Awards

2023 — Rob Carpenter is a Mississippi native who began drawing at a very early age. He plays with line to create calculated, eye-pleasing, hand-drawn tapestries. Deliberately and repetitiously, Carpenter draws each line then layers those lines until they fuse together to become one surface. Using ink or pencil on paper, his process is monotonous and tedious, but his finished work is expressive and impressively crafted. Carpenter, who served as a professor of painting and drawing at Nicholls State University from 1991-2012, has been featured in Studio Visit Magazine and New American Paintings and has received two grants for outdoor sculpture and painting. His work has been featured nationally at the George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco, the William Dale Gallery in New Orleans, The Medici Center for the Visual Arts in Philadelphia and The Metropolitan Gallery in Arlington, VA. 

2022 — Geeta Dave is the daughter of one of India's best-known artists, Balwant Joshi, and a respected art educator currently teaching at Baton Rouge’s Glasgow Middle School. While Dave’s style of painting is rooted in her homeland, she paints with the freedom of expression, zest and imagination of her generation. Her powerful compositions incorporate fantasy figures of jungle animals, birds, reptiles and exotic plant forms into strong and focused works of art, seeking to balance our perceptions of nature. Eight of her wildlife panels are on permanent exhibit at the Greater Baton Rouge Zoo. Her focus is projects that emphasize community engagement and environmental education that not only showcases students’ work but teaches them the importance of organizations that improve our society.

2020 — Billie Bourgeois’ goal as an artist is responding to her subjects rather than producing representations of them. A native of New Orleans and LSU graduate, she has taught art in both public and private schools. Her spiritual upbringing planted within her a sense of the sacred and mystical and provided fertile ground for an already natural instinct for art. She is always concerned with the composition and formal aspects of the work, balanced with subjects derived from nature and intuition. She is most at home with suggestions of gesture and strong personal mark making.

2019 — Samuel J. Corso is a multi-media artist with a concentration in glass. His stained glass can be found at numerous churches throughout the city and state as well as across the country. He has exhibited by invitation at the Mobile Museum of Art, Regional Craft Biennial, Arkansas Art Center Decorative Arts Museum and Glass Art National. He was selected for inclusion in New Glass Review IV, a selection of the “100 Best Glass Designers” in the world for 1982 by the Corning Museum of Glass. He has taught courses in drawing, design and painting at LSU, his alma mater, and conducted workshops in glass design and construction for Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, Gatlinburg, TN, and at the American Crafts Council. He was also invited to exhibit and teach a course and lecture on his work to the Society of Artists in Glass Conference in Wanganui, New Zealand.

2018 — Malaika Favorite, who received both bachelor and master degrees from LSU, works in a variety of different media, allowing her flexibility based on the nature and purpose of the work. Within a single series, she may employ canvas, wood, metal and more to create an elaborate assortment of shapes. Her works can be found in a number of notable collections including Absolut Vodka, the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, GA; Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA; Coca Cola Co., Atlanta; Walt Disney World, Orlando; and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati. A graduate of LSU with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she has been featured in Art: African American and African American Art & Artist, both by Samella Lewis; Black Art in Louisiana by Bernardine B. Proctor; and the St. James Guide to Black Artists by Thomas Riggs. Her poetry, fiction and articles have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals.

2017 — Randell Henry is a professor of art at Southern University and presently serves on the boards of Baton Rouge Gallery and the DeBose Foundation. HIs paintings have been on view in galleries and museums from New Orleans to Ghana. His mixed media collage paintings showcase his approach to making collages using improvisational methods of playing with shape, color and pattern. With influences from abstract expressionism, cubism and African and Asian art, Henry explores dreams through his surrealistic collage images.

2015 — Stephen Wilson is a stain glass artist working and living in Baton Rouge. He is known throughout the South for creating majestic pieces of art that are both timeless and substantial, while being inspired and personal as well. Many of his works can be found in churches throughout the Baton Rouge area. His purist approach with the glass and lead often stands in stark contrast to the contemporary design itself, distinguishing him from among his peers. “When I design a window, I feel that I am touching two characteristics of God — of His very person—color and light. I want each window to be a jewel, a work of beauty through which God’s glory can shine.”

2014 —Kelli Scott Kelley is a professor of painting at the LSU School of Art. A Baton Rouge native, she received a bachelor’s degree from LSU and a master’s from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Since 1987, her work has been primarily comprised of mixed-media narrative paintings, drawings and objects. She has also collaborated with her husband, composer Bill Kelley, on surreal performances and video pieces. Kelley’s paintings have been exhibited in many venues including the Mesic Ve Dne Gallerie in Czeske Budejovice, Czech Republic; Bangalore University in India; Contemporary Arts Museum and Hooks-Epstein Gallery in Houston; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado; and Taylor Bercier Gallery in New Orleans.

2012 — Ed Pramuk is an American abstract expressionist painter who taught painting, drawing, printmaking and design at LSU for 35 years. Now a retired Professor Emeritus, he currently lives and works out of his home/studio in Baton Rouge. He’s had numerous exhibitions in New York, Texas and Louisiana, and he taught Louisiana State University for 35 years.