Meet the 2026 Acadiana Trailblazers

DANIEL BAROUSSE

Daniel Barousse was five years into working what he thought was his dream job. An avid skateboarder, he was working as a sales rep for a major skateboard brand. It was 2015 and he was sitting on a curb with a friend in Austin, Texas. While chatting with his friend, he realized there were still many days when he just did not want to go to work.

Fast forward to 2018, and Barousse’s employer laid him off. He was quickly offered a similar job with another skateboard company, but he said the prospect of the job “didn’t set my soul on fire.”

Barousse decided to ride his bike from Denver to Austin to clear his head. While riding, he asked himself “What would my day look like if I was a billionaire?” The answer he came up with included skateboarding, riding his bike and making stuff for his family out of wood. All of the men in his family had done woodworking. His grandfather had been a master carpenter.

Years earlier, Barousse had seen the work of the Japanese artist Haroshi, who created a sculpture out of recycled skateboards. So, Barousse had the idea to also make sculptures and furniture out of recycled skateboards.

“I realized the only way you don’t have days where you do not want to come to work is if you’re the creator,” Barousse said.

Working with his friend Grayson out of a garage in Denver, Barousse made his first table out of recycled skateboards. But seven months later, he met a Louisiana girl and decided to return home to Lafayette to pursue that relationship. He converted his father’s old storage shed into a wood shop.

Over the years, Barousse has completed a variety of projects, including a skateboard sculpture of Joe Cool. He also made a lounge chair for (and got to meet) action star Jason Momoa. He made the world’s largest skateboard rack out of recycled skateboards, and it is still on display at Relief Skate Supply in Panama City, Florida.

Being from Acadiana has been a positive influence on Barousse in ways both personal and professional. He has traveled around the globe to spots including Costa Rica, Japan, Thailand, Spain and France but feels the hospitality in Acadiana is unlike any other place in the world. But it has also influenced his art.

“There’s a specific DIY culture in south Louisiana that I feel doesn’t exist in other parts of the country,” Barousse said.”

When he is not making skateboards, the 36-year-old Barousse uses his semi-pro cycling skills for fundraisers to donate free skateboards to children on the Gulf Coast. He has provided over $100,000 in skateboards with his work. Each giveaway also includes hands-on instruction from expert skateboarders so the children can learn how to skateboard properly.

Through it all, Barousse is passionate about both his professional and charitable work and optimistic about the future.

“I can’t wait to see where we end up 20 years in the future,” Barousse said. “I’ve gotten to a pretty cool place.”

Barousse Works
barousseworks.com
@barousseworks

ROZALYN LECOMPTE

Roz LeCompte is a renaissance woman with multiple talents and passions is in her blood.

LeCompte is a self-taught artist. She paints, sculpts, writes poems and even created a successful drum accessory brand. Her passion for art began as a child. She grew up in a crowded household with four younger sisters, and painting served as an escape from the constant motion all around her. It still functions as a refuge for her.

“Creating is the way I have brought play into my adulthood. I am constantly making.  Constantly experimenting. Always searching for what feels most authentic in that moment.  I don’t make for anyone but myself. It’s how I tune out the chaos of the world. I guess it’s a coping mechanism,” LeCompte said.

When the 47-year-old LeCompte was in high school, she would go to the mall with her friends. But she would be frustrated that she could not afford some of the jewelry she wanted. So she decided to make her own.

“I was always making what I wanted,” LeCompte said.

LeCompte recently worked for ten years with a company she founded, Secondline Jewels. A live music buff, LeCompte made earrings, necklaces, cuffs and rings from upcycled drum cymbals.

LeCompte also upcycles items from her own household. When the elastic on her daughter’s flowered fitted sheet got too stretched out, LeCompte cut strips from the sheet and wove them in with other fabrics to create sculptures of swamp lotuses that hung from a ceiling.

Another creative upcycling moment for LeCompte came when she discovered an old seesaw by the side of the road. She covered the seats in velvet and painted flags from hemp canvas. This piece became a part of the Cur Non exhibition celebrating the legacy of the Marquis de Lafayette.

In 2024, LeCompte expanded her art repertoire to include a deck of cards inspired by Parisian Marie Lenormand’s 14th century illustrated tarot deck. While LeCompte was mourning the death of her friend, the artist Dege Legg, she created the Rêverie Oracle Deck. Each card featured images from her work.

Currently, LeCompte devotins her attention to the Franco Fine Arts Exchange in Lafayette, an organization she founded last year and where she serves as the creative director. The organization is dedicated to facilitating lasting connections between Acadian artists around the world. These connections will take forms like penpal correspondences between artists, transcontinental collaborations, group exhibitions and immersive residencies.

Acadian culture is something LeCompte is intensely proud of. She did not learn of her own Acadian heritage until her grandmother passed away in 2017.

“My family survived deportation. They were warriors,” LeCompte said. “I feel like I was supposed to be born here.”

Roz LeCompte
rozlecompte.com
@rozlecompte

PAT AND ANDRE JUNEAU

Seventy-eight-year-old Pat Juneau loved making stuff even when he was a little boy in Alexandria. His father had grown up poor and made things because he had to. When Pat was only five years old, he built his own toy boats to play with. Decades later, Pat is a master craftsman who creates bright folk art sculptures and furniture with his son Andre in their studio in Scott, Louisiana.

For the 44-year-old Andre, the love of art and creation also extends back to childhood. He was going to art shows with his dad since he was only six weeks old.  He worked in 3D printing and IT, but kept getting drawn back to art and decided to join his father and pursue it full-time.

Pat has been a full-time artist for over 50 years. He and Andre build a variety of commissions for clients, including furniture like benches and thrones (yes, thrones). They create art with a Cajun flair, like painted sculptures of buckets of crabs. Other artworks prominently feature alligators and crawfish.

“We lean really heavily into Acadiana stuff,” Andre said.

Their art is on sale in multiple galleries in both Lafayette and New Orleans as well as a couple across the Gulf South. They also travel to art shows and festivals throughout the year. Pat has been selling his art at Jazz Fest since 1975.

Pat and Andre primarily work in aluminum. They used to work in steel, but they had practical reasons for switching to aluminum.

“Aluminum doesn’t rust,” Pat said. “When you live in southern Louisiana, things tend to rust … Aluminum is also lighter. People can carry it out of an art show instead of having to get it delivered.”

Both father and son believe that adaptability and flexibility is an important part of creativity.

“Sometimes you think you have a good idea but it ends up not being as good as you thought it would be,” Pat said.

“Patience is necessary,” Andre added.

A love of art and creation is not just limited to the men in the Juneau family. Suzanne and Angelique Juneau (Suzanne is the mother of the family, Angelique is the daughter) create artisanal jewelry out of the family workshop in Scott. Suzanne is a founding member of the Louisiana Crafts Guild. Angelique also teaches art in Broussard.

Andre is now the president of the Louisiana Crafts Guild. The guild promotes art in a variety of ways, from galleries in Lafayette and New Orleans (Sans Souci and La Guild, respectively) to the Louisiana Crafts Fair at Festival Acadiens. He also helps organize the studio tour in March, which allows locals to visit artists in their studios and workshops to see how art gets made. Andre fondly remembers one visit from a machinist father and a college-aged art student daughter. The father was openly skeptical of his daughter’s ability to earn a living with her art and wanted her to pursue other options. But three hours later, he was enthusiastic about his daughter’s ambitions.

“By the time he left, he was talking about coming back,” Andre said.

Juneau Metalworks
psjuneau.com
@juneaumetalworks

KELLY GUIDRY

Kelly Guidry has been drawing and doodling for as long as he can remember. He grew up in Lafayette’s north end surrounded by creative people. His grandfather did metal castings, and his mother was a seamstress who worked on Mardi Gras gowns. When he went to the University of Louisiana, he majored in advertising design. But when he took a sculpture class there in 1991, he was hooked.

“I just loved it,” Guidry said.

After graduating from the University of Louisiana, he would work in advertising while making his sculptures in his free time. In 2000, he decided to take the leap and quit his ad job to pursue his art full-time, using his savings to build his inventory. After selling sculptures at events like Festival International de Louisiane, he purchased a house in Breaux Bridge that has served as his studio for the ensuing 25 years. It is within walking distance of the Pink Alligator Gallery, where many of his works are on display.

Guidry embraces a style he has referred to as “modern primitive.” He uses chainsaws, power tools and welding equipment to create his sculptures. His primary mediums are copper, steel and wood.

The 53-year-old Guidry’s sculptures are eclectic. He made a functional four-foot-tall nutcracker for a client. He made a life-sized blue heron to be mounted on a wall. He made an egret angel — a winged figurine with an egret head on top of it. He made insect sculptures out of solid wood and welded metal for the Lafayette Science Museum’s entomology exhibit. The sculpted insects included cicadas, mosquitoes, wasps and dragonflies.

“My inspiration comes from a lot of different places,” Guidry said. Sometimes his commissions lead him into unexpected places. “Sometimes people ask me to do something I would not have thought to do on my own.”

Guidry said his work has evolved over the years. He said it used to be simpler, but now is more detailed. He described himself as “an attention deficit-style worker.” He will start many different projects at once, going back and forth between the works. Some pieces are private commissions, others are sculptures he is creating for his inventory and others are just for fun.

A lot of Guidry’s commissions come from clients who are from Acadiana but have moved away from the area and want to have a little piece of home with them wherever they are. As a child, Guidry did not have much interest in Cajun culture, but that changed for him as he matured. He grew to appreciate the friendly, welcoming nature of the Acadiana community.

“As I got older, little by little, I gained more respect for the culture and how unique it is,” Guidry said. “I’ve come to be very proud to represent my culture.”

When Guidry is not creating art, he spends time with his wife Robin, herself an artist who designs jewelry that is also sold at the Pink Alligator Gallery, and their nine-year-old daughter Zoe.

Kelly Guidry
kellyguidry.com
@KellyGuidryArt

SANDRA WALKIN

Growing up in Elizabeth, Louisiana (a small town near Fort Polk), Sandra Walkin was a child who loved decorating and painting her room. But while the artistic tendencies were there from a young age, she was also drawn to the sciences and made her career as a pharmacist. But after she retired and her son and daughter moved out of the house, she found herself looking for something new and she found that by creating bowls and tables out of wood and metal.

“I think of myself as a finisher,” Walkin said. “I find cool pieces of wood and I do cool things with them.”

The birth of Walkin’s art career began while she was still a pharmacist. She wanted to live in the woods and be surrounded by trees, but her husband, a doctor who was often on-call, could not be that far away from the local hospital. But they found a solution. They bought eleven acres that had been most recently used as a golf driving range and hired a landscape architect to plant between five and six thousand trees over the span of two years.

When Hurricane Rita devastated the area in 2005, it hit many of Walkin’s trees hard. While walking her property, she started saving pieces of wood that caught her eye either because of the shape or the grain. Eventually, she got the idea to fill some of the holes and imperfections with metal.

“I love organic pieces of wood,” Walkin said. “Pieces of wood that have imperfections are the best. I find those imperfections are an opportunity to create beauty … Every single piece of wood I collect has a story.”

As the years passed, she took classes in various forms of finishing — Venetian plasters, gilding, chemical patinas. The scientist in her was particularly fascinated by chemical patinas — forming a colorful surface layer on metal by applying chemicals like acids to accelerate or control the reaction. She likes the variety that comes with chemical patinas. Even if you use the same chemical on the same metal, she said the result will be different day to day depending on things like weather conditions, water conditions and other factors.

“It’s never boring and it’s never ever the same,” Walkin said.

One wooden bowl Walkin initially discovered was covered with grime. She gilded it in silver then edged it in 23 karat gold. She found a slab of walnut and turned it into a side table, inlaying the imperfections with brass then setting it on a stone base.

Currently, Walkin’s pieces are on display in the DPR Gallery in Lake Charles. Her work also appeared with a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit at the Historic City Hall Arts & Cultural Center in Lake Charles. As part of that show, Walkin asked the museum to relax its standard “do not touch” restrictions on the exhibits because she wanted people to feel the wood.

When she is not working on her art, Walkin tends to her property.

“Taking care of a forest is a full-time job,” Walkin said. “But my forest and my art go hand in hand.”

Sandra Walkin
 @louisiana.artisan.furniture
 @swalkin