St.Lewis and Yseult -New Orleans Magazine

Louis St.Lewis- Sean Yseult at Fearrington-Smith Gallery

We all know artists, or at least people who think of themselves as artists.  But when you run across the real deal, they stand out from the competition like comets in the night sky, flamboyantly extravagant, extreme and unforgettable.  Such is the case with the artistic duo of St.Lewis and Yseult.  New Orleans residents will recognize the name of Sean Yseult as the multi-talented bassist for the arena rocking band White Zombie, who has made New Orleans her home now for several years and has as her residence a garden district manse as gothic as they come. No stranger to success, Ms. Yseult  has jammed on David Letterman and taken drugs with Dr. Leary.  Her home office is filled with golden records and awards, not only for her musical career, but for her stylish modern silk scarves which are sold in exclusive boutiques worldwide.   Her fellow classmate from the North Carolina School of the Arts, Louis St.Lewis took a different path in the arts but his history is just as interesting.   St.Lewis has discussed color theory with Paloma Picasso,  been photographed and praised by pop saint Andy Warhol, sketched in the nude by artist Robert Indiana, lavished with praise by artist Judy Chicago and  lives in the type of creative decadence and self imposed hedonism that would make Oscar Wilde prick up his ears.  Together and collaborating in the visual arts nearly 30 years after they first met, the pair are a formidable two-headed monster of artistic experimentation and wit.

The show, which balances almost equally the solo works of the two artist with their joint creations, is at once surprising and surprisingly logical.   Both artists posses a keen eye for design, in fact it is the eye in both that is more talented than the hand.  Both artists rely on machines as surrogate studio assistants, more interested the product than the path to getting there.  Yseult delights with her bold patterns and lush colors printed on silk, St.Lewis  it seems can run anything through a computer and create magic.  His large scale mono-prints created with transfered printer ink are modern day direct descendants of Warhol... Jake, Heath, and President Bush never looked so effortlessly modern.  When the Yseult-St.Lewis worlds colide, the effect is of another artist entirely, the sleek purity and craftsmanship of Yseult with the eccentricity and unbridled imagination of St.Lewis.  A match most definitely made in artistic heaven.      

Louis St.Lewis New Orleans Magazine

I WANT MY REVE D'ORLEANS

Art Lovers can probably agree that when pop artist Andy Warhol made positive comments about a fellow artist's work, that artist had finally "arrived".  It's like Hieronymous  Bosch  meets MTV."  Warhol said about Louis St.Lewis,  and artist who has finally physically arrived in New Orleans.  " Le Reve D'Orleans ( the Dream of Orleans) is a collaboration between Louis and musician Sean Yseult, member of the band Rock CIty Morgue and former white zombie bass player , in which they mix creative juices, resulting in photography, paintings and collage. " Le Reve" shows at Sylvia Schmidt Gallery.

Louis St.Lewis SKIRT MAGAZINE June 2009 party

If you loved the June cover of skirt! magazine, our Eve edition, with the amazing, complex, captivating blue-toned woman (so much to see in this piece of art!), you'll love skirt! after work next Tuesday night, June 23, at 518 West in downtown Raleigh.

That's because you'll meet that man, the one in the picture, the one and only Louis St. Lewis, a Triangle resident, who is the creative force behind this month's cover of skirt!

And, yes, in the photo, he's wearing a skirt, which makes us instantly fond of him.

In the past couple of weeks, I've had the good fortune of chatting with Louis by telephone and email. He sent me this wonderful picture to share. That's Vogue Editor-At-Large Andre Leon Talley sitting with him at a formal function. Mr. St. Lewis told me, "(Talley) is kind enough to have quoted that I was, 'The most stylish man in the South, St. Lewis is sable in a world of rabbit.'" I love it!

Mark Sloan, director of the Halsey Gallery at the College of Charleston describes Louis this way: "If people were electrical current, Louis St. Lewis would definitely be HIGH VOLTAGE." Louis finds that incredibly funny.

If you'd like to meet Louis in person, he'll be at our skirt! after work on June 23, 518 West, downtown Raleigh, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. We're so excited to be able to meet him and share his artwork with our skirt! readers.

We hope you'll join us! Who knows? Maybe Louis will wear his own skirt! to skirt! after work! It would not surprise me at all.

Louis St.Lewis SKIRT MAGAZINE June 2009

Louis St. Lewis was the perfect choice for The Eve Issue this month, as his celebrated mixed-media collages are frequently based on the intersection of mythology and religion. Andy Warhol commented that Louis’s work was “like Hieronymus Bosch meets MTV!” With over 30 national and international solo exhibitions to his credit, Louis’s creations are in the collections of such notables as HRH The Prince of Kuwait, Christian LaCroix, André Leon Talley and Oprah Winfrey. His artwork is also found in numerous museum collections, including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Morris Museum and the Masur Museum. This fall, Louis teams up with Sean Yseult, artist and female bass player of White Zombie fame, for a collaborative show, “Pretty Babies,” at New Orleans’ Canary Gallery. For more information, visit myspace.com/louisstlewis or emaillouisstlewis@gmail.com.

Louis St.Lewis feature, The Raleigh Extra

Louis St.Lewis : Making a Place of His Own

Spotlight the Arts- The Raleigh Extra

by Ivan R. Waldorf

Louis St.Lewis means to turn heads- and he succeeds.

There is more to art than pen to paper, brush to canvas, or bow to string. Art is as much entertainment as anything else, and it helps to bring that overlooked element to bear when seeking a wider audience for your work.

That, in a nutshell is part of the magic that is Louis St.Lewis, the expressive young artist who was commissioned this year to create the signature poster for Artsplosure.  And what a collection of emotions and images it is.  Much like it's creator.

" I learned early on that I needed to market myself effectively," St.Lewis says, " and I believe I have been successful in doing so."   Indeed.

He lives as most other artists and would-be artist can only dream of.  He is an artist, full time.  His works sell for thousands of dollars and are sought after,  And he is free to be whoever he discovers himself to be.  Not bad for something considered a hand-to-mouth business.

" I've tried to market myself in the manner of the late 19ths and early 20th centuries, when artists were valued as something important," he says.  "Art is entertainment, just like the movies, shows or any kind of show business.  People want to be entertained, so I use costumes, a limo, an entourage, because it livens things up when I arrive."

But what about all that stuff about artistic purity?  It's all in the eye of the beholder, apparently, because this artist, having been booted out of every college  and art school he attended- not for failure to perform, but failure to conform- has left his purer classmates in the dust.

"None of the people who graduated from the schools I went to are still in the arts." Louis says.

And as one looks at the Artsplosure poster, it's easy to see the influence of Louis' favoritesm like Warhol and Dali.   But there's a lot of Louis St.Lewis there too.

After all, how many people could stand at the top of the Eiffel Tower and see it - the Tower- as a jazz horn in the hands of Sir Walter Raleigh, surrounded by classic images of The Louvre, while understanding Paris as a town " just like Raleigh, except not quite."

After all, that's what art is all about-seeing  the ordinary in an extraordinary way.  That's what makes Louis St.Lewis the artist he is- something no classroom or workshop knows to teach.  It must be discovered within.

Louis St.Lewis - Charleston Post and Courier feature

Bones, brushes, find places in art

The Charleston Post and Currier

by Jeff Nichols

Believe it or not, it was sort of like Jerry Seinfeld meets heavy metal bad boys Marilyn Manson Fridaynight at the College of Charleston's Halsey Gallery.

An Estimated crowd of 400 - including an international art buyer from Ripley's Believe it or Not and The Lady Chablis from The Garden of Good and Evil stopped by the gallery for the concurrent opening of flamboyant artist Louis St.Lewis "Doppleganger" ( which means the ghostly double of a living person) and Caryl Burtner's  " Special Collection" which included among other trivial oddities, a wall full of discarded toothbrushes.

Downstairs , St.Lewis collection included a coffin with a wax replica of his own body and his "Ancestal Chandelier"  a chandelier composed entirely of human skulls and bones.

" Either he's got a great sense of humor, or you'd have to say he's pretty twisted", said College of Charleston theater arts professor David Goss.  " We all have our personal limits of what we will and won't accept, and mine are pretty broad,  I don't find anything offensive about it."

St.Lewis, dressed in a 19th century fox hunting outfit, makes no bones - pun intended- about turning human bones, blood and other byproducts into art.  Like Manson, the controversial act fond of ripping pages from the bible during concerts, the Chapel Hill, N.C.- based artist, said those who criticize the shock value of his art are hypocrites.

"I'm trying to rip down the hypocrisy of church and society," St.Lewis said.  The people who complain about my art are the same ones that support the death penalty, but they get all squeamish at seeing the results of their votes."

Though it's art with a message, St.Lewis is quick to point out that he doesn't take it too seriously. Neither should we, he said.

"All I'm trying to say is have fun with life while you can," he said. Listen to what he said about the skull chandelier . " It's a lot like Charleston.  Lots of good bones and some skeletons in the closet. And I never have to eat alone."

Dozens of Charlestonians in the past week including the Bishop of Charleston have called Halsey Gallery curator Mark Sloan  to say that St.Lewis' art is not funny at all.  It's sacrilege, they told him.

Over 100 other callers congratulated Sloan for bringing St.Lewis' brand of pop art to Charleston, Sloan said. " It's a great responsibility and a burden to be really the only outlet in the city for this type of unconventional art.  This is something we haven't ever seen around here before.  It's stretching the boundaries of what we think of when we think of art."

If it stretches those boundaries too far for stately old Charleston, no one here seemed willing to admit that Friday night.  "Absolutely not," said one man peering into St.Lewis's coffin. "Anybody with an open mind who appreciates art won't find this offensive at all."

What did the Ripley's guy think of all this?  He came specifically to check out St.Lewis' spooky chandelier.   "I't's classic Ripley's Believe It or Not" said Ripley's vice president Edward Meyer.  Why would someone do this?   I'm interested, and I think our patrons would be."

The exhibitions will be displayed until Feb. 25. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 11.am, to 4 p.m.   Admission is free. 

BOOM Magazine feature: Louis St.Lewis

BOOM Magazine

Furniture, and Photographs and Paintings, Oh My..

Louis St.Lewis, North Carolina native, long-time Chapel Hill resident, art critic for Metro Magazine and notable artist in his own right ( Ben Williams, former director of the North Carolina Museum of Art has called Louis " One of the State's true geniuses") will have three simultaneous solo exhibitions in March and April.  This flurry of activity showcases St.Lewis' recent works that were produced after and " inspiring" trip to Barcelona, Spain last fall.  He credits this productivity to " walking the same paths, and seeing the same vista's as  Picasso, Miro and Dali."

Neither camera nor media-shy, St.Lewis has been creating controversy and garnering enthusiastic supporters for twenty years. " It's like Hieronymous Bosch meets MTV!" , quipped Andy Warhol in response to St.Lewis' early work.  St. Lewis has however, moved away from the type of art that would garner remarks such as this, no longer using human blood or human bones in his creations.

St.Lewis' current trademark is to incorporate imagery from other artist's work into his own compositions of mixed media.  In the painting, The Young Harlequin, the childs face has been "borrowed" from an oil portrait most likely painted during the 18th-19th centuries.  The nod to Picasso is also apparent.

What I particularly like about St.Lewis' work is that each painting or collage has a distinct personality ( or personalities)- there is an emotional component to viewing his pieces,  Whether it is wit, sarcasm, playfulness or glibness, the observer is actively involved.

The trio of current exhibitions begins at Tyndall Galleries.  The show, entitled The Palimpsest Project features large-scale canvases and will run through April.  On March 15, If you are looking for trouble you came to the right place  opens at the Craven Allen Gallery and features new large scale pop art prints and collages.  Through April, Louis St.Lewis: Experimental Studies will be on display at Crooks Corner.  I'm not certain what that means, but I hear the show has already sold out.