Local artist embraces family, friends in latest gallery showing

LOUISVILLE — Looking to embrace friends and family, Louisville-based artist Lyndi Lou unveiled her latest show, “Penny Arcade,” full of portraits done with pyrography and watercolors, on Aug. 31.

Though Lou has been in the art world for years, having presented five other shows, “Penny Arcade” is the first show she has had the opportunity to present at Aurora Gallery and Boutique, the shop she owns with two other artists, Alex Rumsey and Mia Farrugia.

The show was born from living through the pandemic and other big upheavals that made Lou focus on what she holds dear about her friends, past and present, and her family.

Many of the pieces in the "Penny Arcade" feature a double set of eyes, as shown in "Country Roads" above.

“Each of them are for a person, and there’s specific things in each painting, and it’s like what I hope for them,” she said, “It’s just for them.”

Lou hesitated to call the paintings guardian angels but likened them to being their own deity or Greek god.

All of the paintings featured bright colors of green, oranges, blues and purples, with shimmering gold. Before they were painted, the portraits were burned into wood, adding texture and movement.

Lou focused heavily on the subjects’ expressions through their eyes and mouth. Some were adorned with two sets of eyes; some eyes held an intense glimmer. The slightest lines in the mouths changed the expression from serious to awestruck to sorrowful.

“What I guess I would hope that people took from the show would just be a sense of togetherness and caring for the people in your life,” Lou said.

"Which Will" (above) is one of the many portraits in "Penny Arcade" based on the friends and family of artist Lyndi Lou. This particular piece was created in honor of Lou's mother.

“Which Will,” a blue-and-red-heavy painting of a woman wearing a crown of flowers and holding a book releasing bumblebees, was done with Lou’s mother in mind. The painting’s subject appears to have a glimmer in her eye and a curious mouth.

From a young age, Lou’s mother encouraged her to read and learn about the world outside of their small Kentucky town bubble.

“She didn’t want me to just have a small worldview. She wanted me to see and understand other cultures, and the things that went on, and think about things in different ways,” Lou said.

Despite having over 20 pieces in the show, Lou said that she only told a few of the people who had a painting in their honor, worrying that some might feel left out or read incorrectly into it.

Some of those who did know they had a portrait of their likeness came into the show and were able to quickly identify which was theirs, according to Lou.

The paintings in the show were accompanied by mixed media terrariums Lou has been making for some time. Most of the terrariums were encased in bell jars displayed on shelving units, but two musical-themed terrariums hung on the walls in shadowboxes.

This guitar belongs to Jerry Hill, owner of J&J Old Louisville Music Shop, before passing in 2022. Lou created this piece in honor of him for a previous group show called "I Made You a Mix Tape."

The two shadowboxed pieces sandwiched the rest of the show, one being a stickered guitar that once belonged to Jerry Hill, the owner of J&J Old Louisville Music Shop before he died in 2022, and the other being a violin covered in monarch butterflies.

While Lou intended for the terrariums to be an aesthetic addition to the show, the meaning of the two shadowboxed creations fit with the theme rather fortuitously.

Above, two showgoers contemplate and observe "Noche De Ronda," a painting Lou made to commemorate her grandmother.

The guitar, covered in stickers of local businesses, is surrounded by roses, moss, and luna moths. Initially created for a group show at Aurora called “I Made You a Mixtape,” Lou aimed to honor Hill with the piece.

Finishing off the show was the violin encased in a shadowbox with over 20 monarch butterflies on and around the instrument. Lou finished the piece two days before she hung the show, after thinking she wouldn’t have enough time to complete it.

Though the monarch piece at the end of the show was not made in honor of anyone specifically, it perfectly complements painting “Noche de Ronda” which was made for her paternal grandmother, Mandy Lou. As Mammie Lou created a family, her portrait shows her creating a song with a violin, the butterflies coming from the strings being the love and things that followed.

Lou learned to spread bugs in 2012 after a trip to Amsterdam inspired her to take up the art by learning via YouTube. She began by framing spread specimens, and it was a couple of years until Lou started creating the terrarium scenes.

“I feel like it's a lot cooler to put them in those little terrariums because it’s almost like you're giving them a little scene out of a life or something…It was like something that you would maybe come upon in a garden,” she said.

The bugs that filled the bell jars and shadowboxes were all ethically sourced from insect sanctuaries around the world, with whom Lou has spent a lot of time building relationships. The sanctuaries collect the insects after they naturally pass and are sold to raise money for the sanctuaries. Lou also ensures that the bones included in her terrariums come from ethical sources.

Both the paintings and terrariums fit perfectly into the energy of Aurora, which Lou described as a kind of punk, goth, tattooer space.

Seeing her work hanging with the rest of the gallery and boutique was very emotional for Lou, as she was surrounded by friends, family, and community members who frequent Aurora openings.

“Being able to put something that I had been working on personally, and then adding it to what we were all building together, it felt really great,” she said.

In addition to friends, family, and those familiar with Aurora, Lou’s show drew clients from Mama Tried Tattoo Parlour, the shop she owns.

Bernadette Eve attended the show and was impressed to see the art Lou makes by wood burning, after receiving a tattoo from Lou in a style that mirrors the wood-burning effect.

Lou has been an artist since she was a kid, sitting on the floor filling up giant rolls of butcher paper her mom provided to help channel her hyperactive energy. The artist painted all through middle and high, but it was when she was studying political science in college, that Lou knew she wanted to be a tattoo artist.

In the four years it took for Lou to find a tattoo apprenticeship, she was constantly showing her art in local group shows and at Highland Coffee Company when it was open on Bardstown Road.

Bernadette Eve (above) views prints from Lou's previous show "1,000 Ships" at Aurora Gallery & Boutique.

Processing the world by creating art, Lou said that she must make things, by painting, drawing and tattooing.

“With me, art feels inevitable,” Lou said, laughing that she thought she sounded pretentious, before further explaining that it’s like she gets itchy if she doesn’t create art.

“I can’t just not do it,” she said.

Rumsey, a co-owner of Aurora and Pale Moon Tattoo, said she is immensely proud of Lou, having been able to watch her friend and co-owner evolve as an artist for over a decade.

“I think her color palettes and the use of the mica powder, in particularly for this show, was a change because the gold leafing effect that she used to do was much more constrained,” Rumsey said, “I feel like changing some of her medium usage has allowed a little bit more freedom in the process and created more interesting, unexpected results.”

Penny Arcade can be viewed at Aurora Gallery and Boutique, at 1264 South Shelby Street, until the end of October.