Nurturing the Arts in North Central Louisiana
UPCOMING EVENTS
ARToberfest 2024
The 14th Annual ARToberfest Celebration will be held on Thursday, October 31st at Sundown Tavern in Downtown Ruston. Each year NCLAC hosts regional home beer brewers, micro-breweries, and a donated array of other beer-y beverages from commercial sponsors. ARToberfest has become NCLAC’s biggest fundraiser, allowing us to raise the funds to support our staff, continue to offer creative programming, and boost the work of other artists and nonprofits in our region. ARToberfest is a great night out for lovers of all things creative. Combining beer, food, art, live music and so much more, you won’t want to miss this amazing event!
*Ticket ARE Live! Merch info coming soon!
Recent Events
Summer Art Camps
The North Central Louisiana Arts Council is very happy to have been given the opportunity to bring back our annual Summer Arts Camps this year. Our 2024 camps were supported by a Louisiana Project Grant funded by the Louisiana Division of the Arts.
This year NCLAC partnered with multiple local organizations to make the program accessible to as many children as possible and we were able to grow this year’s program by 60 for a total of 143 participating students. We hosted five weeks of art camps at the Lincoln Parish Library. We were also given the opportunity to partner with the Pinkie Wilkerson Life Development Center Foundation for a bonus week as part of their literacy camp held at Mt. Harmony Baptist Church in June.
We partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Ruston for two weeks in June. We worked with the 3rd grade students to create custom shirts using bleaching, screen printing, beading and other methods. Students also designed tote bags and were given a tour of the NCLAC Peach Art Exhibit on display in the Library’s Chautauqua Gallery introducing them to various forms of art as well as the works of local artists.
Both sessions of the Boys and Girls Club camps were taught by Bonnie Ferguson, a local artist and educator. She has taught art at a local private school for the last 8 years after earning her Bachelor of Fine Art from LA Tech.
Public registration was made available for three weeks in July. For the first two weeks we worked with students going into 1st through 4th grade. Students were allowed to experiment with multiple materials to create two mixed media pieces as well as learn screen printing and cyanotype printing.
These weeks were taught by Martie Clary. Martie earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Art Education from LA Tech and a Master’s Degree in Gifted Education. She has taught art for 34 years and currently teaches Kindergarten through 8th grade art at AE Phillips.
The final week of public camp students going into 5th and 6th grade worked on mixed media pieces as well as designing tote bags. The final project was inspired by Art on 45, a local art exhibit hosted to help raise funds for various local organizations. Because NCLAC’s 2025 Summer Art Camp was the recipient of the final Art on 45 fundraiser, we wanted to introduce the students to the history of the project and let them create their own.
The last week was taught by Brittney Shambro. Brittney has a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education with a Pre-K and Kindergarten Certification. She has 8 years of experience teaching Pre-K through 5th grade. She began her third-year teaching art this past Fall at both Cypress Springs and Ruston Elementary.
We want to thank the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council and the Louisiana Division of the Arts for supporting projects like this across Louisiana and allowing us be part of that endeavor. We also want to thank our local partners the Boys & Girls Club of Ruston, Lincoln Parish Library, and Art on 45. Without community partnerships such as these, projects like our Summer Arts Camps would not be possible.
GEEKTogether Art Exhibit
The North Central Louisiana Arts Council hosted our first ever GEEKTogether Art Exhibit! As a collaboration with the Lincoln Parish Library’s first annual GEEKTogether, this exhibit featured works that reflect subjects relevant to the GEEKTogether theme: fandoms, comics, anime/manga, video games, pop culture, etc.
The exhibit was displayed at the Lincoln Parish Library in the Chautauqua Gallery from March 2nd-31st and available for viewing during normal library hours.
The closing reception was on Tuesday, April 2 in the George Byrnside Community Room from 5:30-7pm with awards occurring at 6pm.
We want to thank all of our participating artists. A very special congratulations to all of our winners this year:
Adult 1st Place: Meredith Anderson, Adult 2nd Place: Bonnie Ferguson, Adult 3rd Place: Lindsey Vincent, Teen 1st Place: Arabella Douglas, Teen 2nd Place: Gabriel Seaman, Teen 3rd Place: Evan Sloan, Youth 1st Place: Leytin Thomas, Youth 2nd Place: Korbin Vincent, and Youth 3rd Place: Trinity Williams!
A very special thank you to our 1st place sponsors: A&H Games, Game Exchange, as well as one other donor who wished to remain anonymous.
Written Artistry: A Collaborative Exhibit
Markus Wobisch (Artist) and Kenneth Robbins (Writer)
Written Artistry is a collaborative exhibit that brings together the written works of regional writers with the visual creativity of regional two dimensional artists. Eleven local writers were given two weeks to compose a new, original piece no longer than five hundred words in length. Those works were then turned over to their partner who was challenged to create a visual, two-dimensional rendering, no larger than 20x20 inches, in the same amount of time. The result is a show that beautifully blends the written word with visual representation in a multitude of colors, shapes, textures and styles.
Participating writers for Written Artistry include Christiane Drieling, April Doughty, Tom Faber, Devin Jennings, Khalilah Kersey, Mary Ann Van Osdell, Jesica Ray, Kenneth Robbins, Christopher Seaman, Athena Scott, and Emma Stone. Participating two-dimensional visual artists are Meredith Anderson, James Cobb, Gaelin Craighead, Bonnie Ferguson, Inique Harris, Mary-Evelyn King, Morgan McCullin, Ayah Tamimi, Callan Thornton, Keagan Vaughan, and Markus Wobisch. We want to thank each and every one of these amazing creators for lending their talents and imagination to this project. All of them together made this dream a reality.
Written Artistry is a collaboration between the North Central Louisiana Arts Council and the Ross Lynn Charitable Foundation.
