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Published Sept. 30, 2021

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A gallery talk and reception for "Out of Storage" artist Stefan Nodarse is at 2 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 6 at Bry Gallery. Nodarse is a ULM alumnus, Adjunct Professor of Art and Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at Masur Museum of Art.

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“Out of Storage” Works by Stefan Nodarse is the new exhibit at Bry Gallery at the University of Louisiana Monroe.

 

Nodarse, MFA, is Adjunct Professor of Art in the School of Visual and Performing Arts, College of Arts, Education, and Sciences.

 

The exhibit runs through Oct. 20 and is free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Friday from 8-11:30 a.m. A gallery talk and reception will be held Wednesday, Oct. 6 at 2 p.m. The campus and community are invited to attend.

 

The collection of paintings and sculptures Nodarse literally brought out of storage for the one-man exhibit.

 

The Oak Grove native recently returned to Northeast Louisiana to join the university and serve as Masur Museum of Art Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.

 

 

"The woodcuts were from my thesis exhibition in 2018 and were in storage until about two months ago," said Nodarse. "Some of the others were in storage over a year because I don't have a place to keep them."

 

Nodarse earned his Bachelor of Fine Art from ULM in 2009, specializing in printmaking under Doyle Jeter. In 2018 he completed his Master of Fine Arts with distinction in printmaking from Indiana State University in Terre Haute. He was an adjunct art instructor during his graduate studies.

 

Nodarse gained experience in museum operations at Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute where he worked during and after his master’s studies. With his MFA, Nodarse joined the faculty at nearby Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. He taught drawing and painting at St. Mary until the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

 

"The pandemic hit St. Mary, and I was hired mid-semester at Indiana State to teach 3D design. I was there two weeks when everything shut down," Nodarse said.

 

Like his colleagues at ULM, "I had to figure out how to shift to (teaching) online.”

 

At the same time, Nodarse was working at a restaurant, which eventually became another casualty of the pandemic. With the constraints of COVID, Nodarse had enough of waiting tables and teaching art online.

 

Wondering if any positions at ULM were available, he reached out to his former professor Cliff Tresner, VAPA Associate Professor of Art, who put him in touch with Joni Noble, Ph.D., VAPA Art Professor, and Art Program Coordinator.

 

In a quick turnaround, Nodarse was back home in Louisiana. He is now teaching beginning drawing and basic design at ULM at night and working at the Masur by day.

 

About "Out of Storage"

 

“Out of Storage” features dynamic, oversized portraits, some with exaggerated expressions; and larger-than-life relief sculptural portraits mounted on stands and scattered throughout the exhibition space.

 

A tryptic of self-portraits on 36-by-40-inch canvases painted during quarantine is a graphic demonstration of the artist's mercurial emotions as his isolation dragged on.

 

The first self-portrait is "an examination of my state of mind, at that state of mind,” he said.

 

The second shows "every single emotion was annoyed and descended to wanting to scream all the time … the rage"; and the third, entitled "Enrage," – "is looser, more painterly with more expressive brushstrokes done on purpose that way."

 

The freestanding sculptures are relief matrices, a form of printmaking. Nodarse used combinations of wood, Masonite, and linoleum to create the larger-than-life evocative sculptures. Some are portraits of friends and family members, including his grandfather Gerry Bolding.

 

"As a printmaker in grad school, I studied portraits and expressions. I found the larger prints were losing contrast … so they looked flat," he said.

 

With some experimentation and ingenuity, Nodarse discovered he could use different materials and techniques to create the objects in the exhibit.

 

Of the exhibition, Nodarse said, "This body of work is a combination of sculptural works and oil paintings examining the varying degrees of expression, ranging from rage, joy or lack thereof."