Kathy Hughes is a New Orleans native who has lived most of her life in the uptown area of the city. As a child her family had a home on the Mississippi gulf coast where she spent summers and weekends throughout her teenage years. Her time spent in the city and on the coast has influenced her art since her days as a Tulane University student earning her degree in Ceramics. As an undergraduate student her work incorporated shapes and the repetition of those shapes and lines that were in her environment, such as the pilings left behind when a pier is blown away by a hurricane. These simple shapes and their organized chaos is a recurring element in her work today. After graduating from Tulane, she received a M.Ed. in Art Education and recently retired from the Jefferson Parish Public School system as an art talent educator for 26 years.

After taking an Encaustic workshop 17 years ago she fell in love with this medium and it became her primary means of expression. She does not consider herself a painter in the traditional sense but rather a mixed-media artist as she incorporates ink, oil paint, collage and sometimes other non-traditional materials including the occasional found objects. Her pieces usually begin with mark making, using a variety of dry and wet media. These marks are often covered up but are a starting point for her abstract paintings. Her intuitive process lends itself well to the layering and scraping of the encaustic medium, revealing the marks and colors underneath. To quote the artist Cindy Sherman, Kathy says, “If I knew what the picture was going to be like I wouldn’t make it.”

Nathalie Simon is a Haitian American sculptor, photographer and jewelry maker currently based in New Orleans. As a child, her grandparents called her “Nathou” (pronounced na-too) a nickname lovingly laden with memory and the milieu of the island: its golden light, the brown-green sea turtles of its coastal shoals, and the song of the many languages spoken.

Haiti’s spirituality and sense of place infuse the organic curves, surprising contrasts, and delicate details of Nathou’s ceramics, jewelry and photography. She returns to those early memories often, driven by her curiosity for the natural world. This innate sense of awe inspires her to create one-of-kind pieces that evoke the cultural rhythms of Haiti’s story and bestow her with sanctuary and focus as she pursues her other life passions in law and public policy.

The organic lines of Nathou’s sculptural vessels are replete with artistry and a sense of place. Inspired by nature and all its contrasts, they exude calmness and raw sensuality. They can be used as a centerpiece, a sculptural element, or functional object.