Page 61 - South Mississippi Living - January, 2024

Marian Glaser.
Paulette Dove.
Julie Reyes.
Another artist cited by Houston is Paulette Dove, a former board member and current instructor with the museum. “She has taken the lead on the community gallery and is a talented artist herself,” he said.
Active in the Mississippi Art Colony, of which many coastal artists are involved, Dove is a retired art educator in the Biloxi schools and says she's been an artist all her life. “I like pottery and oil painting with maritime stories and animals as inspiration,” she said.
Julian Rankin, executive director of the Walter Anderson Museum of Art, also has a long list of talented local artists. He points out the creative spirit of the area. “For more than 100 years, members of the storied Anderson Family – including the famous brothers Walter, Peter, and Mac – have been creating art on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” he says. “They were influenced by the region’s unique landscapes and histories.”
This legacy of creativity and entrepreneurship, he adds, continues to inspire contemporary creators, who are adding their own chapters
to Coastal Mississippi’s artistic story. “While Walter Anderson’s myth and style are inescapable, his lasting contribution is the belief that all people have the innate ability to create,
explore, and chart their own creative paths – wherever they may lead.”
Among the artists he notes are Julie Reyes and Marian Glaser. Coast native Reyes earned a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts with an emphasis
in painting at Mississippi State University. “I have a passion for exploration and nature,” she says. “They’re often the catalyst for much of my work. I find ways of portraying new truths through abstraction.”
Bay St. Louis resident Marian Glaser has
a passion for art and creating. “Currently,
I’m focusing on portraiture with the desire to incorporate a vintage feeling into my work,” she says. “I also do sculpture work and charcoal drawings.”
Other artists named by Rankin include Ruth Miller, Ben Prisk, Carmen Lugo, Stephanie Dwyer, Erica and Mitchell Gaudet, Cali Rob, and Matt Stebly.
Houston also lists Kat Fitzpatrick, Roseann McKenny, Carolyn Whitescarver, Mary Hardy, J.J. Foley, Jerry Mauldin, Carolyn Busenlener, Georgeann McCullough and Trinh Nguyen Garcia.
These artists work in all media including textiles, animator/illustrator, painting, mixed media, metal, glass, portraits, murals and tattoo.
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