LSU Art Faculty Present Works: Spring 2026
Holding, U.N.O Gallery
U.N.O. Gallery in New Orleans presents Holding, the works of LSU School of Art faculty Michaelene (Mikey) Walsh and Kelli Scott Kelley, on view February 21-March 8, 2026.
“To hold is a universal act, both burden and embrace. It can mean to grasp, to endure, to carry, to comfort, or to resist. Holding acknowledges the exhaustion and complexity of daily life: the struggle to keep holding on to hope, to dreams, to joy, even amid disappointment, sorrow, and uncertainty,” according to the artists.
“This exhibition reflects the physical and emotional labor of holding what we can and cannot endure, what we must protect, and what we must release. It gestures toward the metaphorical and literal weight women carry: the work of mothering, caregiving, and sustaining, as well as the resistance of holding back against destructive forces: floodwaters, war mongers, monsters of power.”
“For both artists, the act of holding becomes a meditation on resilience, love, and the tenuous beauty of being human.”
Kelley is professor of painting. In Kelley’s work, subconscious worlds populated by hybrid beings unfold into dreamlike narratives that explore humankind’s connections, disconnections, and impact upon the natural world. Through an alchemy of truth and magic, she seeks to reveal the supernatural woven through the everyday.
Walsh is associate professor of ceramics. In this series, Deep Time, Walsh sought solace in the eternal and enduring qualities of the ceramic vessel, an archetype found throughout human history. Returning to the most basic elements of the ceramic process, her work connects to many makers’ hands across time.
Jungle Boogie (Tulum), by Bradley Kerl, 2025. Oil on canvas, 80×60 in.
Bradley Kerl: Point of Light, Ivester Contemporary
Works by Bradley Kerl, assistant professor of art/painting, will be on view at Ivester Contemporary gallery in Austin Texas February 28 – April 4, 2026.
The artist talk is Saturday, February 28 at 6:30 p.m.
Point of Light marks Bradley Kerl’s third solo exhibition with the gallery and features a body of work that explores scale, structure, and the shifting meanings of familiar imagery. Kerl set out to create paintings of varying scales that maintain equal visual and conceptual strength regardless of size, building each composition atop a framework of geometry and symmetry that is then disguised, subverted, or reworked through an intuitive, painterly process.
Drawing from a wide range of source material including personal photographs, memories, vernacular painting, and his children’s drawings, Kerl constructs layered paintings that operate as both collage and invention. The works examine how symbols and settings can transform depending on context, highlighting dualities such as beauty and destruction, warmth and violence, awe and unease. Recognizable imagery invites entry, while subtle disruptions and compositional shifts challenge certainty and encourage viewers to reconsider their initial assumptions. Embracing the visible process and the physical hand of the artist, Kerl foregrounds painterly imperfection as a response to increasingly algorithmic modes of image consumption.
Developed during a period of personal and geographic transition as Kerl relocated with his family from Texas to Louisiana, the exhibition reflects on time, memory, and movement. The title Point of Light “functions as both description and inquiry, referencing the recurring presence of light throughout the paintings while also suggesting direction, focus, and possibility. Light serves here as both subject and metaphor, a source of warmth, life, and perception that guides viewers through a body of work grounded in reflection, transformation, and renewal.”
Kerl 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.