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Exhibition Opening:
Friday, March 2
5:30 PM - 8 PM
Critical MASS returns with over 150 entries of Visual and Literary art in our annual exhibition. This event is FREE and open to the public.
Critical Mass 6 combines critique, creativity and community building through an explosion of art, entertainment and literature. Nowhere will artistic energy be greater March 2 through May 5, 2018 than on two full floors of artspace in downtown Shreveport when Critical Mass 6 debuts with art from almost 150 visual and literary artists from across Northwest Louisiana (NWLA).
Critical Mass is an annual, Open Invitational Exhibition and Critic Series. It is designed to advance professionalism in the Arts in Northwest Louisiana through a system of formal critique. Nationally acclaimed critics are curated by Robert L. Pincus, Ph.D., who is a contributor to Art News, Art in America, and The Wall Street Journal. Each critic reviews visual and literary art and names a “Best of Show” winner in each category. Each winner receives a $2,000 cash prize to support a solo Exhibition/Presentation produced in artspace several months later.
Critical Mass 6 is a pivotal part of a deliberately planned Arts Ecosystem in NWLA. Beginning in 1976, SRAC starting working to form an intersection—a link—among art programming in the region. This ecosystem starts with Arts in Education for ECE through K-12 with the ArtBreak Festival and continues with the development of a NWLA Artist Directory, an Artist Entrepreneurial Training series, arts markets, artist commissions and quarterly UNscene events which pair national artists with regional artists for innovative creativity.
Alicia Eler will serve as Visual Arts Critic for Critical Mass 6. Eler is visual art critic/arts reporter for the Minneapolis “Star Tribune” and is the author of The Selfie Generation: How Our Self-Images Are Changing Our Notions of Privacy, Se, Consent, and Culture. Her cultural criticism and reporting are published in the Guardian, GLAMOUR, Harper’s Bazaar, New York Magazine, CNN, LA Weekly, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, New Inquiry, Hyperallergic, Aperture, MAXIM, Art21 Magazine and Artforum.
Ann Fisher-Wirth is this year’s Critical Mass 6 Literary Arts Critic. Fisher is a poet and professor at the University of Mississippi and has many books to her credit. Her newest book is entitled, Mississippi, and features her poems with photograph by Maude Schuyler Clay. Fisher is also the coeditor of The Ecopoetry Anthology.