With exhibits on campus, off campus and in the LSU Museum of Art, University students and the Baton Rouge community have brought an increasingly aesthetic environment to the Capital City.
North Gate Tavern found its artistic groove earlier in the semester when Dusty Cooper, bar owner, resurrected a once-a-month art show open to community artists. Drip! Art Show, an exhibit that also functioned as a marketplace for local artists, displayed artists’ work inside the dining area and outside on the rustic patio.
Cooper said the art show stopped in October to work out some changes and generate new interest for the art exhibit.
The approach worked.
“Before, we would feature 10 to 12 artists per show,” Cooper told The Daily Reveille in February. “We’ve seen three times as many entries for this first show back.”
Art mediums including paintings, sculpture, print and jewelry, were all featured in the show, which continues monthly.
Salma Hasan, fine arts graduate student, displayed her thesis exhibit, “Permitted Memories and Ornamentation,” in Foster Hall Gallery. Hasan’s exhibit marked a perseverance of sorts as the subjects of her paintings were her deceased family members, painted via memory.
Hasan grew up in an Islamic culture that forbids painting the human figure. However, the artist considers her family portraits a liberation from outdated tradition.
“My mind is really clouded with all these people and memories,” Hasan told The Daily Reveille in April. “It is good to release these memories and put them into paintings.”
Hasan said her collection of oil paintings, accentuated by traditional Arabic design, reflect a healing process.
Another foreign-born artist made a splash in the Baton Rouge art scene with an exhibit in the LSU MOA.  Gabriel Dawe’s “Spectrum of Color” debuted in the Gill Hamilton Gallery earlier this month.
The exhibit features “Plexus No. 15,” a 16-foot-tall, site-specific installation of common sewing thread woven into a towering double helix of varying colors.
Dawe said he spent nearly 70 hours installing the artistic creation, which gave new purpose to 37 miles of sewing thread. The Mexico City-born artist said he built the piece by lacing thread through precisely measured metal hooks, which were carefully attached to the walls of the exhibit space.
Dawe said he used a long metal pole to act as a needle to thread the taller hooks he couldn’t reach. He said the installation process was tiring, as he had to keep his arms lifted above his head for hours as he hoisted the pole to lace the thread back and forth among hooks.
“It’s hard work,” Dawe told The Daily Reveille in May. “I think of it as a long-distance race, and I try to keep a steady pace.”
 
____ Contact Josh Naquin at [email protected]