Greater New Orleans

Art East: Slidell mixed media exhibit offers lessons in metaphor

We are so lucky to live in a city that has respect for art and for the artists who share their insights and efforts for others to see. 

Photo by Kathleen DesHotelWinner of the St. Tammany Parish Purchase Award, Therese Knowles of Baton Rouge showed the many layers of enjoyment provided in 'Enjoying the Garden.' 

Slidell offers art galleries and activities that involve its community and visitors in a learning process.  What we are learning is respect for one another, respect for many views and appreciation for the creative process. 

Sam Caruso Jr., Slidell Memorial Hospital Director of Marketing, Public and Governmental Relations, said of our milieu, “Those who know are aware that Slidell is culturally rich, progressive and intellectual.” 

Each year, Slidell and its Commission on the Arts extends an opportunity for artists to use several media to express their ideas. 

The artworks in each of this exhibit express more than the technical ability of an artist.  They also bring to awareness what artists see metaphorically that others might not. 

In the book, “The Postman” by Antonio Skarmet, a relationship develops between Mario, the postman, and the poet, Pablo Neruda.  Mario wishes to write a poem to the woman he loves, and in conversations with Neruda Mario eventually realizes from his lessons that the entire world is a metaphor.  Thus, it is the job of the poet and the artist to cause others to become aware through the metaphor, expressing one thing in terms normally denoting another. 

A prime example of metaphor exists in “Deadly Blossoms” a vase by Kelly Landrum-Hammell.  The piece is constructed in raku firings and decorated with stems and flowers created with spent bullets.  Together the elements of earth and man combine to tell stories of how beautiful and harmful can exist in one environment.  It also gives a viewer hope that the harmful can be made beautiful. 

Diane St. Germain, who is spiritual in all her artistic interpretations, offers a worn chair and building façade to offer her vision in “Time Passing.”  It shares the emotions associated with purpose and usefulness in things and people that we might take for granted were it not for paying attention to the reliable and faithful under our noses. 

Photo by Kathleen DesHotelJanet Akers from Vicksburg, Miss., used all earth products to create the clay and fox tail grass horse, 'Golden Girl.' 

The first-place winner, “Aqua” by Jeff Thibodeaux, presents individual droplets atop hammered copper.  The directions of the scores in the copper simulate water’s flow while the large droplets in complimentary aqua focus attention via close-ups of the smaller parts of the flow.  Thus, it depicts an almost scientific study of hydrology. 

In her layered sculpture, “Enjoying the Garden,” Therese Knowles uses wood, clay and paper to present all the pleasures and elements that produce a garden.  With parts of smiles and a hand holding a garden product, she reaches to her audience in offering the gratification of a beloved hobby. 

Known for his sculptures, Michael Reed combines a painted canvas and a sculpture of a child in “Hanging Out with Kayden.”  The black and white subject on a warm red background, going from bright reds to darker reds generates the feelings of love that children bring.  Making it partly three-dimensional generates the feeling that children reach out for our affections and give as much as they receive. 

One of the most colorful and bright pieces in the show is a presentation of the reality of a bayou’s path mixed with the manmade blueprints and maps. “ Little Pecan Bayou,” by Stephen Delatte, engenders a connection with planned and natural phenomena.  The brightness demands attention and interpretation as the waterway crosses on its own path in a horizontal wiggle across the plane. 

One of the smaller, yet most stunning, pieces in the show is “Golden Girl” by Janet Akers.  It is a clay sculpture of a horse in brilliant orange and yellow with mane fashioned from foxtail grass seed heads.  The presentation suggests pride and dignity of the noble animal.  Its form brings to mind clay figurines designed by James and Walter Anderson for their brother, Peter, in the Shearwater Pottery Studio in Ocean Springs, Miss.

Art can even bring us on travels.  Rita Maduell brings us to Bordeaux, France, where we look into a shop window to see a man’s dress-to-impress suit juxtaposed to an elegant woman’s dress.  Peering through the window of the artist’s eyes and then to a shop’s window view of French fashion creates the feeling of being there appreciating a place and tradition that we might never witness without Maduell’s experience and ensuing art. 

“Flight and Home” by Angela Berry mixed vines and digital prints from film to create little cupped nests on vines that stretch from the center evoking the feeling of flight in and out.  There is a suggestion of fragility implied in the flight and security in the nest. 

The bold metaphors in large pieces and few smaller ones present an excellent exhibit, which can be credited to the expert eye of the judge, E. John Bullard, director emeritus of NOMA.  He said that he was pleased with the quality of entries and struggled to narrow the more than 80 original entries to 29. 

“I look not only at the works individually but also how they will hang together as a group.  The current show demonstrates a great range of styles, from highly realistic to totally abstract, with variations in between.  Something here will appeal to every taste and unite diversity within a high lever of skill,” he said. 

Art is expression, and humans need to express and be understood.  This presentation of metaphorical images brings them to our attention and makes them available to anyone who wants a cathartic visit to a place of refinement and cultured works.  Bring your children, your grandma, or just go alone. 

The exhibit will be showing through Feb. 11 at the Slidell Cultural Center at City Hall on 2055 Second Street in Olde Towne.  For further information about individual artworks, artists or the exhibit, call the Slidell Department of Cultural and Public Affairs, at 985.646.4375 or visit www.slidell.la.us. 

News about arts activities in east St. Tammany may be sent to Kathleen DesHotel, 1120 Pennsylvania Ave.,  Slidell, LA 70458-2008; or by e-mail to kathleenfocused@gmail.com.  All submissions become the property of The Times-Picayune and will not be returned; submissions may be edited and published or otherwise reused in any medium.