The capacity to reside in joy and terror in equal measure gives Sora’s paintings their unsettling power, a brutal acknowledgment that creation coexists with destruction.
Louisville
An Artist Goes Home to Her Appalachia
The paintings that form the heart of Ceirra Evans: It’s Okay to Go Home offer a more complex and generous response to the stale and sneering stereotypes of Appalachia.
The Graceful Instability of Kiah Celeste’s Art
Celeste’s sculptures all rely on natural forces to achieve balance, and thus are perpetually on the precipice of collapse.
Bearing Witness to Breonna Taylor’s Life and Death
There are many in Kentucky who wish to get beyond the Breonna Taylor tragedy, but Amy Sherald’s magnetic portrait of Taylor insists otherwise.
There Is Nothing United About the United States or the Art World
Peter Williams doesn’t make things easy for the viewer, and why should he?
Join a Multidisciplinary MFA Program in Studio Art and Design at the University of Louisville
All MFA students receive a scholarship or assistantship. A private studio space is provided for each student in our new MFA Building.
Treading the Paths of History, with Art as a Guide
Art can have a unique place in interpretive history experiences by embodying the history of a place with an impactful visual, and making that visual part of the narrative. But it’s hard to do well without being overly intrusive or just clashing with the surrounding setting. Here are four examples of approaches to historic trails told through art.
In Kentucky, Tomorrow Comes Today
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Since moving here with my family a couple of years ago, The Land of Tomorrow (LOT) has been on my mind. It is a provocative production and exhibition space established by Drura Parish and Dmitry “Dima” Strakovsky, first in Lexington (2009) and then in Louisville (2010), Kentucky.
Reverend, Collector, and Unlikely Tastemaker: The Story of Al Shands
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — Long before Reverend Al Shands bought his first contemporary artwork, he founded an Episcopal church that met weekly at a Washington, D.C. seafood restaurant. “I find the wholesome, institutional nature of the church rather boring. But I do not find religion boring. To pray, I do not find boring,” he said. For six years during the 1960s, Shands was able to maintain this unusual congregation. “The only place we could afford to start meeting was in the restaurant. We used the mixing bowl as the baptismal font, the wine came from the bar, our bread was the rolls they served and our altar was the table.” For Shands, “The religious encounter is like a dinner party.”