The Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge recently returned with their annual Art Flow exhibition and contest for 2024. 

This year, all the art was promoted under the phrase, “There’s No Place Like Home.” with several artists and different mediums, there is a wide variety of art to take in at the exhibit. It will be open for viewing through May 23 at the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center. 

Many artists interpreted the theme differently and constructed their work with a different process. Jeremiah Johnson, an artist who has two art pieces featured in the exhibit, said one of his paintings was in reference to him moving to Louisiana for the first time back in 2020. 

“I applied for a job down here and within less than a month, I had to move to Thibodaux, Louisiana,” Johnson said. 

Johnson said while being here, he’s encountered many new animals that he has never seen before in his home area of Central Pennsylvania.   

The painting depicts multiple animals that are common to the Louisiana landscape. An assortment of pelicans, nutria, alligators and other southern crawlers are spread across a multi-colored background in a repeating fashion. The painting stretches beautifully across a nylon canvas. It’s titled “Cajun Friends.”    

Johnson said as soon as he moved to Louisiana from Pennsylvania, he immediately started looking for ways to share his art. He said two years ago he and his wife, Duyen Nguyen, applied to the Art Flow contest. However, only his wife was selected. This time around, he said he’s happy that both of them were able to get in.  

Johnson grew up on a 100-acre fruit farm with his father which inspired his second painting, “Hard Work.” The painting depicts two male figures hugging in the center of a collage made with different blocks of images. 
Johnson said he kept the relationship between the two men in the image ambiguous for a specific reason. He said most people are not used to seeing two men embrace each other. Johnson’s father came out as queer when Johnson was in his 20s and this added another layer to the nuanced piece. 

“Growing up the son of a gay father, you sort of feel afraid that everyone thinks oh yeah he’s like your ‘sugar daddy’ or something. So, I’m not afraid to tongue and cheek that idea,” Johnson said.  

He said his father never took on the conventional methods of tough love and masculinity. However, his father did pass on a strong work ethic. 

“My family have been farmers since they came here from Germany in the 1700s,” Johnson said. “They always believed in hard work and it’s built up in our community in Pennsylvania.”   

Lundyn Herring, the curator of the exhibit, said she was very impressed with the different types of art that came through the submission portal. 

“I’m the type of curator where I don’t look for hyper-specificity,” Herring said. “I like the literal, but some of the submissions were a little too on the nose.” 

In the exhibit, there are different forms of art such as paintings, photography and sculpture. Cierra English, an artist featured in the exhibit, said she used mixed media like acrylic paint, pastels, ink and gold leaf.  

English said she was born in Morreo, but Baton Rouge is where she grew up her entire life. She said this is where she considers home. Her submitted piece, titled “Solitudes Embrace: Home,” is a beautiful and abstract blend of teal, nude, beige and yellow. The colors warp around each other, almost like a hug. 

“To me, home is all about the peaceful solitude. That warm, comforting stillness, whether it’s in daily routines, being surrounded by close friends, or even just with myself. That’s the feeling I channeled into the piece,” English said.   

English said she discovered her passion for art at a young age. She said her mother often talks about how she used to draw cartoon characters as they flew across the screen. She tested for a talented arts program as a child and has been creating ever since. 

The exhibit also had a competition that gave out cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Jonathan Stevens, artist and first-place winner of the competition, said he hasn’t shown his work publicly in 25 years. 

“I’ve always done work and kept a sketchbook and things like that but it’s only been recently in the past year or so that I’ve returned to my work in a more active way,” Stevens said. 

Stevens said it was the prompt of the exhibit that pushed him to participate. He said the idea of home being someone’s self or body is a theme that he likes to explore a lot. In addition, he is also interested in organic architectural forms that occur naturally, such as wasps and bird nests.

Stevens’ piece “Wherever You Go There You Are,” is a large format digital print on hotpress cotton rag. He said the work in the show is a collection of digital images that have been altered and put into a new context. 

The artwork is a mixture of red-colored images and characters from the “Wizard of Oz”. Multiple image blocks of red blood cells, brains and hearts are dispersed around the movie characters to create new meaning. 

When asked about his work process, Stevens said, “At this point, I have a regular set of processes that work for me. I have no doubt that they will continue to change over time as they have in the past. I find it helps to take it easy and go with the flow. I do what I feel called to do if it makes me happy and it’s working.”