NOCCA’s “On the Edge” Gallery Series Kicks Off the 2012-2013 Season with a Faculty Exhibition
September 20-October 26, 2012
Opening reception: September 20, 6pm – 8pm
The Ken Kirschman Artspace and The NOCCA Institute are proud to announce the 2012 NOCCA Faculty Exhibition. The opening reception for this show will be Thursday, September 20, from 6pm to 8pm, and the exhibition continues through October 26, 2012. The show will feature two- and three-dimensional work in a variety of media by Marcus Brown, Terry DeRoche, Nikki Jackson, Jennifer Odem, Mary Jane Parker, Keith Perelli, Ann Schwab, and Michel Varisco.
The Ken Kirschman Artspace is located on NOCCA’s campus at 2800 Chartres Street, in New Orleans. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9am to 1pm, and Saturday, 12pm to 4pm. Admission is free.
BIOS
Marcus Brown
Marcus E. Brown, a native of New Orleans, is a sculptor, painter, educator, inventor, and an avant-garde sound performance artist. Brown developed a form of painting called Electro-sonic Painting in which the artist paints with an amplified brush or tool used to simultaneously create a fine work of art as well as music. In demonstrating this new genre of music and art, Brown has collaborated with many talented and renowned musicians including Bill Summers, Devin Phillips, Mark De Florio, Chuck Barber, Nathan J. Normand, Tyrone Brown, Signal Path, Eric Bigger, and Norman Sylvester. In 2008, Brown received an Art in Public Places commission by the Arts Council of New Orleans in collaboration with the Joan Mitchell Foundation for his piece Human Universal Musical Sculpture (HUMS), a sound sculpture that interacts with an individual’s bioelectrical currents to produce a unique sound. HUMS is located in Washington Square Park on Elysian Fields Avenue. Brown, who is a graduate of NOCCA, earned his BFA at the Kansas City Institute of Art (KCAI) in Kansas City, MO and a MEd from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. In addition to his performance art, Brown exhibits in numerous galleries and museums nationally. He has also taught visual art at the K-12 level as well as college art classes and workshops across the nation. Brown currently teaches at NOCCA and Delgado Community College.
Terry DeRoche
Born in Bangor and raised in Portland, Maine, Terry went to Maine College of Art and graduated with a BFA in photography in 1990. Circumstance and opportunity lured Terry to New Orleans where he went to the University of New Orleans, studied Special Education: Gifted and Talented, and received his MEd in 1995. Terry spent the next two years teaching in St. John Parish until hired by NOCCA in 1997. He has been happy teaching computer graphics and drawing ever since. Terry’s work combines his love of photography, drawing, writing, painting, and the computer into digital collages.
Nikki Jackson
Nikki Jackson was born and raised in England. Her father worked in the great London museums in South Kensington, giving her unparalleled exposure to the history of world art. She studied at Bath Academy of Art, and Bath College of Higher Education, before being awarded a scholarship to study with Paul Soldner, in California. She has taught in California, Alabama, and New Orleans before joining the faculty at NOCCA in 1999. She has been a recipient of a Gane Travel Scholarship and Surdna Foundation Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited nationally and in Europe.
Jennifer Odem
Based in New Orleans, Jennifer Odem has exhibited her work both locally and abroad. Jennifer Odem’s most recent one-person exhibition titled, “A Discourse In Abstraction: Jennifer Odem and NOMA’s Permanent Collection”, was organized by curator Miranda Lash at the New Orleans Museum of Art in March 2009. Her 2008 and 2009 exhibitions include a solo show at 511 Gallery in New York and group shows at the Winkleman Gallery in New York, the Front Gallery in New Orleans, and Tulane University’s Newcomb Center for Women. She has drawn a great deal of inspiration from her seven artist residencies abroad in locations including Ireland, England, Autria and Poland, as well as from her 2007 residency at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
Odem is the creator of several outdoor sculptural installations, including “Blue Fence”, a site-specific sculpture presented in collaboration with AORTA projects; “Wheels of Fortune” (1999), sited in the salt flats of Utah for the Center for Land Use Interpretation; “Island”, produced for the Center for Polish Sculpture in Oronsko, Poland (2004); and the “St. Rose Project”, a private commission in St. Rose, Louisiana. In 2009. In October of 2008, Odem was the recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation’s New Orleans Career Opportunity grant and was short listed for AWAW (Anonymous Was A Woman) grant in June, 2009. Her work has been written about in Sculpture Magazine (Dec. 2001) and reviewed in Artnews (Jan. 2003). Her work is also included in Playa Works: The Myth of the Empty, by William L. Fox, University of Nevada Press, 2002.
Mary Jane Parker
A native New Orleanian, Mary Jane Parker received her BFA from Louisiana State University, and MA and MFA in Studio Art with a Printmaking emphasis from Illinois State University. Her work is mixed media, combining printmaking and painting techniques with glass and bronze sculpture. She was awarded a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in 1990 and 2001, a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Award for Excellence, an NEA Independent Study Fellowship, a Surdna Foundation Fellowship, and mini-grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts. Ms. Parker has exhibited work nationally and internationally and was included in the 2005 New Orleans Museum of Art’s Triennial. She is represented in New Orleans by Arthur Roger Gallery.
Keith Perelli
Keith Perelli a visual artist working in painting and drawing, is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. He has participated in numerous, national and international invitation and juried exhibitions. He has exhibited his work at D.O.C.S. Gallery New Orleans, Found Gallery, Los Angeles and Steve Martin Fine Art, Miami. Mr. Perelli has been a recipient of The Surdna Foundation Arts Teacher’s Fellowship, Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship and a Foundation Ratti Arts Fellowship. He has received five professional development grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts. Most recently, Mr. Perelli was awarded a public works commission from the Downtown Development District.
In addition to six solo exhibitions at D.O.C.S. Gallery, New Orleans and one at Found Gallery in Los Angeles, his work was selected for the Foundation Ratti “Corso Superiore,” Como, Italy, “Alan Kaprow Invitational,” Milan, Italy, “University of New Orleans 3 Person Alumni Works on Paper,” Innsbruck, Austria, and “Louisiana Artists,” Museum of Art, Alexandria, Louisiana. Most recently, his work was selected for a “Culture of Queer, A Tribute to J.B. Harter” exhibited in New York, NY and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and a traveling exhibit entitled “Katrina, Catastrophe and Catharsis,” at the Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado. His work was featured in the Red Dot Show in Miami and Art Now Fair in New York.
Ann Schwab
Ann Schwab works in photography, mixed media and installation, creating works that utilize nature and natural forms – as well as medical instruments – to explore our human processes of coping with physical and emotional trauma. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, an MFA from Tulane University and has studied at SACI in Florence, Italy. She has been the recipient of numerous awards including: a Maryland State Arts Council Fellowship, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, a Surdna Foundation Fellowship and professional development grants from the Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation, the Creative Capital Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Anderson Ranch, and the Surdna Foundation. Ann Schwab’s work has been reviewed in publications such as Art Papers, New Orleans Art Review, and the Kansas City Art Review. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are held in corporate, public and private collections. Ann Schwab is Assistant Chair of Visual Arts at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, where she is on the teaching faculty. She is represented by Søren Christensen Gallery in New Orleans.
Michel Varisco
Michel Varisco is a native New Orleans artist. Her work explores loss and regeneration in both urban and rural settings. She exhibits around the country and has received grants from The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, The Cultural Economy Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the Surdna Foundation. She received a public arts commission from the Arts Council of New Orleans on behalf of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Varisco received her MFA from Tulane University and B.A. from Loyola and studied and taught in France through the Cleveland Art Institute working with Denis Brihat. Varisco’s work has been published in Adbusters, The Oxford American, USA Today, Common Ground Archeology, and Cultural Vistas, among others, and is included in public and private collections in the US and abroad.