…
Organized Chaos
John Muir, the famed Scottish-American naturalist and “Father of the National Parks,” once wrote that only in the wilderness could he find his soul. Like Muir, artist Bill Iles turns to the swamps and forests of Southwest Louisiana as a…
