Show captures visual memories of La. 1
The camp seems to be claiming the quiet drama of the sunset as its own, knowing that it will fade as soon as night’s curtain hides the stage.
It once stood on this spot in Leeville, just before La. 1 crosses the bridge to Grand Isle. It disappeared in 2005.
Kathy Daigle knew it when painting this piece, but she also knew her story of La. 1 would be incomplete without it.
Because that’s the nature of Louisiana’s longest highway, one that stretches 436 miles from the Louisiana-Arkansas state line to the tip of Grand Isle. It’s a road that tells the story of the state’s people, cultures and history.
Which includes the history of the people who travel it.
“This camp was the mainstay view just as you drove over the Leeville bridge on the way to Grand Isle,” Daigle wrote.
“My family always knew we were near when we saw the camp. It had such character. It weathered all storms until that fateful time of Hurricane Katrina. It was a great loss of an iconic scene.”
There’s sadness in these words accompanying Daigle’s painting, “Leeville Camp at Dusk.” It’s one among more than 60 paintings in the Associated Women in the Arts’ exhibit Life and Landscapes Along Louisiana Highway #1.
The show runs through March 11 at the West Baton Rouge Museum, which is hosting the exhibit as part of its Louisiana State Bicentennial celebration.
And though Daigle’s words are filled with longing, there’s still a sense of joy in her work — joy from the memories generated by the little Leeville camp.
Memories of family vacations, of when the question, “Are we there yet?” is finally answered.
For upon spying that camp, Daigle knew she’d finally arrived at Grand Isle. The story of La. 1 wouldn’t be the same without it.
Just as it wouldn’t without the story of Norma Roy.
Roy was an early member of the Associated Women in the Arts whose father helped name La. 1.
She focused on painting scenes along the highway before her death in 2006.
Three of those paintings are displayed on easels in the center of the exhibit, the first to catch visitors’ eyes upon entering the museum’s gallery.
Roy was a Marksville native. Her father, Lewis Peter Roy, was instrumental in unifying the string of highways that tied the northernmost part of the state to the southern border.
Although the roads were connected, they each had a different highway number. Norma Roy’s father was successful in convincing the Louisiana Legislature to designate the roadway La. 1. “Norma always said she could paint water,” Marylyn Daniel said.
“She taught painting to a lot of us, and she didn’t ask us but told us, ‘You are going to be a member of the association.’”
Daniel is the organization’s 2011-12 president, Nancy Jo Porrier is its chair of exhibition opportunities.
Both also have paintings in this show.
“The artists worked on paintings for this show for about a year,” Porrier said. “It’s been about a year-and-a-half project. We had originally tried to schedule the exhibit at the Louisiana State Museum, but that fell through. Then the museum’s director, Bill Star, suggested that we call Julie Rose.”
Rose is director of the West Baton Rouge Museum. She told the museum stands on Jefferson Avenue, which once was La. 1’s route through Port Allen.
“That was perfect for us,” Porrier said. “We would have a show about Highway 1 in a place that once was on Highway 1.”
Rose also asked if the organization could wait until the beginning of 2012 before showing the exhibit so it could kick off the bicentennial year of Louisiana’s statehood.
“It’s turned out beautiful,” Porrier said.
Members of the organization traveled along La. 1 with sketchbooks and cameras to record places and people along the way. Sometimes the artists chose to paint plein air; other times they chose to create paintings in their studios.
The result is a visual story as diverse as the highway it portrays.
Take, for instance, Kathy Stone’s “Best Friends at Bonaventure’s.” This is another case of a La. 1 scene playing a part in the artist’s personal history, yet one that’s connected to others.
“Bonaventure’s Landing on False River near New Roads has always been a favorite destination for many family vacations and summers throughout my lifetime and that of my daughter and her best friend,” the painting’s label stated. “It was easily accessible by Louisiana Highway 1 or by boat. I can still hear the music and the hubbub of all the folks getting ready for a day of fishing or a night of merriment.”
The painting’s focus is two little girls sitting side-by-side on the pier. Are the girls a portrayal of Stone’s daughter and her best friend?’
Could be.
But it’s also an invitation for viewers to put themselves in the picture, to look into the water, to hear the music of which Stone writes.
Northwest Louisiana is represented by a Danni Shobe’s painting “Dusk on Cane River Lake,” inspired, she writes, “by a scene that took place on a wonderful evening near Christmas.”
In it, a man stands beneath a live oak, fishing pole in hand. Warm light glows from the top of a light post.
Then comes Wilma Roy’s tribute to the small towns along the highway in her piece, “Along La. Highway 1.”
The painting features signs and telephone poles found along the way.
“The corners in our small Louisiana towns are very interesting,” Roy writes. “There’s a light (maybe), old telephone wire poles with insulators still on them and handmade signs nailed to little poles like eat-at-this-restaurant or that restaurant, etc. Of course, most of the older signs have tilted sideways. I found it very interesting, and it made me smile.”
And that’s the whole point of this exhibit, isn’t it? To generate smiles.
Because if viewers don’t recognize everything in the show, they’ll surely recognize something. A landmark, a tradition, an experience — they’re all part of the viewers’ history, as well as the artists’.
And therefore part of the state’s.