KRVS, Basin Arts and the UL College of the Arts are partnering to bring the community a new way to engage with local art and artists.
The partnership is in two parts. The first is a BARE WALLS installation at the radio station thanks to a sponsorship by local IT services company Rader Solutions, and the second part is the launch of a new KRVS radio segment called ART CIRCLE that will air on the final Monday of each month.
The first BARE WALLS exhibition is currently on show, with about a dozen pieces on display across KRVS’s performance studio and the radio station’s common spaces. The art will change in December and continue to be rotated every three months, Basin Arts founder Clare Cook said.
Cook said the BARE WALLS program aims to beautify spaces while providing artists income and exposure, and KRVS’s platforms on air, their app and website offer a unique chance to extend the exposure beyond the walls at KRVS to the broader community. That’s where the idea for ART CIRCLE was born, she said.
Basin Arts currently does a smaller scale version of ART CIRCLE each week, where a local artist gets a spotlight through a blog post and social media takeover. The radio segment will be a new take on that, with UL College of the Arts Dean Daryl Moore leading a conversation between two local artists. The guests will be booked by the Basin Arts team, Cook said.
The segment will be pre-recorded and air on KRVS 88.7FM during the 3 p.m. hour on the last Monday of each month, during KRVS’s “Après-Midi” program, Devall said. It will also be available for streaming on the station’s website and app.
Cook said she hopes the show will inspire burgeoning artists and give art consumers in the community more context to engage with and appreciate the work they’re viewing. Being put on the spot in an interview show is also a great opportunity for the artists to get a new perspective on their own work, she said.
“When you have to talk about [your art], you understand it differently. When you have to put words to something that you do, that’s sometimes innate, you have to dig in as an artist and ask, ‘Why do I do that?’ The act of explaining yourself sometimes is where you have those moments of realization,” Cook said.
The first ART CIRCLE segment aired Oct. 30 with musician Mo Prejean, part of the two-member hip-hop duo Armed Rhymery, and visual artist Dirk Guidry as the featured creators.
The conversational interview style gives the artists an opportunity to share their inspirations, their artistic processes, the work that goes into their creative output and how what they do is both similar and different, the women said.
Devall said the ART CIRCLE segment is a new way for KRVS to highlight Acadiana residents’ wealth of creative expression and the ways music, art and culture enhance life in the region.
That mission drives much of KRVS’s programming, which includes an emphasis on platforming Zydeco, Creole, Cajun, Swamp pop and other local music genres that are mostly shut out of larger commercial radio enterprises, she said.
“I’m a strong believer that the market is not the only determinant of what’s valuable. I love that we and Basin Arts, two cultural nonprofits, can mix it up this way,” Devall said.
A California native, Devall has spent time around the country in her decades as a journalist and audio editor and while Lafayette is the smallest city she’s lived in, it’s also uniquely bursting with culture and creativity in a way that’s uncommon around the country, she said.
Devall said she hopes ART CIRCLE will help listeners better understand the passion, commitment and effort that goes into making art locally so that residents don’t take it for granted.
“It takes a lot to make a robust music and art scene. It doesn’t just happen…It’s good for people to know so they don’t take for granted when a festival happens or when a mural happens or even a jam session. There is so much here, and I think it’s kind of cool to pull back the curtain a little bit about how so much is here,” Devall said.