6 artists’ diverse styles flow in BR Gallery show

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Advocate News Features staff
• Published: Jun 7, 2009

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Two artists of six stick around on this Saturday while gallery staff readies the back lawn for the first installment of its Movies and Music on the Lawn series.

This will be their premiere, too. Not a world premiere, but a first-time showing at Baton Rouge Gallery Center for Contemporary Art .
Which adds a special flavor to the exhibits. Again, six in all.

“We’re featuring our six new artist members this month,” John Michael Byrd said.

He’s the gallery’s special events coordinator, the guy who’s burning a path between the gallery and its back lawn at the moment. It’s important to make sure artists have everything they need when installing a new exhibit, but it’s also imperative to get the screen set up for the night’s event.

Still, he can’t help stopping to admire the artwork that’s already been hung.

“It’s all so different, yet it flows so well,” Byrd said. “This is going to be such a great show.”

Matt Morris can’t help the smile that crosses his face upon hearing this. He hears it in passing, true, but Byrd’s words are exciting.
Because it’s already great for Morris. For Ben Diller, too.

They were joined earlier by fellow artists Mary Claire Delony, David DuBose, Eleanor Owen Kerr and John Harlan Norris. It’s the last Saturday of the month, the day the gallery’s new shows are installed.

Gallery doors usually are closed on this day, and a time block between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. is carved out for artists to hang their work. Some artists leave earlier, some stay later.

And here are Morris and Diller, making final adjustments.

Six, by the way, is a big number for a monthly show. Most times, three or four artists are featured. But everything has a way of fully occupying its space while smoothly giving way to the next artist’s work.

It’s as Byrd described it — everything flows.

And Diller’s work catches the current in two parts of the gallery.