COURTESY WALTER ANDERSON MUSEUM
COURTESY OHR-O’KEEFE
The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art includes metallic pods (below) that “torque like ancient, hurricane-battered trees.”
COURTESY MARLIN MILLER
The Walter Anderson Museum of Art (above) features paintings, prints and sculptures by Anderson and others.
Gulf Coast Exhibits Events at Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art (386 Beach Blvd., Biloxi). Open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. $10; $8 seniors, students and military; $5 ages 6-17; 5 and under free; call 228-374-5547. • “Looking Ahead: Portraits from the Mott-Warsh Collection” through May 28, in the Beau Rivage Gallery and the Gallery of African American Art. Exhibitors include Chuck Close, Romare Bearden, Robert Mapplethorpe and Elizabeth Catlett. Hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. • “Alisa Holen: Confluence” through June 2. Holen’s ceramics are on display in the Mississippi Sound Welcome Center. • “Earth, Sea and Sky: Southern Ceramics from the Dod Stewart Collection” through June 2. See more than 70 pieces of Newcomb, Shearwater and Singing River pottery in the IP Casino Resort Spa Exhibitions Gallery. • “Geoff Mitchell: Chaos at the Confessional” June 12Nov. 24, in the IP Casino Resort Spa Gallery. The exhibit features a selection of mixed-media works and contemplative videos. • “The Art of Eugene Martin: A Great Concept” June 5-Dec. 1, in the Beau Rivage Gallery and the Gallery of African American Art. The late artist’s mixed-media collages contain allusions to animal, machine and structural imagery. • “Trailer McQuilkin: An Uncommon Beauty” June 5 –Nov. 24, at the Mississippi Sound Welcome Center. McQuilkin uses copper, oil paint and found objects to create images of plants. • “Mortal To Mythic: The Transforming Power Of Art” Permanent Exhibitions. Exhibitions include “George Edgar Ohr: Selections from Gulf Coast Collections” in the Star Gallery; works by Ohr and “Frank O. Gehry: Dancing with the Trees” in the Welcome Center Gallery; and “My House: The Pleasant Reed Story” and “The Native Guard: A Photographic History of Ship Island’s African American Regiment” in the Pleasant Reed Interpretive Center. Free. Events at Walter Anderson Museum of Art (510 Washington Ave., Ocean Springs). $10, $8 seniors and military, $5 children ages 5-15; call 228-872-3164. • “River and Reverie” through Aug. 15, see Rolland Golden’s paintings of southern waterways. • The Artwork of Chris Stebly Aug. 1 – Dec. 31. Stebly, Walter Anderson’s grandson and a nationally known artist, exhibits 40 artworks in a variety of media. Downtown Ocean Springs Arts and Crafts Market, on Washington Avenue. Gulf Coast artists and crafters sell their creations on third Saturdays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Call 228-875-8407.
After Hurricane Katrina destroyed many of the coast’s trees, artists made them into art that dots Highway 90.
The Mad Potter of Biloxi Frank Gehry, the famous architect who has designed some of the world’s most notable modern buildings, intended to make the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi “dance with the trees.” Gehry, famous for avant-garde masterpieces such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain, visited the Biloxi site more than 10 years ago and scribbled his vision of how the new museum (386 Beach Blvd., Biloxi, 228-374-5547) would fit in the landscape right across the highway from the beach. “They gave me a site filled with live oak trees. You can’t build next to them or be in the drip line,” Gehry told Charlie Rose in a 2001 television interview. So he chose to dance with them. The Mad Potter of Biloxi, George Ohr (1857-1918), had much in common with the celebrity architect who envisioned a whimsical museum to house Ohr’s fragile pottery. “I loved his work. I loved his work,” Gehry twice told Rose. So did many private art collectors. Ohr created as many as 10,000 pieces of pottery, but only about 400 are in the museum’s collection. Ohr’s thin ceramics amaze art experts. Some of his
pottery looks like fine, gathered fabric. Some pieces have unusual glazes that resemble exquisite Venetian glass rather than the clumpy Mississippi clay Ohr mined himself from the Tchoutacabouffa River. Skilled artists have a hard time replicating his glazes. The Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art complex includes a ceramics studio, a state Welcome Center, a contemporary art gallery, an African American art gallery and the George Ohr Gallery. It also includes the Pleasant Reed House, a replica of a historic home. Reed was a freed slave who became a successful Biloxi businessman. His built his family’s house as well as many others in the community. He was also a contemporary of Ohr’s. Some Biloxi residents aren’t crazy about the unusual buildings on the waterfront, much like some of their great grandparents who shook their heads at Ohr’s insane pottery. An Arts Haven Bay St. Louis doesn’t have a permanent arts museum, but it does have almost 50 galleries and at least 200 artists who belong to the Hancock County art association, simply called The Arts. Many artists in Bay St. Louis brag that Malcolm White, executive director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, has a home here. “There are so many artists here,” Marilynn Masters Arseneau, association president, said. To accommodate them, the association has five galleries in various spots. Arseneau paints a little herself and displays her work at the Mockingbird Café and Bakery (110 S. 2nd St., Bay
St. Louis, 228-467-8383). Second Saturday is a monthly arts festival in downtown Bay St. Louis the second Saturday evening of each month. Niche shops in small cottages open their doors for visitors. Some serve wine and cheese. Some sell pottery and watercolors. Children run under massive oak trees, and old friends sit on front porches to catch a breeze blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico. Local bands play to provide a sound track for this arts community. Bay St. Louis also has larger festivals, such as the Bay BridgeFest in the fall. It’s a fairly new festival celebrating the community’s reconnection to Pass Christian after Hurricane Katrina. Pieces of the old bridge have become part of the public art in the new bridge. “We have a beautiful mosaic at the base of the bridge,” Kat Fitzpatrick said. It’s a different mosaic than the one at the base of the Ocean Springs bridge, although the theme is familiar––a tall sailboat on the water. The bright mosaic is near the entrance of pedestrian path to Pass Christian. Hurricane Katrina destroyed Fitzpatrick’s home. Crews dismantled what was left and reconstructed her home on another site, a better site, she says. At her new house, she has a studio that she sometimes shares with other artists. She teaches various arts workshops throughout the year. The oak trees left on the Coast fascinate Fitzpatrick. “They are still rooted, but they have this amazing movement and torque in the trunks. I’m learning from them how to stand strong,” she said. 15 “It’s a perfect allegory for survivors on the Coast.” jacksonfreepress.com
phins, alligators and cats in this larger-than-life storybook. At the edge of town at the base of the Highway 90 bridge to Biloxi, a 120-foot-long mosaic dominates the scene. On it, sailboats drift on blue tiles. Local artists Chris Stebly, Ching Walters, Susie Ranager and Patt Odom all contributed to the mural.