“Levity and Lace”, New Orleans Art Review
NOW, ASK YOURSELF, honestly, what kind of art would you imagine you would find when you read that an exhibition involving Waters and Flood was opening at the Arthur Roger Gallery this month?
Press & Media
“Aesthetic Ethnography,” New Orleans Art Review
With the sympathetic understanding of the insider and the objectivity of the ethnographer, artist Willie Birch furthers the social documentary tradition of photographers Helen Levitt, Roy de Carava, and Robert Frank.
“Thugs take a hacksaw to our spirit” New Orleans Times-Picayune
Art, by its very nature, is worth more than the ingredients that give it shape. A clay pot is worth more than the lump of clay from which it was formed, a painting more than the paint and canvas. Similarly, the bronze sculptures in John Scott’s eastern New Orleans studio were worth more than the bronze itself.
“Famed sculptor falls prey to thieves Works dismantled, carted out of studio”, New Orleans Times-Picayune
The thieves may not have known what exactly they stumbled onto when they climbed through a broken window of a nondescript warehouse in eastern New Orleans.
“Securing Abstraction”, The New Orleans Review
Allison Stewart is yet another abstract romantic, but her temperament is distinctive. Although she is conceptually allied with Marden and Dunbar— complete with an overmastering theme — she does not share their restraints.
“Douglas Bourgeois: Psychedelic Southern Gothic”, Juxtapoz
Douglas Bourgeois, both magician and mechanic, deconstructs and reconfigures reality as a hermetic and skewed detail-packed world. He is an artist of these times, this country, and, specifically, New Orleans.
“Nicole Charbonnet at the Arthur Roger Gallery”, N.O.A.R
NICOLE CHARBONNET’S CURRENT body of work, entitled, The Truth about God, deals with subjects such as the temporality of the material world and the power of nature. Charbonnet portrays these thoughts in a series of canvases, all done in mixed media and acrylic. Her works are at once alarming but offer a sense of calm in their soft, fresco like appearance, reminiscent of the colors of Pompeii, muted almost to a whisper with the patina of time.
“Seeing Beauty in Unexpected Places”, American Artist
Simon Gunning has an edgy way of viewing southern Louisiana’s almost mystical landscape with all its beauty and harshness. His paintings of vast, watery marshes; dark, almost impenetrable swamps; gritty city streets; and the Mississippi River coursing through the endlessly flat coastal delta are not the grand romantic illusions favored by the mid-19th century Luminists or Impressionists.
“All Roads Lead Home: Exploring the Artwork of Willie Birch”, Baltimore City Paper
When you ask Willie Melvin Birch, “How did you get here?,” you want to ask him in every sense: how did he get here, as well as how did he get here. The Maryland Institute College of Art alumnus journeyed a curiously circular road to being a fall 2006 artist-in-residence at his alma mater with two showcase exhibitions.
“Bountiful Bourgeois: Artist Douglas Bourgeois Assembles His Show of Shows”, New Orleans Times-Picayune
Working day after day in his St. Amant, La., studio near Gonzales, it usually takes Douglas Bourgeois three years to create enough of his small, hyper-detailed artwork for a show.
This time, Hurricane Katrina delayed his planned exhibition, adding another year to his intensive work schedule.