WAYNE AMEDEE has long been interested in art. As a young child, he experienced two formative events: a visit to a fine arts museum where he was fascinated by classical and African sculpture and abstract painting and the influence of an elderly relative who encouraged him to paint what he saw around him. Also influential in his life is the countryside on the banks of the Mississippi River where he grew up, and his lifelong spiritual connection with that mystical, powerful body continues. His series of paintings and works on paper titled "Renewal" is his response to Hurricane Katrina. According to Amedee, "these paintings borrow much from nature and have been a great aid in mending my psychological state and my well being, my own 'self help' manual."

BARRY BAILEY has exhibited extensively in the New Orleans area and received a number of prestigious commissions and reviews. His work combines a contemporary minimalist approach to figuration with ancient techniques of casting, carving, and modeling. Barry was born in High Point, North Carolina, in 1952. He moved to New Orleans in 1980 and was the first visual arts coordinator for the Contemporary Arts Center until 1982. He supervised Artworks '84 for the Louisiana World Exposition and was an artist in residence at Louisiana State University in 1985. Barry started teaching at Tulane University in 1987. He has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant and was awarded an NEA by the Southern Arts Foundation.

BRENT BARNIDGE’s work is rooted in traditional figurative sculpture. He has recently begun employing high relief sculpture as a broader landscape for his art. He finds that it provides a unique means with which to explore complex ideas. He began his art career as a carnival sculptor in New Orleans in 1999, and has since been commissioned by many clients nationwide, including nature centers, film companies, and museums. Commissions have included figurative works for the Free Canteen Memorial in Streator, Illinois, Pompey’s Pillar National Memorial in Billings, Montana, and the Point Vincente Interpretive Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. He earned his MBA from the University of New Orleans and his MS from Louisiana State University.

RAINE BEDSOLE's works are included in the collections of New Orleans' Museum of Art, Louis Armstrong Airport, the South Carolina Museum of Art, the Miami Herald, and Nordstroms, among others. In 2006, Bedsole was honored as a participant in the Art in Embassies program in Kuwait, Nepal, and NATO in Brussels. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions. In September, her work was on view in Lord and Taylor's 5th Avenue windows in conjunction with 'Kaliedoscope Katrina.' Bedsole's work can be seen in Miami during Art Basel in December and at Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York. Born in Mobile, Alabama, Bedsole recieved a BFA from Auburn University (1983) and a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1989).

KIM BERNADAS works in both figure and portrait sculpture using a classical approach with emphasis on proportion, gesture, and individuality. As a former physical therapist and ballet instructor, Kim has had a lifelong study in the dynamics of the human form. Her artistic training began at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts in 1991, where she now teaches portrait and figurative sculpture. She has taught sculpture at the St. Tammany Art Association and has held intensives in Alabama and Florida. She is a member of the National Sculpture Society and the New Orleans Art Council. Kim's professional career has included public and private collections -- most recently, at the Tulane Medical Center Maternity Pavillion. She was also featured in the New Orleans Magazine, named the 2005 WYES Artist of the Year, and awarded at the 2004 National Drawing Exhibition in Sante Fe. Her work can be viewed at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts.

BARBARA BRAINARD has been making monotypes since she discovered the technique while jurying a student drawing competition at Tulane in 1985. Since Hurricane Katrina, she has been making monotype images of the landscapes, neighborhoods, and people of New Orleans. Her themes include population migration, derelict and viable structures, and shifts in interpersonal relationships. She teaches drawing at Loyola University and lives and works in Uptown New Orleans. A practicing artist for 30 years, Barbara has received prestigious grants and awards for her artwork and has an extensive exhibition record nationally and abroad. She is represented by Cole Pratt Gallery.

Photo by Donn Young.

ANDREW BROTT lives and works in the university district of Uptown New Orleans. His company BrottWorks designs, fabricates, and installs custom art glass creations by utilizing a team of highly trained artisans in glass and metalworking. Brott is committed to rebuilding the New Orleans arts community that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Over the past twenty years of work, he has developed a style of design and execution based on creation and death, life and decay, destruction and erosion. It is always in some form of evolution, flux, or change.

JO ANN GREENBERG received her bachelor's and master's degrees in fine arts from Tulane University. Her ceramic works are in the collections of the New Orleans Museum of art and The Tampa Museum of Art, among numerous private collections. "I have been interested in clay since I was a child. The plastic qualities of clay, the softness makes it easy to mold into the shapes I desire. Then my pots and wall pieces are incised with nudes and other forms found in Louisiana's nature. The clay is used as a canvas for underglazes and glazes. The works are fired in an electric kiln. Then they become a part of me." She is represented by Le Mieux Galleries in New Orleans.

Photo by Buff Strickland.

MIRANDA LAKE is an encaustic collage artist living in New Orleans. In 2003, she was selected for Louisiana’s No Dead Artists juried exhibition and again in 2005 for the New Orleans Museum of Art’s Triennial of Southern Art, the oldest juried exhibition in the country. In 2007, Miranda was invited to teach a digital encaustic collage workshop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado, and was selected to be included in the R&F Paints Encaustic Works Biennial. Miranda’s work combines one of the oldest, most archival forms of painting with the digital darkroom creating a bridge and exploring the tension between past and present, both personal and collective. Themes of rebirth and potential have been the primary focus of Miranda’s work since Hurricane Katrina with a focus on the absurd contradictions of what it means to live in postdiluvian New Orleans while grounding these impressions in a very personal iconography.

CAROL LEAKE is known for her landscapes in oil, her figurative watercolors, and her depictions of the festival Mardi Gras. The carnival images are the subject of the documentary Parade Pictures, featuring the Mardi Gras-related work of Leake and of noted artist George Dureau. She is working on a series of oils for the series Nudes With Guns, as well as unarmed nudes and portraits in oil. Since 1982, she has been a member of the visual arts faculty at Loyola University where she teaches painting. She has a bachelor of fine arts degree from Newcomb College at Tulane University and a master of fine arts degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Carol's work has been shown regionally and nationally and can be found in numerous private and corporate collections.

Photo by Donn Young.

BEVERLY MORRIS is a New Orleans ceramic artist who began to work with clay in 1991. The primary method she uses to build her large ceramic pieces is coil-building, one of the oldest and most labor-intensive techniques. After her pieces are built, Morris incises and carves patterns into the clay, giving them a distinct texture and feel. The works are then fired multiple times. She often incorporates natural elements into her work including shells, dried grasses, and rocks. She is represented at DOCS gallery. Morris has a political science degree from Tulane University. She worked for The Times-Picayune for 15 years as an award-winning copywriter and creative director.

MARY JANE PARKER's work is mixed media, combining printmaking and painting techniques with glass and bronze sculpture. Mary Jane is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship (2007) and a Louisiana Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship (1990, 2001). She was also awarded a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Award for Excellence in Works on Paper in 1990. Mary Jane, represented in New Orleans by Arthur Roger Gallery, has exhibited work nationally and internationally. She was recently included in the Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art at the New Orleans Museum of Art; "Homegrown: Southeast,” an invitational exhibition organized by the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; and “Close Up: Recent Work by Five Louisiana Artists” at the Kathryn Markel Gallery in New York City. She is a faculty member and chair of visual arts at NOCCA|Riverfront in New Orleans.

KEITH PERELLI, a visual artist in painting and drawing, is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. He has participated in numerous national and international invitation and juried exhibitions. He exhibits his work at DOCS Gallery (New Orleans), Found Gallery (Los Angeles), and Steve Martin Fine Art (Miami). Mr. Perelli has been a recipient of Foundation Ratti's arts fellowship and Liquitex Inc.’s Excellence in the Visual Arts Award. In addition to six solo exhibitions in New Orleans,  he has exhibited for Foundation Ratti's "Corso Superiore” (Como, Italy), “Alan Kaprow Invitational," (Milan, Italy), and “UNO 3 Person Alumni Works on Paper” (Innsbruck, Austria). Most recently, his work was selected for “Culture of Queer, A Tribute to J.B. Harter” in New York, NY, the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and a traveling exhibit entitled “Katrina, Catastrophe and Catharsis,” at the Fine Arts Center (Colorado Springs, Colorado).  He has received four mini-grants and a fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

PHIL SANDUSKY, showing an early aptitude for art, studied under the academic painter Marjorie Edwards, who taught him a sense of aesthetics, the importance of keen observation, and a love of paint. Although his life has taken him in different directions, he always returned to his first love: art. Sandusky began formal art training at the age of sixteen in Jacksonville, Florida. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in physics at Jacksonville University and spent several summers enhancing his talent in Madison, Connecticut, and at the Art Student's League in New York.

Sandusky held his first solo exhibit in 1988 at the Academy Gallery and has since had a total of twenty-three solo exhibits in New Orleans and across the country. He has published several articles in American Artist, and he now pursues art full time, serving as instructor of landscape and life painting at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. He resides in New Orleans with his wife, Michele.

MAGTILLT LAAN VAN THIEL was born in the Netherlands and grew up in New Orleans. She paints portraitures and landscapes with oils. She has had numerous exhibitions locally and at New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts. Her most recent exhibition was held at the Mary O’Keefe Cultural Center Gallery. She received a bachelor of fine arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1963. She received a Cresson Scholarship for european travel in 1964, attended art school in Holland, and studied at the Newcomb College of Art in New Orleans. She and her husband, Eduard van Thiel, reside in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. They have three sons.

SIDONIE VILLERE is a multifaceted artist. As a sculptor, her ceramics use geology to shape metaphorical self-portraits. As a painter, her ethereal works use multiple media to achieve layering and depth for a painterly effect that maintains a sculptural aesthetic. Her work has exhibited throughout the United States. In 2004, she was awarded a public commission for the Jefferson Parish Courthouse.

She recently had her first solo exhibition at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, where her work was acquired for the New Orleans Museum of Art permanent collection. Her work appeared in “Kaleidoscope Katrina,” an exhibition of twelve New Orleans artists in the windows of Lord and Taylor on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. As a curator, Sidonie has assembled numerous group shows for the annual National Council on the Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference. In 2005, she curated “CLAY:  A Compelling Expression” at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans. She has a studio at Mid City Studios and teaches art at the Louise S. McGehee School. She is represented by the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans. She earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in ceramics from the Newcomb School of Art and her master of fine arts degree in ceramics from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Her work can also be viewed at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery.

DELL WELLER studied four years at the Art Students League in New York. After two years of study in Mexico, he returned to New Orleans. He developed a widespread reputation for his wildlife etchings. He is working on portraits, landscapes, and still-lives. Dell has been an instructor at NOAFA since its inception in 1978. He has had numerous one-man shows and is represented in many private collections.

KRIS WENSCHUH was born in the former East Germany and moved to London after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She emigrated to the United States in 1998, where she lived and worked in New York. After a visit to New Orleans, she “fell in love with the culture and the people,” and decided to permanently relocate, adopting the city as a home. Kris has a background in linguistics, decorative design, education, and art. She has studied in Russia, Germany, London, San Diego, and New Orleans, where she has received a number of prestigious awards and scholarships.

Inspired by her extensive travels and experiences living in varied cultural climates, her paintings combine an approach based on observation and representation, informed by oblique transitions in voice and emphasizing thoughts on psychological relationships universally relevant to the human condition.