Review: Brian Guidry and Michelle Levine

Brian Guidry & Michelle Levine are currently exhibiting their work at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans for the exhibition curated by Dan Cameron, "Hot up Here".

Read Doug MacCash's Review:

"Hot Up Here: New Work by New Orleans Artists" at the Contemporary Arts Center is a sample platter heaped with works by 16 cream-of-the-crop mid-career Crescent City conceptualists, with a traditional painter or two tossed in for good measure. It's the latest of the CAC's long-running series of survey exhibits (previously known as the Louisiana Biennial, and the Louisiana Open before that), which periodically check the temperature of the New Orleans art scene.

And "Hot Up Here" is pretty hot. It's the aesthetically steamy must-see show of the late summer.

Unless you feel you've seen it all before, that is.

CAC curator Dan Cameron, who selected the "Hot Up Here" artists, is the reigning king of Crescent City art. His Prospect.1 New Orleans exhibit, which took place between October 2008 and January, did more to ratchet up New Orleans' contemporary art scene than any other single event -- ever.

Prospect.1 spoiled us. We now have a taste for the most mind-bending contemporary art. Luckily, there are lots of New Orleans artists able to provide it. "Hot Up Here" proves that.

continued >>>

Review: Loren Schwerd

Read the Examiner: "Loren Schwerd at AMMO" by Chris Herbeck

http://www.examiner.com/x-11569-New-Orleans-Contemporary-Art-Examiner~y2009m8d28-REVIEW-Loren-Schwerd-at-AMMO

The Latest New American Paintings is Ready!

See Brian Guidry's recent work in the latest New American Paintings, an Open Studios Press publication that focuses on one region at a time. This year's Southern Regional Edition was juried by Ron Platt, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

We also noticed two other of our favorite New Orleans artists in the line-up - Nicole Charbonnet and Aaron Collier!

A warm congratulations to all the artists who made it in. Pick up a copy today at your favorite book store when you get a chance...but I'm thinking (unfortunately) that you might have no other choice in town than Borders or Barnes & Noble.

http://www.newamericanpaintings.com/

Have you been to The Porch yet?

The Porch is a community-based organization that is using the arts to affect social change. A grassroots organization instigated, post-Katrina, in New Orleans’ 7th Ward, the Porch serves the community bounded by St. Bernard Avenue, N. Claiborne Avenue, Elysian Fields Avenue and St. Claude Avenues. The Porch builds on cultural assets of the neighborhood, working in their community center at 1941 Pauger Street.

http://www.theporch-7.com

Loren Schwerd gets a WONDERFUL review by Doug MacCash

check it out!

http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2009/08/art_seen_critic_doug_maccash.html

Loren Schwerd's "Mourning Portrait"

Above: "Unmoored, Near Dorgenious Street". Human hair, mixed media.

It's hard to think about the month of August without remembering the lives and communities lost in Katrina. In celebration and in memorium, AMMO proudly presents a solo exhibition by Baton Rouge and former New Orleans resident Loren Schwerd. Her "Mourning Portrait" series is a collection of sculptures made from photographs she took of actual homes in New Orleans after the flood, brought to life using the eighteenth and early nineteenth century practice of hair weaving to create pieces that commemorate cycles of life and death.

Please join us for the opening of the exhibit this Saturday, August 15, from 6 -9pm. The show will be on view through September 16.