Michael Elliott-Smith

@elliottsmith

Earlier in my photography career, I photographed landscapes with a medium format camera usually loaded with infrared film. I moved into digital photography in 2005, shooting both digital visible and digital infrared images. Once I understood the power of Photoshop, it opened up a new direction to explore, the world of surrealism. Some of my prints are formed from a number of images, these constructed places only exists in my imagination fueled by dreams, personal emotions and life experiences. Whether, the final print is composed of one image or several, I am simply presenting my vision of the world around me.

Barbara Elkins

@barbelkins

Pianist/Accompanist/collaborator

Judy Caplan Ginsburgh

@jcgtune

Judy is a multi-award winning singer/songwriter/educator specializing in music for Families and Jewish music. She has a degree in Vocal Performance from the prestigious Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Judy has produced over a dozen recordings and published several music curriculum books. Her music sells all over the world wherever music is sold. She is a recipient of the Louisiana Governor's Arts Award for Professional Artist of the Year; she was a Southern Arts Exchange Roster Artist and a juried artist on the Louisiana Artist Roster. She is also the recipient of a Jubilation Fellowship Award from the Tides Foundation for her outstanding work sharing music and joy with children.

Cindy Blair

@cindyblairlightart

My recent work are experiments in how the clay I use flows and moves over a form naturally and how far I can push the materials to emphasize the movement in the form. They are also experiments in how color and movement interact with light. Rather than beginning a piece with an end point in mind, I begin each piece with questions. How can I suggest a certain kind of movement? How will form interact with a found piece of design, like an existing light fixture with an interesting or inspiring shape? What will happen when certain colors are layered on top of the light? So much depends on the natural movement of the clay. The entire endeavor is a practice in embracing flow and letting go of expectations.

Megan Hale

@mhale

My name is Megan Hale and I am from Alexandria, Louisiana. I currently reside in Pineville, Louisiana. I consider my style as American Scene, focusing on scenes of everyday life that encompass the human condition and experiences. I like to find beauty and mystery in the mundane. I want to depict everyday life around us as a beautiful composition. Everyday life involves all aspects of human conditions and experiences, whether it be joy, pain, anxiety, or comfort. The goal of my work is to depict color and form in an aesthetically pleasing way while evoking a sense of nostalgia and contemplation. I want to use art to interpret the many ways we overcome and grow in our environment and life. The main subject of my work is scenes of everyday life, whether it be landscape, portrait, still life, or a combination of the three. Before I begin a painting, I search the environment around me to find a pleasing compositional vignette. The process of making my art begins with a sketch, then an underpainting. Since color, light, and shadow are often my inspiration, I will choose a color palette based on the subject and the most prominent colors in the subject matter. This is sometimes an attempt to capture complete realism or can be affected by mood. I have worked with oil, acrylic, pastels, charcoal, and pencil. By nostalgically exploring the normative environment, I hope to engage the viewers' senses and memories of places, things and feelings forgotten or repressed. I choose these methods as a means to capture our everyday environment and invoke a thoughtful response to these fleeting moments that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Paul Nettles

@gentlemanrook

Paul L. Nettles (born in Houma, Louisiana) is an Alexandria resident of many decades. Educated at Louisiana College, he received BA degrees in Psychology and Studio Art. He trained in oil painting and is currently a painter, photographer, and found-object sculptor. He is an enthusiastic woodworker, and many of his found-object assemblages are housed in hand-built enclosures of repurposed material. In an effort to emphasize the analog process versus the digital mass production of images, he prefers the use of pre-1970, Former Soviet Union film camera bodies and lenses. He has frequently been juried into the Alexandria Museum of Art’s September Competition, has appeared in the Tom Peyton Memorial Art Festival, and River Oaks 5x5x5 Competitions on multiple occasions. His photographic work has been used in various venues over the years, including an informational display at the Oregon Coastal Preservation Museum, the cover of a book (Crop Chemophobia), the Indiana Railroad’s annual calendar, and a Wikipedia entry (“Nurdles”). One of his photographs resides in the Alexandria Museum of Art’s (AMoA) permanent collection. He currently works at the Alexandria VAMC as a Tai Chi instructor, and has been a prior operator of the Iris M. Rayford Museum Store. He can be contacted at gentlemanrook@gmail.com to share commission requests and learn more about his artistic process.

Leslie Elliottsmith

@leslieelliottsmithstudio

Leslie Elliottsmith is from New Orleans and holds a BS in Art Education and a MFA in printmaking from LSU. Her artwork is narrative and allegorical focusing on climate change and misplaced policies that injure both the environment and society. She lived in Baton Rouge for ten years getting her degrees and then teaching at LSU. She has resided in Alexandria since 1983 when she became education curator for the Alexandria Museum of Art. In 1990, she began a new career, instructing and designing Survey of the Arts at Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts (the state residential gifted school) in an innovative online high school program and retired in 2015 as LSMSA director of online learning. She also has taught adjunct at LSU, UNO, LSUA, LC, NSU, and ULM as well as a completed series of artist in residencies across the State of Louisiana. In 1994, she received the Louisiana State Visual Artists Fellowship for painting. Her art works are part of many public and private collections nationally and she has exhibited her work in 268 national exhibitions. In 2025, she received a CERF grant from the Baton Rouge Arts Council. She is represented by LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans and Baton Rouge Gallery in Baton Rouge.

Amber Voorhies

@avoorhies

I have been creating for as long as I can remember, starting at my grandmother’s table, in the middle of rice fields in South Louisiana. I am drawn to patterns in nature, dualities in nature (the ability to exist in more than one realm such as with the physical and spiritual), and deep metaphors of life that can’t be described with words. I work primarily in acrylics and functional ceramics. I have a BA in Studio Art from Louisiana College under Bob Howell, and am a certified Montessori teacher ages toddler and 6-12(elementary). Art has always been a primary way to encourage decision making in my students; I believe that art makes humans powerful. I am currently a fine arts teacher, a resident artist at River Oaks Square Arts Center, a wife, mother, and friend to humans and animals. I currently gain much of my inspiration from horses and horseback riding.

Demondra James

@artistic

I'm from Winnfield, Louisiana. I graduated from Winnfield Senior High School. I love art every since when I was a child. I love sports. My favorite sport is basketball and football. I love adventures. I'm just enjoying the journey called life.

Maria Plata

@silvermariaplata

Maria Plata is making her Strauss debut in "The Wedding Singer". Plata has prior experience in writing, acting, and directing plays in the Philippines. She starred as Bloody Mary in "South Pacific" directed by the late Hal Robinson, and Plata was also Dña Aurora in Pagsabog ng Liwanag (Burst of Light). Plata directed a trilogy of plays that included two adaptations of love stories and one comedy written by Plata title "Inday (Maid)". By day, she works at Monroe City Schools as a Gifted math teacher and content leader. In her spare time, she allows her creativity to come alive through painting, but Plata is excited to make her return to the stage as Imelda Marcos in "The Wedding Singer".

David Holcombe

@chekhovonthebayou

David Holcombe began writing and drawing decades ago. To avoid the plight of a starving artist, he went to medical school (in Belgium no less) and returned to the U.S. with a Belgian wife, a son and 8 years of European experience. He continued to write and paint throughout his long education and subsequent professional life in Alexandria, Louisiana. He has published 16 books and hundreds of medical articles in Cenla Focus and Visible Horizon. His paintings have been selected in multiple juried shows (and rejected in many more), but show up in private collections around Alexandria and elsewhere. His plays have been produced by Spectral Sisters Productions where he serves on the Board for the last twenty years.