Nurturing the Arts in North Central Louisiana
Upcoming Events
2025 Peach Art Exhibit
The Peach Art Exhibition is one of NCLAC’s longest-running programs. Featuring drawing, painting, photography, 3-D art, and mixed media; artists of all ages are encouraged to submit their own original art pieces, which are judged for awards provided by our sponsors. We are excited to continue the tradition of hosting the Peach Art Exhibit alongside the Louisiana Peach Festival for our 38th year.
Art work submissions can be brought to the Lincoln Parish Library on Tuesday, May 27th from 9am to 1pm or Wednesday, May 28th from 12pm to 6pm.
Artists must submit Entry Form attachments for each piece entered, which includes a portion that is taped to the back of their artwork(s). Entry Forms will be available at the Check In location, or may be downloaded. Please use this form.
An opening reception will be held in the Library Event Center on Thursday, June 5th from 5:30pm to 7pm with awards given at 6pm.
For more information email us at info@nclac.org.
Recent Events
Pictured Left to Right: NCLAC Executive Director Marcie Nelson, 3rd Place Adult Winner Obed Nti, Honorable Mention Adult Winner Terence C. Williams II, 1st Place Adult Winner Shamar White, Honorable Mention Adult Winner Ronald McKinney, and 2nd Place Adult Winner Amanda Berg.
2nd Annual GEEKTogether Art Exhibit
The North Central Louisiana Arts Council hosted our second GEEKTogether Art Exhibit opening on Saturday, March 1, 2025. As a collaboration with the Lincoln Parish Library’s second annual GEEKTogether, this exhibit featured works that reflect subjects relevant to the GEEKTogether theme: fandoms, comics, anime/manga, video games, pop culture, etc.
The GEEKTogether Art Exhibit will be displayed at the Lincoln Parish Library in the Chautauqua Gallery from March 1st through April 28th. It will be available for public viewing during normal library hours.
We want to thank all of this year’s participating artists. Without your dedication and talents community exhibits like this are not possible. A very special congratulations to each of our winners this year:
Pictured Left to Right: NCLAC Executive Director Marcie Nelson, 3rd Place Teen Winner Susie Welsh, Honorable Mention Teen Winner Chance Wood, 1st Place Teen Winner Kimora Thompson, and Honorable Mention Teen Winner Nora Brady.
Adult 1st Place: Shamar White, Adult 2nd Place: Amanda Berg, Adult 3rd Place: Obed Nti, Adult Honorable Mentions: Terence C. Williams II and Ronald McKinney, Teen 1st Place: Kimora Thompon, Teen 2nd Place: Madison Haneman, Teen 3rd Place: Susie Welsh, Teen Honorable Mentions: Chance Wood, Sebastian Isaula, and Nora Brady, Youth 1st Place: Giselle Raley, Youth 2nd Place: Kylie McKittrick, Youth 3rd Place: Scarlet Guzman, Youth Honorable Mentions: Lyla Good and Audrey Young!
Pictured Left to Right: NCLAC Executive Director Marcie Nelson, 1st Place Youth Winner Giselle Raley, 2nd Place Youth Winner Kylie McKittrick, and Honorable Mention Youth Winner Lyla Good.
This year’s judge was mixed media collage painter, Vitus Shell. Shell lives and works in his hometown Monroe, LA, where he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He was the 2021 Louisiana Artist of the Year and received an NPN Take Notice Fund in 2022. In 2007 while attending the University of Mississippi, Shell was honored with the MFA Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Public Collections include the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University and the Elliot Perry Collection, among others. Additionally, Shell has taught at Grambling University and Louisiana Tech University. He is also the president and co-founder of the Black Creatives Circle of North Louisiana.
We offer a very special thank you to our prize sponsors: Creative Exchange, Board & Bottle, Lunar Art Painting, Haute Mess Designs, and the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council.
Reminder to all participating artists that artwork can be picked up on Tuesday, April 29th or Wednesday, April 30th from 4-7 pm in the Chautauqua Gallery of the Library. Any artwork purchased from this exhibit can also be picked up by collectors on those dates.
We look forward to GEEKing Together with our community in 2026!
Layon Gray’s Kings of Harlem School Show
The North Central Louisiana Arts Council is proud to announce the return of our School Show! Thanks to a grant from Jonesboro State Bank’s Pledge Ten initiative, we are bringing back the award-winning writer and director Layon Gray back to his home state of Louisiana along with his talented cast and crew of professional artists. The best part is this opportunity is completely FREE for your students and educators!
This show is an opportunity for students to witness the talents of professionals who have come from similar backgrounds to themselves. We think it is important for young creatives to meet and hear the stories of successful actors, writers, and musicians who look like them and have lived experiences relevant to their own.
Simultaneously, students will be immersed in the rich culture and history of African Americans who defied the odds and shaped professional sports in our country. This show is a perfect supplement to standard Black History curriculum while giving students and educators the benefit of enjoying a locally historical facility, the Dixie Center for the Arts, which is nearing it’s 100-year anniversary.
This performance is recommended for students in grades 9 through 12. Seats are limited and once spaces fill up registration will close. The deadline to register for classes to attend will be Friday, January 31. Teachers or administrators can reach out to our office via email at info@nclac.org for questions or to register their classes.
For more information about the play, the director, and how to get your 9th-12th grade class registered to attend:
Click Here
The Sound of Earth’s Color
The North Central Louisiana Arts Council is excited to partner with local artist Meredith (Anderson) Edwards for her first solo exhibit hosted at the Creatives At Work Gallery in Downtown Ruston.
After twenty years of practicing her craft, Meredith has put together a collection of thirty digital mosaic landscapes that capture the beauty and essence of our planet. The Sound of Earth’s Color, is the result of many hours dedicated to exploring unique color blending techniques & line work, giving the viewer a new and creative perspective to the world around us.
Meredith says that Ruston, Louisiana has been a huge supporter of her art, from hosting festivals and small local art events. “This community has helped make her childhood dream come to fruition before my eyes,” explains Edwards.
As a big thank you, Meredith has offered a percentage of the silent auction proceeds as donation to the North Central Louisiana Arts Council, to help continue funding our ever-growing local art community.
Invite a friend and join us for a night focused on how we can give back to the arts and appreciate the beautiful corner of the world that we all call home. Meredith asks that we all take a moment out of our day to admire where we are, who we’ve been blessed to be here with, and maybe help even make another dream come true.
The closing reception and silent auction will take place next Saturday, December 14 from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm. We hope to see you there!
Holiday Arts Tour 2024
Area artists will display and sell their works of original, handmade items for the holiday season! Jewelry, wood works, hand-crafted books, artisan soaps, leather goods, recycled textile wearables, calligraphy stationery, ceramics, paintings, photography, and more can be found each year at the Holiday Arts Tour.
We want to give a very special thank you to our local small businesses who will host our artists for this tour: Baldwin Jewelers, Board & Bottle, Brasher Group, Buie’s Photo Shoppe, The Collective, Creative Exchange, Creatives At Work Gallery, Fine Line Supply Co., The Frame Up, Garden Baby, and No. 9 Books & Records.
Summer Art Camps
The North Central Louisiana Arts Council is very happy to have been given the opportunity to bring back our annual Summer Arts Camps this year. Our 2024 camps were supported by a Louisiana Project Grant funded by the Louisiana Division of the Arts.
This year NCLAC partnered with multiple local organizations to make the program accessible to as many children as possible and we were able to grow this year’s program by 60 for a total of 143 participating students. We hosted five weeks of art camps at the Lincoln Parish Library. We were also given the opportunity to partner with the Pinkie Wilkerson Life Development Center Foundation for a bonus week as part of their literacy camp held at Mt. Harmony Baptist Church in June.
We partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Ruston for two weeks in June. We worked with the 3rd grade students to create custom shirts using bleaching, screen printing, beading and other methods. Students also designed tote bags and were given a tour of the NCLAC Peach Art Exhibit on display in the Library’s Chautauqua Gallery introducing them to various forms of art as well as the works of local artists.
Both sessions of the Boys and Girls Club camps were taught by Bonnie Ferguson, a local artist and educator. She has taught art at a local private school for the last 8 years after earning her Bachelor of Fine Art from LA Tech.
Public registration was made available for three weeks in July. For the first two weeks we worked with students going into 1st through 4th grade. Students were allowed to experiment with multiple materials to create two mixed media pieces as well as learn screen printing and cyanotype printing.
These weeks were taught by Martie Clary. Martie earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Art Education from LA Tech and a Master’s Degree in Gifted Education. She has taught art for 34 years and currently teaches Kindergarten through 8th grade art at AE Phillips.
The final week of public camp students going into 5th and 6th grade worked on mixed media pieces as well as designing tote bags. The final project was inspired by Art on 45, a local art exhibit hosted to help raise funds for various local organizations. Because NCLAC’s 2025 Summer Art Camp was the recipient of the final Art on 45 fundraiser, we wanted to introduce the students to the history of the project and let them create their own.
The last week was taught by Brittney Shambro. Brittney has a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education with a Pre-K and Kindergarten Certification. She has 8 years of experience teaching Pre-K through 5th grade. She began her third-year teaching art this past Fall at both Cypress Springs and Ruston Elementary.
We want to thank the Northeast Louisiana Arts Council and the Louisiana Division of the Arts for supporting projects like this across Louisiana and allowing us be part of that endeavor. We also want to thank our local partners the Boys & Girls Club of Ruston, Lincoln Parish Library, and Art on 45. Without community partnerships such as these, projects like our Summer Arts Camps would not be possible.
