Visual Arts, Gambit

Review: Endless Line and Self-Portrait

D. Eric Bookhardt — Mon, 20 May 2013 16:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on a site-specific installation at Newcomb Art Gallery by Pat Steir by D. Eric Bookhardt Big time celebrities in cities like New York sometimes get big heads. It is a common human trait to try to find meaning in fame and fortune, but wisdom is a very different experience.…

Review: Blame It on Vegas: Collecting Meta Modern

D. Eric Bookhardt — Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on Stephen Paul Day's mixed-media works by D. Eric Bookhardt What do the rise and fall of empires have to do with Las Vegas? Probably not much except that both are marked by glamorous and grandiose symbolism.…

Review: O Bury Me Not

D. Eric Bookhardt — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on mixed-media collages by Michael Pajon by D. Eric Bookhardt Winston Churchill once said "History is written by the victors." But it also is true that stories are for everyone, and in America, stories appear almost everywhere, from song lyrics to comic strips or even old vintage scraps of paper, as we see in Michael Pajon's striking O Bury Me Not collage exhibition at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery.…

Review: New work at St. Claude galleries

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on shows at the Front and UNO St. Claude Gallery by D. Eric Bookhardt Kevin Baer's Ritual Process show at the UNO St. Claude Gallery is a little like the jazz piano playing of Keith Jarrett: both seem coolly minimal yet are actually complex. Baer deploys organic materials with surprising lyricism to evoke natural and man-made processes.…

Review: Cardak Ni Na Nebu Ni Na Zemiji

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on a show that juxtaposes old gas stations and Soviet-era monuments by D. Eric Bookhardt What do abandoned local gas stations and Soviet-era monuments have in common? The short answer is Srdjan Loncar, a New Orleans-based Croatian expat artist, who used them as the basis for this Barrister's show.…

Review: Monica Zeringue and Stephanie Patton

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on graphite drawings and multimedia works in the Warehouse Arts District by D. Eric Bookhardt Go to any major museum and you see art based on mythology, from the Renaissance to modern times. In Goddesses and Monsters at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Monica Zeringue's spectacular graphite drawings — nude self portraits of the artist in various mythic guises — may offer some clues even as they evoke contemporary performance art.…

Review: Troy Dugas and Casey Ruble

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on new collage work in the Warehouse Arts District by D. Eric Bookhardt In the art world, some people wonder if this is the worst or the best of times. Neither of the leading art capitals, New York and London, have produced any truly exciting new art or artists in ages, but the silver lining is that tedious trends like postmodernism no longer rule, and vital regional art scenes like New Orleans and Los Angeles have never been more highly regarded.…

Review: Brilliant Disguise: Masks and Other Transformations at the CAC

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on the NOMA collection presented by the CAC by D. Eric Bookhardt The Contemporary Arts Center's Brilliant Disguise show is nothing if not surprising. Organized by New Orleans Museum of Art curator Miranda Lash using work from NOMA's collection, it is not only an unexpected example of institutional collaboration, it also is surprising for its unlikely visual relationships.…

Review: Cinematrope, by Ryn Wilson

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt is intrigued by the new show at the UNO St. Claude Gallery by D. Eric Bookhardt When we were young, we may have dreamed that our grown up lives would be like movies, epic adventures in which we were the stars and wrote the script instead of our mostly uncool parents. Only as adults did we learn that life is a collaboration of luck, intention and circumstance even if our dreams remained as cinematic as ever.…

Review: Works by Chris Guarisco, James Esber and Jane Fine

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on new paintings in the Warehouse and St. Claude districts by D. Eric Bookhardt St. Joseph was a biblical figure, but to New Orleans' large Sicilian community he's the saint whose intercession saved Sicily from famine, so all those St. Joseph's Day altars elaborately festooned with food illustrate how historic icons can be adapted to particular times and places. Chris Guarisco's new paintings provide a more localized interpretation.…

Review: Wessel Castle

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0500

D. Eric Bookhardt on photos and mixed media by Trey Burns and Alli Miller by D. Eric Bookhardt You see them everywhere if you look hard enough, but they are especially prevalent along stretches of older highways in the rural South and West: Places where boom years came and went and where the buildings and signs of earlier times have been adapted to appeal to the trends of the present, sometimes in vain. Abandoned signs with words mangled by wind or vandalism litter the landscape, broadcasting jabberwocky messages to uncomprehending drivers, and even those buildings that have found a second life can look lost in their new roles, surreal artifacts at the intersection of aspiration and desperation.…

Review: Saint Almost

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0600

D. Eric Bookhardt on Michael Bolerjack's paintings at d.o.c.s Gallery by D. Eric Bookhardt "New Orleans is the most beautiful city because it is gritty and raw. You love the city because of it, not in spite of it."…

John Burr

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0600

John T. Burr, an artist and longtime supporter of the arts, died Feb. 22 after a long illness. A native of Massachusetts who grew up in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, before adopting New Orleans as his home, he brought a quirky Caribbean sensibility to his many creative endeavors.…

Review: The Heir Show

D. Eric Bookhardt — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 04:00:00 -0600

D. Eric Bookhardt appraises a new exhibit at Good Children Gallery by D. Eric Bookhardt One of the cool things about the St. Claude Arts District is that you never know what you're going to see. Now in its fifth year and bigger and better than ever, St. Claude has attracted national and global attention as the only experimental artist-run gallery district of any size in America.…