"Looking Up: Heroes for Today" is the title of the new art show LVA coordinated at Louisville Metro Hall. Artists Brianna Harlan, Ashley Cathey and Zed Saeed are all on display, and anyone visiting Metro Hall can ask to see their pieces through January 11, 2019.
Zed Saeed is an art and documentary photographer currently working with recent refugees and immigrants that have settled in Kentucky. In Louisville, he connects with these individuals mostly through the Catholic Charities-Migration and Refugee Services. Saeed believes strongly in the power of photography to create connections and to alter perceptions about people, places and things.
Ashley Cathey is a painter whose creative journey began with performing arts before she was eventually encouraged to develop her visual art talents, which, up until then had been purely for her own personal edification, by exhibiting in Chicago before returning to her native Louisville. She came to prominence when ArtsReach commissioned Cathey to create a series of portraits for their annual Keepers of the Dream celebration at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. In 2016 her work was featured on the cover of LEO Weekly as part of an extensive story on artists of color in Louisville.
Brianna Harlan describes herself as, “a mixed media artist that creates Radically Vulnerable art to invite transformative dialogue. Themes of her work include identity, social/cultural dynamics, intimacy, oppression, and self-suppression. Brianna works primarily with participants, inviting them to share and unpack sensitive topics through questions and actions. The discoveries that come from these mindful investigations shape the concept and inform the work's medium. She creates with people, not just about them, and views the process and resulting work as a tool for a moving experience and constructive conversation.