“A poem should not mean, but be,” is the famous closing line of Archibald MacLeish’s poem, “Ars Poetica.” That’s the way Baton Rouge artist Billie Bourgeois approaches her work. “There’s no heavy symbolism here. What you see is what you get,” she says of her paintings and prints.
What you get is pure bright pigment in Bourgeois’ encaustic monoprints that feel as sunny and hopeful as the New Year. Bourgeois draws with melting squares of pure color trapped in beeswax and resin on a heated aluminum plate. As the color flows, she creates an abstract drawing which she captures by laying a sheet of Japanese paper over it, sealing a single, original print. Bourgeois loves the hot wax process. “Making the monoprints is really spontaneous and playful,” she says. “It’s fast. It’s a creative workout when you do it. It gets the blood pumping.”
Her latest series is titled Mark Making. A lot of the work is inspired by nature, particularly the Barataria Preserve below New Orleans, part of the Jean Lafitte National Park System. She is moved by the natural world, but not in making representational art. “I look for patterns, gestures in tree forms, and then when I draw, it’s like a dialogue between my eye and hand. I’m not interested in making a duplicate of what I see, more a responsive mark to my conversation with nature.”
Mark Making opens Saturday, Jan. 10, at 5:30 p.m., in conjunction with ArtWalk, at Galerie Eclaireuse, 535.5 Jefferson St. To see more of Bourgeois’ work, go to her Web site at www.billiebourgeois.com. Lafayette artist Mary Perrin will also be exhibiting her altered books at the opening. For more information, call the gallery at 234-5492.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
“A poem should not mean, but be,” is the famous closing line of Archibald MacLeish’s poem, “Ars Poetica.” That’s the way Baton Rouge artist Billie Bourgeois approaches her work. “There’s no heavy symbolism here. What you see is what you get,” she says of her paintings and prints. 
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