LSU hosted the 2024 PAVE Student Design Competition August 29-30, 2024 at the LSU Student Union. Teams of LSU School of Interior Design students competed to design mobile health center prototypes aimed for improved health outcomes. The event is held in partnership with PAVE Global, Our Lady of the Lake Health system and the LSU Student Health Center.
The annual PAVE Student Design Competition promotes “real-world” design experience for college-level students globally, who are interested in pursuing careers in the design industry. 11 teams of student designers, in 11 hours, crafted 11 proposals for a new LSU Student Health Center education and engagement pop-up. The event was held with support from Dr. Catherine O’Neal, Our Lady of the Lake (OLOL) Chief Medical Officer, Ann Marie Marmande, OLOL Foundation President, and Kate Gannon-Cullinan, LSU Student Health Center Senior Associate Director.
“This event is a great opportunity for LSU interior design students to work together to design spaces to promote improved health,” said Marsha Cuddeback, Director of the School of Interior Design. “Fantastic first annual PAVE Global Design Challenge at LSU! Many thanks to the PAVE team – Dash Nagel, Jerry Fox, Christine Sturch, Sharon Lessard, and Jon Soloman! Outstanding!”
On August 30, the competing student teams presented professional designs of a new LSU Student Health center “pop-up” that take into consideration accessibility, functionality, campus location, environmental factors, transportation, and sustainability.
Pop-ups would support LSU students’ physical and mental health needs at different locations throughout campus, to give students greater access to healthcare. The proposed facilities, offered in partnership with OLOL, would provide services including health check-ups, mental health consultations, Lighthouse, and provide information to LSU students.
“We aim to create really inviting, calming spaces that students feel comfortable using,” interior design student presenters shared. See more event photos.
“The quality of the presentations were incredibly professional, and truly impressive,” a PAVE judge reported. “There were so many great designs to choose from.”
Roy Sprague, AIA (BArch 1981) has changed many young lives – through architecture.
Sprague has a 40+-year career in architecture, construction and facilities management, including over 30 years in public education. Middle School No. 20 in Cypress-Fairbanks, Texas, was named Roy J. Sprague Jr. Middle School for him to honor his dedication to education throughout his career.
His career began after graduating from LSU with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1981.
“I believe that LSU truly prepared me well for my career in architecture. The five-year architecture degree was a very tough program which required significant number of hours working on architectural design projects,” Sprague said. “I had to fumble through learning time management skills in order to complete the design of each project to meet the submission deadlines we had in our architectural design labs along with our other courses we had to take to provide us a well-rounded education for the field of architecture.”
“I have many fond memories while attending LSU from 1976 to 1981. My most fond memories were the excitement and fun of LSU football weekends and attending our home games standing outside waiting in line on Saturday mornings to enter the stadium for our student seating for Saturday night games to try to obtain the best seats possible. Students would place their speakers by their windows in the stadium dormitories and played music for all the students waiting to enter the stadium,” he remembered. “There were many times I would attend the football games and then have to go back to the design lab to spend the rest of the weekend working all night in order to meet the design project deadlines.”
After graduating from LSU, Sprague served 10 years in various private sector roles for architecture and real estate development firms as project manager, construction administrator, tenant coordinator, senior tenant coordinator, A/E site representative and development coordinator before moving into public education. He was named supervisor of construction and energy for Spring ISD in 1991, where he was responsible for the overall management and coordination of the design and construction of a major building program for renovations and new construction of educational and administrative support facilities.
He came to the Cypress-Fairbanks School District (CFISD) in 1997 as the director of facilities planning and construction, managing a department of four and overseeing successful completion of a $264 million bond program in 1998. In 2001, he was promoted to senior director of facilities planning and construction. In this role, he developed the district’s standard architectural and construction contracts for all projects. He also developed districtwide facility design and construction standards for all new facilities and renovations.
Sprague was promoted to assistant superintendent of facilities and construction in 2006, a role he served in for seven years. In 2007, he took on the added responsibility of overseeing a maintenance department that included 180 employees. In 2013, he was promoted to associate superintendent of facilities, construction and support services—a role that was eventually named chief operations officer.
“He provided leadership, vision and support for the design direction, quality standards, administrative procedures and processes to develop 21st-century school designs for new construction and renovations of existing facilities,” according to the District announcement. He announced his retirement following an accomplished career effective June 2023.
Sprague has overseen the construction of more than 60% of the district’s current square footage totaling more than 11.7 million square feet. Altogether, he has completed the purchase of 41 property sites and overseen the planning and construction of 73 new facilities, which include 30 elementary, 10 middle, seven high schools, two special assignment campuses and 24 support facilities. He and his team have also handled hundreds of renovation and addition projects touching every district facility—enhancing instruction, health, and safety while providing campus equity that has impacted countless students, staff, parents and community members.
“Upon the announcement of my retirement from Cypress-Fairbanks ISD in January 2023, the proudest moment in my entire career was when the Board of Trustees approved the naming of their most recent new Middle School No. 20 as Roy J. Sprague, AIA Middle School in honor of my 26 years of dedicated service to the district with creating high performance and quality learning environments for the students we served,” he said.
“Little did I know that when we started the planning and design of this campus which is part of the Bridgeland Educational Village, that the middle school would eventually bear my name at the front entry of the building,” he said. “The educational village was a concept I was instrumental in developing with our curriculum and instruction department for the district to find more creative and flexible ways to deliver our instructional programs to increase student success.
The design concept locates an elementary, middle and high school on a multi-campus site where all three separate campuses would all be master planned in a college-like setting with shared site amenities, and outdoor learning court yards where students would be able to attend all K-12 grade levels at the same site, Sprague explained. This concept offers many opportunities for the use of shared facilities between the three campuses, collaboration and alignment with all three campus programs, mentoring opportunities with the students with each of the campuses which will help minimize the transition challenges for students going from elementary to middle school and from middle to high school.
Under his leadership, Sprague worked directly with all the district departments to develop and continually update our design guidelines and construction standards to provide high performance learning environments for the students and community. He also developed department procedures, processes and financial controls to efficiently and effectively manage the design and construction of over $5.2 billion of new construction, renovations and additions for the district over six successful bond programs, to efficiently manage the design and construction of over $5.2 billion of new construction, renovations and additions.
Sprague is a registered architect and registered interior designer with the State of Texas, and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. He is an Accredited Learning Environment Professional (ALEP). He is a professional member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), Construction Specification Institute (CSI) and the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE), formerly named the Council of Educational Facilities Planners International. He is also a member of the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), Institute for Leadership in Capital Projects (I-LinCP), Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA), Texas Association of School Business Officials (TASBO) and Association of School Business Officials (ASBO). Sprague served as the A4LE International Chairman of the Board of Directors in 2006-2007. He serves on the National Board of Directors for the Institute for Leadership in Capital Projects (I-LinCP) as well as the Collaborative of High-Performance Schools (CHPS) as Vice Chairman. He was instrumental in bringing CHPS best practices to Texas for K-12 educational facilities.
“I am deeply honored and humbled to have been selected as the namesake of Middle School No. 20,” Sprague said upon the announcement of the naming. “This distinguished honor bestowed by the Board of Trustees is certainly the pinnacle of my 42-year career. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined I would be selected to receive this highest honor in public education—being a school namesake,” he said.
“What an incredible legacy,” said fellow LSU architecture classmate Dale Songy, AIA, NCARB, principal of Coleman Partners Architects L.L.C. “He deserves the recognition. What a greatguy!”
“It is an absolute privilege to have the opportunity to serve all our students and staff to provide them with high performance and quality learning environments so they can be successful in their academic years attending CFISD schools,” Sprague said. “None of this would be possible without the incredible support I received over the years from the Board of Trustees, my dedicated staff and colleagues, district partners, our CFISD community and most importantly, my family.”
For future architects, Sprague advises to explore your interests. “Architecture is a very fascinating and rewarding career with various paths that can be taken based upon your goals, skill set and experience. Your educational and work experience can lead you to various types of roles in the industry. There are those that love the designing of buildings and have a unique talent and vision for creating architectural design for various building types. You can look at specializing in a certain building type such as schools, hospitals, etc.”
“There are others that prefer the more technical side of the business where you can become an expert in specification writing and being the project architect responsible for taking the designers vision and turning it into a set of construction documents that allows general contractors to construct that vision into reality. There is also the specialty of project management to oversee the complete process from programming all the way through construction and completion of the warranty period working with all the various consultants, owners, city officials, etc.to take the project vision to reality.
“I was exposed early in my career for working for real estate developers and learning to be an owner’s representative overseeing and managing the entire process from land acquisition through the design and construction of the development. This was the route my career took back in 1986 and have been on the owner’s side ever since with utilizing my excellent architectural education from LSU and work experience to help developers and building owners create very exciting, sustainable projects to support the community.”
Joelle Nagy, MFA August 2024 graduate of the LSU School of Art, was selected to be included in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s Louisiana Contemporary 2024 exhibition. The works are on view August 3-October 13, 2024.
Nagy, a Louisiana-based multimedia artist who studied painting at LSU, was one of 37 artists to be selected from over a thousand submissions to the annual exhibition. 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.”
“I’m extremely honored to be included in the 2024 Louisiana Contemporary,” Nagy said.
Her featured work “Hunglish” is a grouping of ceramics works recreated from her childhood memories of “of my father’s daily routine of maintaining his native tongue of Maygar/Hungarian,” Nagy said in her artist’s statement. “These items create a still life memorializing these ordinary objects that I view as ritualistic.”
Nagy’s MFA thesis exhibition CSALÁDI is “a compendium of paintings and sculpture that narrate and itemize memories, mementos, and feelings from my childhood in relation to the home. It is an autobiographical agglomeration of objects and spaces that I am honoring and remembering through the act of creating. I am effectuating the feminine and maternal instinct of gathering and arranging my memories pertaining to personal history and inherited cultural identity through altar-making. Idiosyncratic items are collected and bound through color association and sensory memory. Constructed interior and exterior spaces of the home in a series of large-scale paintings wherein Proustian memories were involuntarily recorded through a child’s lens. These works serve as a fragmented memoir of my családi.
(Családi (Magyar/Hungarian) adjective: related to the family; related to the home.)”
This year’s juror is Lauren Haynes, Head Curator, Governors Island Arts and Vice President for Arts and Culture at the Trust for Governors Island. Learn more about the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The LSU College of Art & Design has named Brent Fortenberry the new interim director of the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. He is currently associate dean of research and graduate studies and directs the Doctor of Design in Cultural Preservation program.
Fortenberry joined LSU in 2023 from the Tulane School of Architecture, where he was the director of the historic preservation program. Prior to Tulane, Fortenberry was the associate and interim director of the Texas A&M University College of Architecture Center for Heritage Conservation. He previously served as the associate director for historic preservation, architectural history and archaeological research at the Clemson University Warren Lasch Conservation Center. He holds a B.A. in anthropology from the College of William & Mary, a M.A. in historical archaeology from Bristol University, a M.S. in historic preservation from Clemson University/College of Charleston, and a Ph.D. in archaeology from Boston University. He is also the founder and principal of Heritage Resource Management Consultants, LLC.
The Robert Reich Professor of Landscape Architecture, Fortenberry’s research and teaching areas include: historic preservation; vernacular architecture; digital documentation; architectural conservation; colonialism; Early Modern Atlantic world; heritage; outreach and education; architectural finish; and analysis and interpretation.
LSU School of Art presents faculty artists in conversation: Afterglow | Lauren Cardenás and Jade Hoyer at Glassell Gallery
LSU School of Art will present Afterglow | Jade Hoyer and Lauren Cardenás from September 6 through October 20, 2024, in Glassell Gallery. This two-artist exhibition and its programming explore identity and belonging in response to the artists’ shared experiences. As women and first-generation Americans whose parents immigrated from Mexico and Philippines respectively, Cardenás and Hoyer use printmaking to explore their sense of double consciousness—a feeling of foreignness in both their ancestral and current homes. The project is structured to place LSU faculty voices “in conversation” with visiting artist peers to bring diverse perspectives on lived experiences, creative practices, and building artistic communities.
A free, public reception and artist talk is scheduled for Friday, September 6 from 5–8 p.m. with the artist talk and Q&A at 5:30 p.m. In addition to public programming downtown, visiting artist Jade Hoyer will spend three days installing the exhibition and working with LSU School of Art students to provide a lecture, studio visits, and printmaking demonstrations.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
JADE HOYER | In her multimedia artistic practice, visiting artist Jade Hoyer employs installation, printmaking, papermaking, and social practice to examine social issues through quotidian materials and objects; her work wryly addresses questions of gender, multiracial identity, and social privilege. She currently an artistic practitioner fellow at Brown University’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, and an assistant professor of art at Carleton College.
She has exhibited her work internationally and has been recognized by organizations including the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Windgate Foundation, the Colorado Department of Higher Education, the William Morris Society in the United States, and the Minnesota State Art Board. Her work is in collections such as the Museum at Texas Tech University’s Artist Printmaker Research Collection, the Association of Pinoy Printmakers, Philippines, and the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba, Brazil.
LAUREN CARDENÁS | Lauren Cardenás is a Latinx studio artist who focuses on print media. Her current body of work asks the viewer to question the connotations of everyday mundane objects. She is investigating her bifurcated Mexican American identity as a subject matter. She currently is assistant professor of printmaking at LSU School of Art.
Cardenás holds a BA in Painting, Printmaking, and Drawing from Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX; she is a Tamarind Institute Printer Training Program graduate and holds an MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She was awarded the University of Nevada, Reno Black Rock Press Redfield Fellowship. Cardenás also was a co-founding member and co-director of Museum Blue, an artist-run space in St. Louis.
Images:
Lauren Cardenás, protegeme, 2024, Lithograph on Kitika chine colle on Amate handmade paper with silkscreen,17”x12”
Jade Hoyer, Thank you/ Salamat, 2022, silkscreen monoprint, handmade paper containing Philippine fibers and hospital scrubs, 9’ 2” x 11’ 10”
Professor Darius Spieth speaks at the Belgian Royal Academy, May 2024.
Darius Spieth, professor of art history, gave a series of talks on his research at European art history events in summer 2024.
On May 22, 2024, Spieth gave the lecture, “Flea Markets from a Historical Perspective and Their Contemporary Challenges: The Example of St. Ouen” at the Brussels Art Market Workshop. Organized by the ULB – Université libre de Bruxelles at the Academie royale de Belgique (Belgian Royal Academy.)
“This talk is about the historical beginnings of flea markets in the late nineteenth century, especially that of St. Ouen, near Paris, which gave flea markets their name, “marchés aux puces” (from the fleas sold together with recycled – today vintage – clothing),” Spieth said.
The research retraces the evolution from a place for recycling in the late 19th century (old clothing, iron) to its rise as a design hotspot and tourist destination in the late 20th century, and, finally, the current threat of gentrification to the area. Regarding the challenges of gentrification at St. Ouen, I discuss the fate of the “Espace Steinitz” as a case study.
“My research contextualizes the evolution of the St. Ouen flea market within the urban evolution of Paris and its surrounding territory, the banlieue, from the period of Haussmannization (1850s onward) to the construction of the ‘boulevard periphérique’ (the large, always congested highway surrounding Paris) in the 1950s and 1960s and beyond. I also discuss how the ‘bric-à-brac’ culture of antiques, porcelain, furniture, old clothing, etc. at St. Ouen inspired major modern artists of the 19th to the 21st centuries, including Edouard Manet, Picasso, Henri Matisse, André Breton, Colette, Suzanne Valadon, Claude Verlinde, Jean-Pierre Alaux, Vincent Darré, etc., and how this function as a creative hub endures to the present day.”
Articles on the topic are forthcoming.
Darius Spieth speaks at Château de Fontainebleau, June 2024. Photo by Reagan Laird.
On June 2, 2024 Spieth spoke at the Festival of Art History (Saturnin Festival de l’histoire de l’art) in Fontainebleau at Château de Fontainebleau, France. The three-day is the most important gathering of art historians in the francophone world. The prestigious event takes place annually in the sixteenth-century Renaissance castle of Fontainebleau, near Paris. This year’s festival was themed around “Sports,” in reference to the summer 2024 Olympics in Paris.
“The pleasures of sports and the praise of body culture – trends that were fostered in part by the opening of the Olympics to art competitions in the early 20th century, the availability of photographic motion studies of the body in action, and the extensive advertisement campaigns and commercialization of the Paris Games of 1924 – became essential themes for modern art and literature between the two World Wars,” he said.
But the aestheticization of sports did not please everyone. The talk at the Festival of Art History at Fontainebleau retraces these artistic and literary debates between the two World Wars and shows how they were finally rendered mute by the appropriation of the sports iconography by Fascist regimes and their propaganda machineries.
On June 12 & 13, 2024 he gave the talk “Les Templitudes” at House of the Learned Societies (Maison des sociétés savantes), in Bordeaux, France, hosted by the Archeological Society of Bordeaux. “Gustave Debrie et la genèse artistique des chevaux marins du Monument aux Girondins (Gustave Debrie and the Artistic Genesis of the Sea Horses of the Monuments to the Girondins in Bordeaux)” explores the Monument of the Girondins on the Square of the Quinconces in Bordeaux is a monumental sculpture that defines in many ways the appearance of the city.
This talk focuses particularly on the bronze sea horses of the monument, which were the contribution of the Parisian sculptor Gustave Debrie (1842-1932).
“My research is also concerned with the illustrious precedents of these sea horses: the fountain with Apollo’s chariot at the Château de Versailles, crated between 1668 and 1670 by Jean-Baptiste Tuby, after drawings by Charles le Brun, builder of Versailles; the horses of Marly by Guillaume Coustou (1743-1745); the paintings and drawings by Théodore Géricault from the early nineteenth century; and the Fountain of the Four Parts of the World, known as the “Fontaine de l’Observatoire,” realized in Paris in 1874 by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.
During the NAZI occupation of Bordeaux, during WWII, the Monument of the Girondins was disassembled for scrap metal, but its components were miraculously saved. After lengthy discussions, the monument was restored and reassembled in its original location in the early 1980s.”
His article on the topic will appear in the annual Revue archéologique de Bordeaux.
This book is a guide to computational design for landscape architects replete with extensive tutorials. It introduces algorithmic approaches for modeling and designing landscapes. The aim of the book is to use algorithms to understand and design landscape as a generative system, i.e. to harness the processes that shape landscape to generate new forms. An algorithmic approach to design is gently introduced through visual programming with Grasshopper, before more advanced methods are taught in Python, a high-level programming language.
Topics covered include parametric design, randomness and noise, waves and attractors, lidar, drone photogrammetry, point cloud modeling, terrain modeling, earthworks, digital fabrication, and more. The chapters include sections on theory, methods, and either visual programming or scripting. Online resources for the book include code and datasets so that readers can easily follow along and try out the methods presented.
“This book is a much-needed guide, both theoretical and practical, on computational design for students, educators, and practitioners of landscape architecture,” Harmon said.
Harmon is graduate coordinator at LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, to be promoted to associate professor in August 2024. His research aims to ground design in spatial science by seamlessly integrating geospatial modeling into the creative design process through technologies such as tangible interaction, digital fabrication, and virtual reality. He co-designed Tangible Landscape, a tangible interface for geospatial modeling. His previous publications include a book, book chapters, and papers on tangible interaction, geospatial modeling, and digital design. He received a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Master of Philosophy in Geography and the Environment from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Design from North Carolina State University.
LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture undergraduate (BLA) students created designs for the Baton Rouge community: Kathleen Bogaski’s Urban Design studio focused on creating a riverfront master plan and site-specific designs in Downtown Baton Rouge. Working with the BR Downtown Development District (DDD) led by Executive Director Whitney Hoffman Sayal, the team identified goals for improving the experience of visitors arriving along the riverfront.
Aims include to enhance the destinations, the park and plaza areas, riverfront trail, creating a stronger sense of place and connections to the natural systems and the city’s tourist destinations, and the downtown art and entertainment district.
On May 14, 2024, the Mayor-President and the Downtown Development District hosted an open house event highlighting the work of the landscape architecture students. The students highlighted their ideas on how to provide visitor and citizens more quality of life experiences and increase tourism to the region. The DDD also provided examples of how other cities have enhanced their waterfront, in addition to cities that have improved their convention centers.
”As we plan what improvements may be made to the River Center, we must plan how it could better connect to the riverfront in order to truly transform our city’s center and make it a major attraction that contributes to our region’s overall economic vitality,” according to the DDD report.
“A few students represented the BLA fifth year studio’s work from our previous semester studio, which aimed to combine all that we’ve learned at RRLSA into a design project focused on the Downtown Baton Rouge Riverfront,” said Ellen Sedlacek. She presented at the open house along with fellow students Jonah Foster and Dan Metzger.
“DDD showcased our master plans and individual site designs to residents and leaders of Baton Rouge to get the community excited about what the riverfront could look like,” she said. “As students, we tried to incorporate sustainable, forward-thinking design ideas that would work to enhance the local culture of Baton Rouge and the Mississippi River, and it was great to share our ideas with members of the community.”
“We are grateful to the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture students who have studied the riverfront and are excited to showcase their ideas,” said Sayal. “We believe their ideas will serve as a catalyst to further discussions on how to accentuate one of downtown’s greatest assets.”
East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, who attended the open house, celebrated their plans to turn the natural beauty of the riverfront into a “dynamic hub of activity.”
“I’m really excited to see the deep dive that the LSU landscape architecture students have taken,” she said. “Their innovative ideas and creative vision have sparked a new wave of possibilities for our riverfront.”
Richard Boehnke is a dreamer. A maker, a creator, someone who is not only driven to change the world and make something new, but who also inspires those around him.
An MFA candidate in the LSU School of Art and one of the two artists in residence in the inaugural Open Experimental Studio at LSU’s Glassell Gallery, Richard works with clay – but he is also a scientist, engineer, business professional, and a teacher.
“I don’t have a traditional art background,” he said. “I grew up playing music and I always liked to work with my hands. I took a ceramics class my last semester of high school, and I loved it. I wound up becoming a studio assistant that summer at Yourist Studio in Ann Arbor because my ceramics teacher could see that I wasn’t done, and he helped me get the position. He has been a great mentor of mine.”
Originally from Ann Arbor, Richard studied biochemistry at the University of Michigan, followed by a Master of Science and Master of Engineering in sustainable energy technology at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, where he received a Fulbright Scholarship. He has been a scientific researcher, a business consultant, a ceramics instructor in Mumbai, India, and an English teacher in Vietnam. After his first Master degrees, he dedicated the first phase of his career to creating a more sustainable world. At Recurve,a software startup company, he worked to support the decarbonization of electric utilities by developing virtual power plants. As a director, he came to a turning point in 2023, wondering where to go next with his career.
“I asked myself, ‘Do I pursue clay?’ I had always wanted to, at some point, wondering if not now, when? I finally decided, ‘Why not make ‘when’now?’”
It was the right time in his life for a change. So he applied to an MFA in ceramics at LSU, having narrowed down programs to meet his criteria: full tuition stipend to support graduate students, art faculty members that value functional work, and ceramics faculty members that likely wouldn’t retire in the coming years.
As a ceramics artist he’s focused on incorporating sustainability into his practice and advocating for it in the field; he published Clay Culture: Sustainability in Ceramics in Ceramics Monthly’s April 2023 issue. He has exhibited his works nationally including recently, juried The Mudflat Cup Show in Sommerville, MA (2024) and the Crescent City Clay Fest 2023 in New Orleans.
To aspiring artists, or students considering whether to pursue an art degree, Richard advises to be open and seek information: “Reach out to people you know, or other artists that you like their work – talk to people to see if it’s for you. It’s important to know why you’re doing this. Go into the experience knowing your goals.”
“It’s really important for students to understand that art is hard – it involves math, science, chemistry, critical thinking, research. Learning how to understand problems from many different viewpoints.”
“What’s amazing about the arts is that you’re not just learning to paint a picture, make a pot, design in a digital program – you’re learning how to think creatively and to see what’s actually in front of you. Art training forces you to learn to think differently. Currently AI is averaging the internet, but we need people to be able to think beyond averages, critically, and solve novel challenges. These critical thinking skills make art and design students appealing to the job market.”
After graduating with his MFA degree, Richard’s goal is to teach as an art faculty member at a college. “Part of the reason I’d love working in clay is I love to teach; I love to help people get to where they want to go.”
As a graduate student in the studio arts program, he is now gaining practical experience working as a teacher, instructing undergraduate art students as a graduate teaching assistant. Connecting with others as they create is one of his favorite parts of the artistic experience.
“I love the process of creating,” he explained.
“The Open Experimental Studio model gives us the space to focus on process, not products. We [as artists] will be able to focus on exploration, learning, growing, and sharing with the community – not necessarily taking anything home, other than the experiences.”
“I enjoy working with my hands, playing with mud every day,” he said with a laugh. “There’s something [about clay] that allows you to connect in a different way when working with your hands.”
His ceramic work is generally functional: “There’s something different about making something to go on someone’s mantelpiece versus to hold in their hands. I want people to be able to pick [my work] up and say, well, ‘I’m also going to drink my coffee out of it or, put some flowers in it, or I’m going to serve dinner with this.’”
He’s excited to be challenged to grow as a maker through the open studio experience, he said, and to connect with the Baton Rouge artistic community. “Make work and explore, sharing that work with our community and encouraging them to explore – that is the goal.”
The Open Experimental Studio will host a series of informal workshops free and open to the public at the gallery in downtown Baton Rouge to share the experience of artmaking with people in the community. See schedule of events.
“I get inspired by working with different people,” Richard said. “To me, it’s all about the community and building together. It’s such a lovely thing to be able to do something like this – my goal is to be a part of it, and help make the Open Experimental Studio exist so that more people can do it in the future.”
As fellow Open Experimental Studio artist Kim Meadowlark said, “we’ll walk so the next people can run.”
The experience is about community building and creating in an open, ephemeral environment. The message: all are welcome here.
Art & Design Team Awarded 2024 Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Research “Big Idea” Award
An interdisciplinary team of faculty researchers in the LSU College of Art & Design were awarded a “Big Idea” grant from the 2024 Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Research to investigate at-risk coastal cultural heritage sites.
Assistant professor of architecture Annicia Streete will lead a research team to scan cultural landscapes, built environments and festivals on the Gulf Coast and in the Caribbean using drones, lidar and radiance fields. The goal of the project is to compile a rich dataset and create an immersive, high-fidelity record of coastal cultural heritage sites at risk because of natural disasters, land loss and sea level rise. The project team includes Brendan Harmon, associate professor of landscape architecture in the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture; Brent Fortenberry, College of Art & Design Associate Dean of Research and associate professor of landscape architecture; Hye Yeon Nam, associate professor of art/digital art in the School of Art; and Farzaneh Oghazian, assistant professor of architecture. Collaborators also include Ludovico Geymonat, associate professor of art history, Jane Ashburn, assistant professor of practice in architectural conservation, and Jesse Allison, Associate Professor of Experimental Music & Digital Media.
“As our coasts change – as land is lost and the intensity of storms increase – much of our cultural heritage will be damaged and eventually lost. Coastal communities in Louisiana are rapidly losing land and are planning to resettle, leaving cultural heritage sites including cemeteries and mounds behind,” Streete wrote.
“Coastal cities such as New Orleans and Port-au-Prince have been battered by natural disasters, putting their rich cultural legacy at risk. With emerging technologies such as drones, realtime lidar, and radiance fields, we can preserve immersive, high-fidelity records of the disappearing heritage of our coasts. By scanning cultural landscapes, the built environment, and festivals of the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, we aim to compile a dataset of heritage sites. We will publish this dataset online as a curated collection of immersive virtual experiences with extensive historical documentation to build awareness of these regions’ rich culture and the manifold challenges they face. This research initiative is novel in its application of cutting-edge technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence-based sensing to the preservation of coastal heritage.”
This project is part of the Coast area of the LSU Scholarship First Agenda. Phase 2 ($75,000) grants fund faculty to develop preliminary data and create a long-term research agenda for large-scale grant proposals for national impact. It aligns with the coastal focus area in the research pentagon in LSU’s Scholarship First Agenda and involves a transdisciplinary team composed of LSU faculty in partnership with the National Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology, Florida State University, Tuskegee University, etc. It also aligns with the National Endowment for Humanities’ agenda.
The largest internal funding program in LSU history, the Provost’s Fund for Innovation in Research has invested $1.2 million in 15 interdisciplinary research teams. Aligned with LSU’s Scholarship First Agenda, the teams and their projects aim to solve pressing problems in Louisiana and everywhere.
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Joelle Nagy, MFA August 2024 graduate of the LSU School of Art, was selected to be included in the 
The LSU College of Art & Design has named Brent Fortenberry the new interim director of the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture. He is currently associate dean of research and graduate studies and directs the Doctor of Design in Cultural Preservation program.
Brendan Harmon, assistant professor of landscape architecture, has published the new book 
Harmon is graduate coordinator at LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, to be promoted to associate professor in August 2024. His research aims to ground design in spatial science by seamlessly integrating geospatial modeling into the creative design process through technologies such as tangible interaction, digital fabrication, and virtual reality. He co-designed Tangible Landscape, a tangible interface for geospatial modeling. His previous publications include a book, book chapters, and papers on tangible interaction, geospatial modeling, and digital design. He received a Master of Landscape Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a Master of Philosophy in Geography and the Environment from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Design from North Carolina State University.
