The Shellof Vitus

  The National Performance Network is thrilled to announce the second cohort of the  Take   Notice  Fund, honoring artists of color in Louisiana. The  Take   Notice  Fund awards $5,000 grants to artists and culture bearers of color living and working in Louisiana. These artists’ bodies of work represent excellence, dedication to their practices, and contributions to this country’s discourse about racial justice and cultural preservation. Grant funds are unrestricted and intended to support an artist’s creative practice and/or wellbeing. The initiative is supported with generous funding from the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program. “The award honors those who have decided, ‘I’m going to commit my life to this artistic practice, to always learning, to observing what’s going on in my community and the world,’” said  NPN ’s Director of Southern Programs Stephanie Atkins. “It comes down to excellence—these artists are pushing ...

 

AUGUST 6, 2022 - JANUARY 8, 2023 Ogden Museum of Southern Art first launched Louisiana Contemporary, presented by The Helis Foundation in 2012, to establish a vehicle that would bring to the fore the work of artists living in Louisiana and highlight the dynamism of art practice throughout the state. Since the inaugural exhibition over ten years ago, Ogden Museum has shown works by 489 artists, making Louisiana Contemporary an important moment in the national arts calendar to recognize and experience the spectrum and vitality of artistic voices emanating from New Orleans and in art communities across Louisiana. This statewide, juried exhibition promotes the contemporary art practices in the state of Louisiana, provides an exhibition space for the exposition of living artists’ work and engages a contemporary audience that recognizes the vibrant visual arts culture of Louisiana and the role of New Orleans as a rising, international art center. This year’s guest juror is Valerie Cassel Oli...

  Pictured: Vitus Shell Studio Portrait. Photo courtesy of Art Center Sarasota. Art Center Sarasota’s 2021 exhibition season continues with four exhibits, January 27-March 5. Vitus Shell: “31 Flavors” features large-scale, mixed-media works exploring the Black experience by the Louisiana-based artist Vitus Shell. JAVO: “Revisited” feautures intricate works on canvas that explore the beauty and tragedy of culture-making within the native Puerto Rican’s adopted society. In the juried exhibition, “Visions in Black,” Art Center Sarasota partners with the Suncoast Black Arts Collaborative to showcase the works of local art students alongside works by seasoned artists of African descent. The “Visions in Black” exhibit is sponsored, in part, by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. “Anything Goes” is a juried exhibition of artwork spanning a range of mediums, including paintings, drawings, photography and sculpture. The opening reception for all four exhibits is Thursday, January 27, 6-8 p...

  Monroe artist Vitus Shell is a remarkable artist who explores the African-American experience through strong, compelling and often unsettling images of Black contemporary life in America. It is art driven by irony, activism and his notion of Black “coolness.” Monroe artist Vitus Shell is a remarkable artist who explores the African-American experience through strong, compelling and often unsettling images of Black contemporary life in America. It is art driven by irony, activism and his notion of Black “coolness.” Born in Monroe in 1978, Shell, who has taught art at the University of Louisiana Monroe, Louisiana Tech University and Grambling State University, holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Memphis College of Art where he and other artists formed a collective that launched his career and those of other African-American artists. “My paintings,” says Shell, “are geared toward the Black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful image decon...

  BLACK CREATIVE CIRCLE Article by STARLA GATSON | Photography by JERON STRICKLAND | STRICKLY US  Black female politician and author Shirley Chisholm once declared, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” The Congresswoman’s guidance has been echoed and shared countless times over the decades, encouraging many to  show up in spaces  they or others like them have not previously occupied. But what is one to do when the table for which he is looking doesn’t yet exist? Why, he takes a cue from the  Black Creative Circle of North Louisiana  (BCCNL) and builds it himself! The BCCNL was created to give local black creators a place to show up and show their work, be empowered, and inspire one another, filling a need the organization’s vice president, K’Shana Hall-Davis, noticed fairly quickly. “When I went to certain events in the area, I never really saw anyone that looked like me as the artist,” she explained before adding, “I’m not s...

  Vitus Shell Vitus Shell is a mixed-media collage painter born in Monroe, LA, where he lives and works. His work is geared toward the black experience, giving agency to people from this community through powerful images, deconstructing, sampling, and remixing identity, civil rights, and contemporary black culture. He received a BFA from Memphis College of Art, 2000 and an MFA from the University of Mississippi, 2008. Vitus Shell has been in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Hermitage Artist Retreat, Mass MoCA, Joan Mitchell Center, Skowhegan School of Art, and Masur Museum of Art. THIS LAND is funded in part by a grant from South Arts with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support provided by the Mississippi Arts Commission. "Being from North Louisiana, you’re like the step cousin … of everybody from South Louisiana. And sometimes we don’t get the full credit…" – Vitus Shell