NOCCA’s “On the Edge” Gallery Series
Kicks Off the 2011-2012 Season with an Alumni Exhibition
September 1 – September 30, 2011
Opening reception: September 1, 6pm – 8pm
The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and The NOCCA Institute are proud to announce the 2011 Alumni Exhibit. The show features two- and three-dimensional work in a variety of media by Zarouhie Abdalian, Rachel Avena Brown, Amanda Cassingham, Kayleigh Maier, Bonnie Maygarden, and Jonathan Taube.
The opening reception for the 2011 Alumni Exhibit is Thursday, September 1, 2011, from 6pm to 8pm, and the exhibit continues through September 30, 2011 in the Ken Kirschman Artspace on the NOCCA campus, 2800 Chartres Street, New Orleans. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 12pm to 5pm, and Saturday, 12pm to 3pm. Admission is free.
Biographies
Zarouhie Abdalian
Zarouhie Abdalian was born in 1982 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2010. Working fluidly between drawing, video, and installation, Abdalian investigates landscape as both the material site in which the viewer is located and as an index of the historical accumulation of images circumscribing the site itself. Her view of landscape is linked to her perspective on catastrophe insofar as catastrophe reveals the disintegrity of a material site and exposes boundary conditions under which a physical location is known or perceived. Abdalian’s work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, which recently include: Zarouhie Abdalian, Aids 3-D, Matt Sheridan Smith, Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2011), Painted Over/Under, LACE, Los Angeles (2010); and SC13, curated by Chris Fitzpatrick and Post Brothers at SFADM, San Francisco (2010). Forthcoming exhibitions include: Rendez-vous 11, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne, France (2011); and a solo exhibition at Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann. Abdalian currently lives and works in Oakland, California.
Rachel Avena Brown
Rachel Avena Brown, born Rachel Avena DeTrinis, is an artist and teacher currently working and residing in the Algiers neighborhood, located on the west bank of the Mississippi River in New Orleans. She is also a member of the artist collective, The Front. Mrs. Brown attended Academy of the Sacred Heart and New Orleans Center for Creative Arts for high school, before enrolling into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She attended classes at the Art Institute full time for two years before transferring to the College of Santa Fe, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004. Mrs. Brown went on to receive a Masters of Fine Arts from the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University in 2007. To view more of her work, please visit her website: www.rachelavenabrown.com.
Amanda Cassingham
Amanda Cassingham from Algiers, Louisiana, returned to New Orleans in 2009 after studying for four years in Boston. There she received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts with Tufts University. She currently hosts artists who share work at art openings in her apartment in the Bywater. Amanda once swam across the Charles River in Boston, as well as in the shark tank at the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans—the latter inadvertently. She spends her time making homemade whipped cream, bicycling across parish lines, and taking a break on her porch while telling people she’s “really busy.”
Kayleigh Maier
Kayleigh Maier was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Tulane University and studied at L’Académie de la Croix Nivert in Paris. In 2009, she was the recipient of the Alberta “Rusty” Collier Award for Outstanding Studio Art Major in 2D and was reviewed in Art Voices magazine. Kayleigh has remained active in the New Orleans art community, volunteering her time to institutions such as the Contemporary Arts Center, Prospect New Orleans Biennial, and New Orleans Museum of Art. Kayleigh is a current faculty member of Audubon Charter School, and offers classes at her studio in MidCity.
Bonnie Maygarden
Bonnie Maygarden (b. 1987) was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. A year after Hurricane Katrina, she transferred from her first year at Louisiana State University to Pratt Institute in New York City where she received her BFA in Painting and minor in Art History. Bonnie Maygarden’s recent work deals with the merging of photo-realism and abstraction through painting and sculpture. She uses gold to convey empty value, which she uses as a metaphor for art. She currently resides and continues working in New Orleans.
Jonathan Taube
Jonathan Taube is a NOCCA alum from the class of ‘06. His studies at NOCCA were cut short in the wake of Katrina and he and ten other students were relocated to the Idyllwild Arts Academy in southern California. He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore with a major in Interdisciplinary Sculpture. His practice has included: slapstick performances about love; raising a public army of street sweepers; guarding a fictional detention center for invasive plants; interventions for public seating; and slipping a military blast wall with banana peels. He was the 2010 recipient of the Grainger Marburg Travel Scholarship to conduct research on how the Prickly Pear cactus became a cultural image in Israel and Palestine.