Baton Rouge Gallery center for contemporary art, 1515 Dalrymple Drive, is showing work by artist members Libby Johnson, Leslie Koptcho, Mary Jane Parker and Brandon Surtain through March 28.
The artists will participate in an Artists’ Talk at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 10. Admission is free.
Libby Johnson’s ‘The Yellow Ball.’
Libby Johnson has titled her exhibit, “Liminal Spaces.”
She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art from LSU. She opened Studio dei Leoni in 2000, where she teaches group classes on painting, abstraction and the structure of the human form. Previously she has taught at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado, and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
Johnson is a painter who uses realistic depictions of nature as a foundation for expressing thoughts, mysteries and feelings that are intertwined with those images. Her work is included in collections at the Louisiana Arts & Science Museum and the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Leslie Koptcho’s ‘Alligator Weed.’
In her exhibit, Botanica Collectanea,” Leslie Koptcho’s prints are deeply inspired by the complexities and visual contradictions found in the natural world.
She focuses on metaphors for personal identity and boundaries — some fragile — that separate the outer world of appearance from the inner one of private, psychic complexity. By looking closely at her environs, she endeavors to strike chords of empathy for all living things and hint modestly at mysteries that are hidden in plain view.
“All the works in this exhibition were inspired by botanical sources, historic herbals and invasive plants specific to the Gulf Coast region,” she said. “Some of the prints on display are part of a larger portfolio in progress that will be accompanied by botanical notes and personal observations, as well as paper samples made by hand from Louisiana’s invasive plants.”
Koptcho is a professor at LSU, where she teaches printmaking, papermaking and arts-of-the-book.
Mary Jane Parker’s ‘Shelter.’
A mixed media artist based in New Orleans, Mary Jane Parker’s exhibit, “Narratives,” is concerned with the ways that our bodies — from marks acquired at birth to scrapes and cuts that define our life’s story — serve as historical records. She has also explored studies of hysteria and outward displays of inward emotional turmoil.
“My work has often included objects that hold memory — a piece of lace, a pressed plant or a perfume bottle — and are often paired with a female figure,” she said. “In this current body of work, with the help of my backyard garden, I have brought these elements together into work that hints at a narrative, one that invites viewers to unravel layers of meaning woven into the elements.”
Parker’s work has been shown nationally and internationally and is included in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the LSU Museum of Art, and the Center for Book Arts in New York. She serves as the chair of the visual arts department at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, where she is also on the faculty.
Brandon Surtain’s ‘Salvation STEPPER.’
Brandon Surtain lives and works in Louisiana. A native New Orleanian, Surtain attended graduate school at Tulane University, where he received a master’s of architecture and a master’s of sustainable real estate development degrees.
He received his bachelor of fine art from LSU with a concentration in painting and drawing. During that time he was also a member of the LSU football team.
“In the vibrant city of New Orleans, where tradition intertwines seamlessly with religiosity, there exists a rich heritage of ‘stepping,’ a form of dance deeply rooted in the city’s cultural fabric,” he said of his exhibit.
Surtain is a former Design Futures student leader, promoting social and professional equity and design thinking in all aspects of life. He currently is working with fellow Tulane alumni on an initiative to help mitigate some of the stressors of COVID-19 by providing art supplies and community resource information to families with children in elementary school.
Gallery hours are noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The gallery will be closed Saturday, March 16, for the “Wearin’ of the Green” parade.
For more information, call (225) 383-1470 or visit batonrougegallery.org.
