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Mardi Gras Project Selected for International Design Award

Art & Design, Students, Research, Landscape Architecture, Honors & Awards, Architecture,

Masood Koochaki’s Mardi Gras-inspired studio project, “The Spine: A Celebration of Mardi Gras and Collective Presence,” received an International Design Awards (IDA) 2025 Silver Award in Commercial Architecture – Cultural/Educational Architecture, with Louisiana State University recognized as the winning university.

Masood is a dual degree Master of Architecture (MArch) and Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) student studying at the LSU College of Art & Design. The interdisciplinary approach integrates design principles for a wholistic understanding of built environments.

“My research focuses on inclusive design and shaping climate responsive public spaces,” Masood said. “In my design work, I’m especially interested in how architecture can translate local culture into durable civic spaces while meeting real needs of comfort, accessibility, and resilience.”

The Spine is a community center in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward that transforms Mardi Gras’ ephemeral festival into a permanent architectural framework. Its central procession spine threads through workshops, theaters, galleries, and gathering spaces, making circulation performative. “Float-inspired form, textile-patterned façades, and a wave-like timber canopy evoke movement, craft, and cultural memory.”

“The project reinterprets Carnival’s dynamic processions into enduring spatial typologies, offering a civic vessel where festivity, craft, and cultural memory coexist year-round,” he wrote in his design statement.

The project was developed at the LSU School of Architecture (ARCH 7006) with guidance from assistant professor of architecture Annicia Streete.

The School of Architecture is a leader in building exemplary professional expertise and rigorous scholarship on the built environment through diverse perspectives, knowledge integration and applied research emerging from the Mississippi delta and engaging global environments

Learn more about the Master of Architecture program.

The Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture has an established international reputation as one of America’s leading and consistently top-ranked programs.

Learn more about the Master of Landscape Architecture program.

LSU School of Art will present “The Middle: Paintings by Will Maxen & Bradley Kerl”

Research, Galleries, Events, Art, Painting & Drawing, Exhibitions, Faculty, , ,

LSU School of Art’s Glassell Gallery will feature the work of painters Will Maxen and Bradley Kerl, who recently joined LSU School of Art’s faculty. The Middle finds common ground in the praxes of these two faculty painters who share a deep interest in the materiality and application of paint in their studio practices. Both artists compose images through a variety of methods—collage, iterative repetition, historical and everyday references—that, together, collapse linear time through a paradoxical focus on fleeting moments and enduring presence. This exhibition will be on view January 17–March 14, 2026.  

An opening reception is planned for Saturday, January 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Glassell Gallery. More programs will be announced in the coming weeks. All programs and events are free and open to all.   

Will Maxen is a painter and an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at LSU School of Art. Maxen weaves together personal experiences and historical narratives that shift between figures and landscapes. His paintings explore the relationships among memory and the environment, inviting viewers to reflect on their own sense of belonging. The layers of visibility and abstraction in his work allow for multiple interpretations, bridging the gap between the literal and the metaphorical. 

Maxen received his BA in Illustration from Central Connecticut State University and an MFA in Art Studio from the University of California, Davis. He has had solo exhibitions at Fridman Gallery, New York; Residency Art Gallery, Los Angeles (Felix Art Fair); and UTA Art Space, New York. His work has been featured in group shows at Welancora Gallery, New York; Fridman Gallery, New York; Canepa Selling Gallery, Los Angeles, Marrow Gallery, San Francisco; Chili Art Projects, London. In 2024, he was an artist-in-residence at Silver Art Project and the New Jewish Culture Fellowship. His work is held in the collections of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, and the Art Galleries at Black Studies, University of Texas.

Bradley Kerl is a painter and an Assistant Professor of Art at LSU School of Art. Born in Beaumont, TX, Kerl holds Drawing & Painting degrees from both the University of North Texas (BFA) and the University of Houston (MFA). Kerl’s practice investigates methods of framing subjects through the medium and history of painting. Using an iterative approach and often broadening his scope to the use of common occurrences – his own pocket supercomputer, the art classroom’s still-life, his children’s drawings, a sunset – Bradley’s paintings are a call and response of completely banal yet totally transcendent everyday moments.  

His work has been featured, most recently, in solo exhibitions at McClain Gallery, Houston, TX, NADA’s Project Space, New York, NY; Art League Houston, Houston, TX; and Ivester Contemporary, Austin, TX. He is an internationally recognized artist, appearing in group exhibitions across the US, Europe, and Australia, and being awarded residencies in Texas, Italy, and France. His work has also appeared in numerous publications including Dwell, Elle Decor, Artnews, The Financial Times, Süddeutsch Zeitung Magazine, Texas Monthly, and New American Paintings.  

  

Reception  

Saturday, January 17, 2026, 6–8 p.m.  

Glassell Gallery  

100 Lafayette Street  

Baton Rouge, LA 70803  

  

Glassell Gallery Hours  

Tuesday–Sunday, 12:00–5:00 p.m.  

Open until 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays.  

Closed Mondays and between exhibitions. 

 

Images:  

Will Maxen, Untitled, 2025, 60×65″ oil, acrylic on canvas 

Bradley Kerl, SLAT, 2025 

LSU School of Art will present Twofold, featuring collaborative work by Addoley Dzegede and Visiting Artist Lyndon Barrois Jr. January 21–February 28, 2026. 

Art & Design, Visiting Artists, Galleries, Art

LSU School of Art will present the exhibition Twofold by Addoley Dzegede and visiting artist Lyndon Barrois Jr. A joint exhibition as their collaborative entity LAB-D, Twofold explores the artists’ individual responses to the same subjects, continuing their respective interests in material value, color, and cultural signification. Through a mixture of textiles, print, painting, and collage, the artists have generated work that represents their mutual tendencies to mine collections, archives, and systems of display. Drawing from images captured during numerous museum visits, each artist selected visual prompts for the other to respond to, introducing an element of unpredictability. Working on an agreed-upon scale for each prompt, the resulting works are an asymmetrical representation of the source material. Both artists employ mimicry and reproduction to generate new perspectives on existing artifacts.  

This exhibition will be on view January 21 through February 28, 2026, in the Barnes Ogden Art & Design Complex Gallery. Visiting artist Lyndon Barrois Jr. will deliver a lecture Monday, February 23, 2026, in Barnes Ogden Room 1200 at 5 p.m. to be followed by a reception in the Gallery until 7:30 p.m. 

Lyndon Barrois Jr. (b. New Orleans, LA) is an artist based in Pittsburgh, PA and an Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. He is half of LAB-D, with artist Addoley Dzegede, with whom he has collaboratively staged four exhibitions, and co-authored a book of essays (Elleboog, at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2019).  

Barrois Jr. uses cinema as a means to travel both temporally and geographically, bringing to mind ideas of anachronism, simultaneity, and reanimation. Looking at branding strategies of old cinema—along with the phased-out profession of shooting film stills—he considers these methods ways to represent a film that has yet to be seen. He is currently undergoing a project that uses the heist film and museum context to contend with legacies of colonial extraction. Another ongoing body of work investigates how fashion images function as constructed figments of the imagination onto which we project our desires and lived realities. In various ways, Barrois navigates questions around color, control, taste, waste, and the layering of information. 

Barrois Jr. received his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2013), and his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore (2006). He has completed residencies at LATITUDE Chicago, Loghaven, the Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (Netherlands), Fogo Island Arts in Newfoundland, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Ireland. 

Addoley Dzegede is a Ghanaian-American artist who grew up in South Florida and is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was a 2022-2023 Fulbright awardee in Craft to the Netherlands, based in Rotterdam for the duration of the award as the Artist-Researcher-in-Residence at Piet Zwart Institute.  

Dzegede’s work investigates notions of belonging, migration and location, and hybrid identities. Through a variety of media and techniques, she explores the metaphoric potential of materials, textile traditions, notions of “authenticity” and the ways color and pattern are used to as a means to assign belonging 

She received a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, and fellowships include the Chancellor’s Graduate Fellowship at Washington University in St Louis, where she completed an MFA degree in Visual Art, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. 

LAB-D is the collaborative art practice of Lyndon Barrois Jr. and Addoley Dzegede. Exhibitions and projects together include The Truth is Rude, at The Millitzer Gallery (St. Louis, 2015), Wayfarer, at Monaco (St. Louis, 2018), Mercantile, at Sharp Projects (Copenhagen, 2022), and To Die For, at Specialist (Seattle, 2022). Together they authored “Elleboog,” a book of essays published by the Jan Van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, Netherlands, 2019). 

As LAB-D, they have been artists-in-residence at The University of Kansas, Arteles Creative Center (Finland), Nes (Iceland), and Loghaven Artist Residency (Knoxville). They were founding members of Monaco, an artist-run gallery in St. Louis. Barrois Jr. and Dzegede were both winners of the Great Rivers Biennial at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2016 and 2018), and grantees of Advancing Black Arts from the Pittsburgh Foundation in 2022. 

 

Lecture: Lyndon Barrois Jr. 

Monday, February 23, 2026, 5 p.m. 

Barnes Ogden Art & Design Complex, Room 1200 

 

Reception: Twofold 

Monday, February 23, 2026, 6–7:30 p.m. 

Barnes Ogden Art & Design Complex Gallery, Room 1010 

 

Barnes Ogden Art & Design Complex Gallery 

31 South Campus Drive 

Baton Rouge, LA 70803 

Monday–Friday, 9:00–4:30 p.m. 

Saturday, 12–4, except between exhibitions. 

Closed Sundays 

Watch Commencement Livestream

Art & Design, Students

The fall 2025 LSU College of Art & Design commencement ceremony will take place at 3 p.m. in the LSU Student Union Theater.

Watch ceremony recording.

Traci Birch in front of New Orleans mapAbout the Commencement Speaker

Traci Birch is an Associate Professor of urbanism in the LSU School of Architecture, and Associate Director of the LSU Coastal Ecosystem Design Studio, a multi-disciplinary research institute focused on the long-term stability of communities and landscapes in dynamic coastal environments. Her research focuses on developing frameworks for community adaptation, preservation and well-being in the face of accelerated climate change. She takes an applied approach, working directly with Gulf Coast communities and community members to build capacity for, withstand, and recover from acute and chronic adversity. Dr. Birch’s work seeks to examine “what counts [to people], not just what can be counted,” exploring the nuanced ways of valuing and dealing with change by different groups and individuals. To accomplish this, she engages researchers from across this and other universities, as well as hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students.  Her goal in this is to play a small part in creating the next generation of professionals who love and care for Louisiana as much as she does.

Traci completed her Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning and her Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Environmental Management, both from the University of New Orleans. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with concentrations in graphic design and printmaking from Baldwin-Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. Before joining Coastal Ecosystem Design Studio in 2015, Traci spent 10-years+ in the private sector as a practicing planner in Louisiana and the Gulf South. This work focused primarily on community disaster recovery and community development policy writing. Her teaching experience includes graduate and undergraduate studios and seminars in coastal, sustainability, and environmental planning, as well as urban planning and urban design courses for COAD students. She previously taught at East Carolina University and the University of New Orleans. Traci is also a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and the American Planning Association.

ProFab Education will present free pop-up workshops for families at Glassell Gallery January 6 & 10, 2026

Galleries, Art

children making artLSU College of Art & Design will host ProFab Ed for two workshops at LSU School of Art’s School of Art’s Glassell Gallery Tuesday, January 6 and Saturday, January 10, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  

Come fab(ricate) Mardi Gras with us using cardboard and computers in the new year! ProFab Education’s fabrication workshops help kids bring their ideas to life using computers and machines to introduce digital fabrication to kids. ProFab Education’s projects allow kids to explore materials and technology, build skills, pursue passions, and grow confidence in experimental making. We especially invite East Baton Rouge Parish School families on Tuesday, January 6 while schools are closed. Learn more about ProFab Education.

These collaborative workshops are an extension of LSU College of Art & Design’s Open Experimental Studio Program which seeks not only to activate the gallery but to activate creative expression and ignite a passion for making. These programs offer families the opportunity to make together and in community. The Open Experimental Studio values process over product, experience over outcome, and communing over consuming. It seeks to create a supportive, open space for playful material exploration through making that is open and welcoming to all. LSU’s month-long artist-in-residence Open Experimental Studio will return in June 2026. 

All programs and events are free and open to all. These collaborative programs are supported in part by The Charles Lamar Family Foundation and LSU College of Art & Design.

LSU School of Art Glassell Gallery
Shaw Center for the Arts
100 Lafayette Street 
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
design.lsu.edu

Grad Walk 2025

Events, Art

LSU School of Art will host its Fall 2025 Grad Walk on Thursday, November 20 from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. This open-studio event features a scheduled walk between School of Art MFA graduate studios, a live band, a glowing lantern installation, and refreshments.

Meet the artists and get a peek inside their process as you visit their individual studio spaces to see in-progress works as well as the School of Art’s gallery spaces. The walk, from 6–7 p.m., will include visits with students from the photography, painting and drawing, ceramics, digital art, graphic design, printmaking, and sculpture areas. The walk will conclude in the School of Art’s sculpture garden where food and drinks will be available to enjoy amid live music and the glow of sculptural lanterns made by the first-year undergraduate students.

There is plenty of parking and LSU’s campus is fully accessible to visitors after 4:30 p.m. This event is free and open to all.