Photographer David Leventi’s new monograph, ‘Opera’ (Damiani) is the sum of many parts. “As the son of two architects, I experience an almost religious feeling walking into a grand space such as an opera house” writes Mr. Leventi, an architectural photographer who, over the course of eight years photographed the interiors of more than 40 opera houses around the world.
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is thrilled to present the work of MacArthur Fellowship winner and internationally-recognized artist Whitfield Lovell. On display through September 13, Whitfield Lovell: Deep River is a multi-media installation that explores ideas of memory, identity, and freedom. Sculpture, video, drawing, sound, and music join together to create a unique experience that takes visitors on a symbolic journey in search of liberty.
Douglas Bourgeois’s transcendent, fantastical images of pop icons as religious icons, set against southern Louisiana scenery, are inspired by his rural life and his homages to what and who inspires him.
DOUGLAS BOURGEOIS’S ART feels disarmingly intimate. Beyond the rapt technique and startling syntax, what engages your notice ultimately is the circumscribed universe he creates – and further, the abiding spiritual tone of that universe. His paintings suggest some otherworldly realm – usually a lyricized south Louisiana – that exists only in reverie.
For this project, Leventi shot more than 40 opera houses in almost 20 countries, from the tiny (Teatro di Villa Aldrovandi Mazzacorati, capacity: 80) to the mammoth (The Metropolitan Opera, capacity: 3,975). The work is being exhibited at Rick Wester Fine Art (with prints up to seven and a half feet wide) starting May 7 and is being released as a book by Damiani in June 2015.
Lin Emery’s suite of new works at Arthur Roger Gallery through April 25 confirms her position as New Orleans’ premier sculptor. For decades, Emery, who was born in 1928, has gifted us with gorgeous, glinting mechanical sculptures that are so exquisitely balanced that they bob and wave in ballet-like motion with every breeze.
At 69, John Alexander has lived an extraordinary life. He sails the Caribbean with rocker Jimmy Buffett and counts among his other pals such Saturday Night Live luminaries as Lorne Michaels and Dan Aykroyd, his partner in a prosperous venture that serves vodka in skull-shaped drinking vessels. He spends his summers on Amagansett, Long Island, but for 35 years has occupied a SoHo loft in New York City, where he long ago established a reputation as a mesmerizing artist, one with a social conscience.
Lin Emery’s kinetic sculptures epitomize that kind of timeless and finely tuned consistency. But like the timeless, pristine miracles of the natural world on which they are based, they can be easy to take for granted — unless something changes, as appears to be the case in her current show at Arthur Roger Gallery.
John Alexander nearly presses his nose against a charcoal image of a lobster and laughs when he says looking into the drawing’s eyes reminds him of his dog. We’re in the downstairs gallery where a series of drawings serve as a prelude to the exhibition at the Meadows Museum, Human/nature. The Ridiculous and Sublime: Recent Works by John Alexander. Alexander jokes in his rich Texan drawl that his assistant had to explain to him what “prelude” meant. Certainly these beautiful, mysterious charcoal drawings of deceptively simple subjects — the lobster, an array of lily pads, a jellyfish and oyster shells — set the tone for the paintings that follow.
John Alexander is being honored with an exhibition of his work at the Meadows during the museum’s 50th anniversary year and the university’s centennial. “Human/nature. The Ridiculous and Sublime: Recent Works by John Alexander” opens next Sunday and continues through June 28. The show’s 35 paintings and drawings are on loan from 26 lenders, including 12 in Texas.