Current Exhibition


A Lump in the Throat: Works by Staple Goods Collective Members

Imogen Banks, Thomasine Bartlett, Aaron Collier, William DePauw, Marianne Desmarais, Abe Geasland, J Knoblach, Norah Lovell, Kaori Maeyama, Maxx Sizeler, and Virginia Walcott

Exhibition Dates: November 9 - December 8, 2024

Opening Reception: Saturday, November 9, 6-9 pm 

Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 12-5 pm, except for Second Saturdays when hours are 6-9 pm.

In conjunction with Prospect.6, Staple Goods presents A Lump in the Throat. In static and moving images, sculptures, and fiber art, the collective’s eleven members reflect on this year’s theme; “The Future Is Present, The Harbinger Is Home.” With eyes ‘on’ towards the practice of our hands and the crystallizing shape of tomorrow, exhibiting artists have pointedly chosen craft over cessation.

“A poem is never a put-up job – it begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A compete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” – Robert Frost

A lump in the throat is a seed of advancement in any creative process, requiring an attentive presence and perseverance to flourish in the face of the unknown. We connect this delicate physical sensation to the structural and emotional environment of New Orleans, our home. A place that has long been a model for the future – in the words of Prospect.6’s curators, “a gift to the rest of the world in its ability to offer lessons and examples for how to live in constant negotiation with the weather, grounded within a community that reflects the global majority, and in direct proximity to the effects and aftereffects of colonial and exploitative economies.”

As artists and community members, we honor the ability to dream up new worlds while the ground beneath shifts, building on the past and embracing the future, sharing the pain and joy all the same.

Staple Goods Collective Biographies

Imogen Banks is a fiber artist and painter who is interested in the creation of an abstract and subtle visual language through her work. She uses cotton rope to make 3 dimensional vessels, as well as weaving techniques within her paintings. Staple Goods Collective member since 2021, she lives in New Orleans, LA. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 2014 with a BFA in Painting. Solo exhibitions include - Ditch Projects in Springfield, Oregon in 2015, Artsdigital in Eugene, OR in 2016, and Staple Goods in New Orleans, LA in 2022.

Thomasine Bartlett, an original member of the Staple Goods collective, has been an artist her entire life. She holds an MFA in studio art and an interdisciplinary Ph.D from Tulane University where she taught for over 30 years. Committed to art as performance/installation/life event, her work for this show is intended to enliven the construction site that is the current gallery entrance.

Aaron Collier is a visual artist living in New Orleans. He teaches drawing and painting at Tulane University as an Associate Professor. Solo exhibitions of his work have occurred at the New Gallery, Octavia Gallery, Cole Pratt Gallery, and Staple Goods. Aaron has participated in group exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. Additionally, his work has been featured in New American Paintings and is represented in such collections as the New Orleans Museum of Art, Iberia Bank, and the Boston Medical Center. He has been awarded artist residencies by the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, ISCP in Brooklyn, and Open Ateliers Zuidoost in Amsterdam. A recent Scholarly Retreat at A Studio in the Woods (New Orleans, LA) was instrumental in offering the time and space to complete the drawing included in this exhibition.

Originally from Detroit Michigan, William DePauw’s creative practice largely revolves around intuitive play and the development of abstract form. He been a member of the Newcomb Art Department faculty since 2006. He is also a founding member of Staple Goods artist collective.

Marianne Desmarais (b. 1972, Gulfport, MS) is a multimodal artist working with sculpture to link material behavior with human experience. A lifelong fascination with the resonant properties of objects drives the form-finding process in Desmarais’s practice across a wide range of materials and through spatial and tactile perception. She has exhibited as a member of Staple Goods, at On The Point, and at the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans. She has participated in numerous group shows including the 2021 Atlanta Biennial and her work has traveled internationally with the Imago Mundi collection for the Benetton Foundation. Desmarais has enjoyed residencies at ChaNorth, the Joan Mitchell Center, and the Banff Center. She earned M.Arch I + II degrees from Tulane University (95) and Cranbrook Academy of Art (2002), and is a licensed architect.

Abe Geasland’s enigmatic functional objects exist somewhere between Sculpture and Design in a realm he likes to refer to as Post-Industrial Primitive. Expressive of his personal fascination with early 20th century manufacturing, these works play with the idea of what is Found and what is Made, signaling how esthetic decisions figure into the design process. Lighting seems to have the most variations on this theme and represent a real physical buffer from the darkness that comes on as the daylight fades.

J Knoblach lives and works in New Orleans but was born in Slidell near Honey Island Swamp. The combination of running cross country and track and studying feminist body art led to an interdisciplinary practice rooted in performance. Byproducts of a physical action may become sculpture, photography, video, or text. In some instances, the audience is invited to interact directly with the work, such as the installation Divest. Recently, Knoblach was featured in After The End with 24 other artists who "speculate about the future and the potential worlds that are imagined through present-tense-endings" curated by Catherine Taft, Deputy Director & Curator at LAXART, via NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance). 

Densely layered and detailed, visually and thematically complex, Norah Lovell’s fragmented narratives are fueled from unexpected sources and aim to disrupt dominant imagery through the lens of aesthetics. Increasingly, her work centers the non-human perspectives of animals on a human world careening at tipping point. She exhibits nationally and internationally, teaches interdisciplinary humanities courses at Tulane University and is a member of the artist-run collective and gallery Staple Goods in New Orleans. Her residencies include the Emily Harvey Foundation, Italy; International Scholars and Curators Program, New York; Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans and Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, Ireland.

Kaori Maeyama is an urban landscape painter who can’t get enough of dark and blurry New Orleans street scenes that encapsulate decay and isolation of the mundane. A recipient of residencies and grants from Joan Mitchell Center, Vermont Studio Center, and National Performance Network, she has conducted lectures and workshops with concurrent exhibitions at the Willow School, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the University of Houston-Downtown. She holds a BA in film production from the University of New Orleans, and a MFA in painting from Tulane University, where she learned to paint without paintbrushes.

Maxx Sizeler (he/him), born and based in New Orleans, is a visual artist of many media and fine woodworker. Maxx received a MFA from The University of New Orleans, a BFA from Parsons School of Design New York, and attended Parsons at the American College in Paris. Maxx’s work reflects his interest in a wide variety of subjects, social issues, and mediums - exploring projects both personal and societal - living as trans between the gender binaries, mass-shootings, illuvial clay/coastal erosion, and how Katrina changed New Orleans. Both craft and conception are important to Maxx. His woodworking skills are reflected throughout his art practice, from 2D to 3D work, to functional work.

Virginia Walcott is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and filmmaker from the Gulf Coast of Alabama. She maintains a solo practice alongside her work as a Production Designer and Director. Based in New Orleans, Virginia runs a small creative studio called Superhumid and is an active member of Staple Goods, a cooperatively-run gallery in St. Roch. Her work has been exhibited in film festivals and galleries across the United States and abroad. Originally trained in journalism, she began her career as a designer for The Atlantic, and today writes occasional arts reviews for publications like Burnaway and Scalawag. In 2025, she will begin an MFA program at Hunter College in New York, concentrating in New Genres. 


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Connections: Staple Goods 10th Anniversary Exhibition Catalog

Exhibition catalog commemorates the collective’s 10th anniversary exhibition, Connections (May 2021), and is available for $5.

Text by Amy Mackie. Book Design by Tiffany Lin. Printed at Paper Machine. Curated by Laura Richens.

Participating Artists: Minka/Thomasine, Aaron Collier, Robyn Denny, William DePauw, Abe Geasland, Daniel Kelly IV, Kristina Knipe, J Knoblach, Norah Lovell, Kaori Maeyama, Anne Nelson, Jack Niven, Laura Richens, Cynthia Scott, Sadie Sheldon, Lorna Williams