Special to Long Beach Breeze
Gulf Coast Artist Ann Dinwiddie Madden is curating three art shows at Coast Episcopal School’s (CES) Gail Keenan Art Center (GKAC) throughout the 2024-25 school year, according to CES Head of School Jake Winter. The current season will be the third year of Madden orchestrating shows at the independent school in Long Beach.
“Having Ann Madden as our official curator is not only a privilege, it raises the bar for the participating artists and the art lovers who attend our events,” said Winter.
Madden’s photographs and mixed media pieces have been shown at galleries all over the United States. She splits her time behind the camera between New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She owned and operated Smith & Lens Gallery with Sandy Maggio, silversmith, for six years in Old Town Bay St. Louis. Her personal and most recent work can be viewed on her website at AnnMaddenPhoto.com.
“My goal in organizing these shows is to make them inviting and exciting in memory of the incredible Gail Keenan, for whom the gallery is named. It’s an honor to play a role in providing wonderful opportunities for artists of all ages,” said Madden.
Currently on display through November 1 is “Legends,” which features the works of powerhouse artists Kat Fizpatrick, Erica Larkin Gaudet, Mitchell Gaudet, Ellen Ellis Lee and Ruth Miller.
Fitzpatrick works in encaustic - pigmented wax, painted in layers, Erica Gaudet is a sculptor who primarily welds metal as her medium, while her husband, Mitchell Gaudet, regards himself primarily as a glass caster who ladles molten glass out of a furnace and into a mold and likes to make objects of desire with “a funky historical presence to them.” Lee is a sculptor and costume designer who creates one-of-a-kind mixed media figurative sculptures, vases and wall art. Miller, who developed a love of making art and doing needlework as a child, later combined the two and began to create embroidered art as an alternative to painting. Gradually, she leaned toward making portraits of actual individuals, and her detailed work can take years to complete.
Each of the three shows will include a 5 - 7 pm evening opening reception featuring cuisine created by Colette Weber of Proost.
After the holidays, the “Sweet Dreams are Made of This” show will open on January 17, 2025, with an evening opening reception from 5 until 7 p.m., featuring cuisine created by Colette Weber of Proost. The show will continue through February 28. Madden will be featuring her own works in the winter show and, to date, has also secured works by Carmen Lugo of Biloxi and Jenny Day of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
On March 28, “Paper Fools,” back by popular demand, will open with an evening reception from 5 until 7 p.m., also featuring Weber’s cuisine. “Paper Fools” was well received at the Gail Keenan Art Center in 2022 and 2023, and, in 2025, Madden’s vision for the invitational show is to celebrate the 160th publishing anniversary of Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
The Gail Keenan Art Center was dedicated in February 2011 to the memory of the recognized ceramic artist and printmaker who was born in 1940 in New Orleans and passed away in February 2005.
