The donor wall inside the main entrance of the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center says a lot about the role art plays inside this innovative building. Forget a staid scroll of names embossed on metallic plates or etched in bricks. The wall is a fanciful collection of colorful mounted triangles, plus-signs, half-moons and squares, with donors’ names inscribed on each one. And on some, tiny clay heads are perched.
“(Artist Mikey Walsh) pulled clay out of the Mississippi River bed to make these (clay head) figures as an acknowledgement of the Mississippians, the indigenous people, who were here before we were,” says Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge President and CEO Renee Chatelain. “The shapes are all so whimsical. That’s what she’s known for.”
Every corner of the Cary Saurage Community Arts Center, it seems, is an opportunity to showcase and contemplate art. Open since January 2021, the center is housed in an iconic midcentury structure on St. Ferdinand Street known as the Triangle Building, which saw a $3 million overhaul under the Arts Council’s direction.
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But the 12,000-square-foot space (quite an improvement over its previous 4,000-square-foot home on Laurel Street) is not just a headquarters for the Arts Council.
It’s also a thriving arts center with a public gallery, artists’ studio, black box theater, recording studio, rooftop terrace and community meeting space.
The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra is housed here. Other arts organizations flow in and out, including the dance company in residence, vagabondance, which provides intensive dance instruction to the community in exchange for space.
The Shell Gallery on the first floor is open to the public and features changing exhibits of regional artists from the Arts Council’s 11-parish region. Down the hall, the black box theater hosts intimate performances, like the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra’s intimate Candlelight Concert series earlier this fall, which featured works spanning genres and time periods and light from 1,200 candles.
Next to the black box, the recording studio is available to podcasters and musicians. And across the hall, freeform studio space and a kiln room provides artists a place to work in exchange for rent, or for projects created for public spaces.
Generous light pours into the building from unexpected angles—it is a triangle, after all.
Move from floor to floor, and find art installed everywhere, from meeting rooms and offices to hallways and stairwells.
Stunning stained glass panels, for example, by artists Steve Wilson, Sam Corso and Paul Dufour, hang against a large window in a large meeting room. And installed outside the elevator in the main lobby is the work of the annual winner of the Arts Council’s prestigious Michael Crespo Fellowship. This year’s honoree was painter, muralist and local art teacher Geeta Dave, whose stirring, vibrant painting “The Power of Intuition,” will hang in the space for the next year. acgbr.org
FALL RADAR
Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge
“(Looking ahead), the Arts Council will celebrate its 50th anniversary with MPAC on Jan. 12, 2023. It is exciting to be part of the great arts and cultural offerings in the region, and to see in the past few years our arts sector embraced by business leaders as a vital component in the overall success of a city and region. Now a creative workforce drives what is cool, inspiring and livable in our community. Bravo!”
—Renee Chatelain, president
LSU Museum of Art
“LSU Museum of Art has an exciting lineup of fall exhibitions—from ceramics by British printmaker Paul Scott, to paintings of the Mediterranean by 19th century American Impressionists, to life-sized sculptures by New Orleans artist Alex Podesta in his bunny persona! ”
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—Michelle Schulte, senior curator and director of public programs
Disclosure: 225 Editor Jennifer Tormo Alvarez is on the board of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge.
This article was originally published in the October 2022 issue of 225 magazine.