The Galleries at LSU

Introducing Open Experimental Studio Resident Artist Rachel Parish She’s in Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays now through June 26.

Rachel’s workhops will explore ancestry through plants, storytelling, and sensory experiences. Rachel will collaborate with EBRPLGenealogy and The Louisiana Wild Society to map family histories, craft vessels from bodily forms, make paper from recycled clothing, and blend botanical scents and teas.

Join us Saturday at noon for a presentation from Genealogy Librarian David Laatsch entitled Finding Roots: Introduction to Genealogy and an Alternative Mapping workshop with Rachel.

Full program schedule at link in bio.

Working internationally, Rachel Parish is an interdisciplinary visual artist and theatre-maker whose work has been seen at venues including Tate Britain, de Young Museum, Lyric Hammersmith, Battersea Arts Centre, Woodruff Art Center, and Standpoint Gallery, as well as in public spaces such as train stations, community centers, homes for the elderly, in streets, schools and online.

Rachel’s social and conceptual practice researches how we exist in community with each other, where this “we” can be a person with themselves, specific groups of people, groups of ecologies, histories, or places. Her practice is rooted in deep listening and fostering dialogue, with the recognition that words are only one form of communication, and that conversation can and does happen across cultures, species, and time, in ways that we can engage and play with meaningfully and creatively.

The 2026 Open Experimental Studio is supported by the Windgate Foundation and the Charles Lamar Family Foundation.

LSU College of Art + Design LSU School of Art East Baton Rouge Parish Library

If you missed it on campus, check out “Making With” at Bluebonnet Branch Regional Library.

ARTH4020: Art & Ecology focused on fieldwork and embodied experience as research methods to move beyond text and image-based research. The creative and contemplative practices represented in this student exhibition emphasized making with an environmental partner such as soil, sun, and a waterway. The course approached art history as a transdisciplinary creative research practice to explore new ways of thinking, knowing, and being in relation.

Visiting artist Rachel Parish led creative practices that were informed by study of the co-evolution of ecological thought and ecological art led by Instructor Courtney Taylor. A meditative nature connection experience led by opened the course.

You can catch artist Rachel Parish alongside Edem Dake in residence throughout June in Glassell Gallery as part of the 2026 Open Experimental Studio.

LSU School of Art LSU College of Art + Design East Baton Rouge Parish Library

LSU College of Art & Design invites our community to experiment, make, and connect alongside 2026 Open Experimental Studio resident artists Rachel Parish and Edem Dake throughout June in Glassell Gallery.

From June 2–26, the gallery will offer drop-in open studio space for visitors to experiment with their own projects, participate in special workshops, and collaborate with one another on projects that will be facilitated by the artists. Working across clay, paper, photography, textiles, and plants, the artists will guide participants in creating personal and collective artifacts rooted in storytelling and sensory experience. Participants may map family histories, craft vessels from bodily forms, make paper from recycled clothing, blend botanical scents and teas, mend garments through embroidery, or create photographic traces of their presence using alternative processes. Designed as accessible, family-friendly experiences, these workshops emphasize collaboration, reflection, and experimentation while encouraging new relationships between memory, material, and community. All experience-levels are welcome. Full schedule coming soon!

The 2026 Open Experimental Studio is supported by the Charles Lamar Family Foundation and the Windgate Foundation.

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