The Contraband

Issue date: 3/26/07 Section: Entertainment

At 6 p.m. on March 16th The Imperial Calcasieu Museum's new Gallery Annex saw it's Grand Opening with the opening of McNeese graduate student Erica McCreedy's first exhibit "Green and Dying", featuring her photography and poetry, which lasted until 8 p.m. Gracing the walls of the Annex were numerous black and white photography pieces, as well as some cyanotypes (another method of developing prints resulting in a pale blue that resembles watercolor), all framed in worn and aged wooden frames. Select pieces of McCreedy's poetry were also displayed.
The Imperial Calcasieu Museum released a statement about McCreedy stating: "Born and raised in Southwest Louisiana, McCreedy studied creative writing at LSU in Baton Rouge before deciding to work on her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry at McNeese State University. For her exhibition, she wanted to mix visual art and language; two art mediums she rarely sees presented in a complimentary fashion. The melancholy past is the theme of her photography, and she explores this through black and white photographs and a blueprinting process that uses photosensitive materials developed in sunlight. 'Through photography and poetry, the impermanence of nature and nostalgia for the past are conveyed,' says McCreedy, 'Louisiana is the perfect setting to express this vision.'"
McCreedy has been practicing photography for 2 years and has experimented in color, black and white, and most recently in alternative photograph processes like cyanotypes and orotypes. Her poetry in the exhibit was displayed as cyanotypes because she wanted to present the poems as visual art as well. Her black and white works utilize an interesting strength of contrast and primarily low key images of mausoleums and statuary in graveyards as well as scenic seemingly passed over areas in Louisiana. The theme was reflected and complimented in the frames she chose for each piece, which were actually built from wreckage from hurricane Rita. McCreedy wanted to add a new layer to the pieces so she chose to collect damaged wood from homes destroyed by hurricane Rita. She and Blaine Miller, the assistant director and curator at the museum, drove down to Cameron and went through abandoned homes, old wood piles, etc. to find floor boards, siding, and whatnot to use for frames. She feels it compliments the theme of death and decay in the exhibit while adding meaning and depth. My personal reaction to this was that it adds a sense of rebirth to something thought lost.
The opening received a great deal of traffic, and many of the pieces in the exhibit were purchased within the two-hour period, a tremendous success for her first exhibit! The exhibit runs through April 20, 2007 at the Gallery Annex. For more information, please call the Imperial Calcasieu Museum at 337-439-3793.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools