SHREVEPORT – The Northwest Louisiana Archives is shining a light on the region’s female artists with its exhibit “Northwest Louisiana Through the Female Gaze.”
The exhibit features paintings and other types of art that depict the natural environment and the culture of the area.
Attendees can visit the exhibit on the third floor of the Noel Memorial Library until May 2.
The exhibit, which started this month in honor of Women’s History Month, is curated from the Northwest Louisiana Archives and private collection holdings.
“This exhibit came from the idea that we have a lot of art and art-related items, such as records from the Shreveport Art Club and the Hoover Water Color Society as well as others,” said Dr. Laura McLemore, head archivist at the Northwest Louisiana Archives. “What all of these pieces have in common is that they depicted what they saw in their environment.
“The pieces are frequently about the natural world, but it’s also a representation of culture and society of that time.”
The majority of the featured art was created from the 1930s-1980s, but some of the artists date back to the 19th century. Most of the works are paintings, but other forms include wood block prints, sketches, and prints of sculptures and murals.
The scenes depicted include Plain Dealing’s famous dogwoods (Cora Lee Butler) and rural baptisms (Elizabeth Friedenberg) to more modern examples like the construction of the “Quilt Kiosk” sculpture (Barbara Abott) and the “Once in a Millennium Moon” mural (Meg Saligman) in downtown Shreveport.
Two of the more well-known artists featured are Friedenberg and Jasmine Morelock Field.
Friedenberg portrayed how people interacted with their rural environments while Morelock Field’s featured pieces are abstract in nature.
“We want people to be aware of our artists and how they interpreted our environment and culture,” McLemore said.
The exhibit has another function, particularly aimed at scholars at LSUS and the wider region who conduct research.
“We want faculty, staff and students as well as LSUS constituents to appreciate the variety of materials that we have in the archives and that the purpose is to use these materials for research,” McLemore said. “People think of us as primarily a photograph repository, and while we do have a lot of wonderful photographs, we’re a whole lot more than that.
“We’re quite a rich research resource on a lot of different topics.”
