An Installation by Jack Niven with Matt Vis December 14, 2019 - January 5, 2020, at Staple Goods Gallery.

New cast concrete pieces from infrastructure fragments found washed up along the Mississippi River at Algiers Point, reconstructed on the gallery wall in mandalic fashion, to float again. Please follow the link for a full explanation and illustrations.

The Trees Beneath,  an installation by Jack Niven & Matt Vis,  was also included this year in Photonola, an annual celebration of photography in New Orleans produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance.

Meet in the Middle at Acadiana Centre for the Arts in Lafayette LA, from  November to December 2014.

I'll be opening a new exhibition of cast concrete works this coming Friday February 8th and also Saturday February 9th at Staple Goods Gallery, 1340 St. Roch.

To view the works click here, and to read an artist statement click here. 

I am thrilled to be included in the Ogden Museum Of Southern Art's annual juried exhibition, Louisiana Contemporary. The juror for the 2018 exhibition is Courtney J. Martin, Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Dia Art Foundation. I will be showing 5 cast concrete pieces from a body of work titled, Footings.

I am pleased to be selected for the Contemporary Art Center’s annual open call exhibition presenting the work of 29 regional artists. Constructing the Break is curated by Allison M. Glenn,  Associate Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. I will be showing 3 cast concrete pieces from a body of work called Footings.

2/28/2018 : Footings was reviewed this week by Sylvie Contiguglia in "Minimalism at Staple Goods", on her art blog, Art e-Walk. Sylvie has been in to see the show a couple of times and I think gets it.

Please join me for a Closing Party for "Footings" at Staple Goods Gallery on Sunday March 4th from 1-5 pm. There will be cocktails, beers, nosh AND a door-prize for one lucky viewer!

I'll be at Staple Goods Gallery on Sunday Feb 25th in the afternoon from 1-5 pm and, weather permitting, will be casting a couple of new concrete pieces ... one of which will be given away next week at the CLOSING PARTY as a Door Prize. Come by and say hi.

Recently my wife Marianne Desmarais and our daughter Fern & I got to host Folwell Dunbar in our studio for a regular column he writes for Nola Vie. He titled it: "Portrait of a Creative Space". 

"Footings" will open at the Staple Goods Gallery on Sat February 10th at 6pm. Due to Mardi Gras events there will also be a closing party on the last day of the show, March 4th, from 1-5pm.

To view the works click here, and to read an artist statement click here. 

This June 2017 I will be exhibiting in, Two Blocks From Elysian Fields: Recent Work From New Orleans, along with other members of the Staple Goods Collective gallery at The Clemente Arts Center in New York City.

I'd like to thank and list all the people who have donated to the Kickstarter campaign to enable the production of this piece. Thank you all for your help and support! 

There is also a section dedicated to "Reckon" under Works, with image pics, installation photos and site events.

... Erik van Haaren, Thomas Raines, Martine Marie Chaisson, Jim Niven, Asaka Kusama Riser, Dona Orozova, Brian St. Cyr, Staple Goods Collective, Tracy Nelson Wescott, Linda Bailey Mayer, William DePauw, Richard Mongiat, Brian Meehan, Jack Niven Sr., Jud Niven, Beth Shippert-Myers, Sarah MacLachlan, Carol Swedlow, Valerie MacEwan, Sally Heller, Ed McIlroy, Mark, George & Donna Gerhold, David & Dawn Merritt, Staci Spanos, Jack Davis, Addie K. & Jeremy Martin, Ruth Owens, Victoria Rogers, Meghan Ryan, Laura Millard, Christopher Chambers, Daniel Lizio-Katzen, Brooke Knuckles Gentekos, Liz Pogue, Craig Damrauer, Dave Sylvestre, Libra Lagrone, John, AnnieLaurie Erickson, Jillian Gibson, Marianne Desmarais, Judie Carson, Jill Stoll, Tiffany Lin, Andrew Laurenson, David Janzen, Margo Grace, Jennifer Shaw, Emily Wilkerson, Karen Louise Crain, Wes Niven, Gin Taylor ...

"Reckon" is a street mural I will be creating for P.3+, a local satellite program of the Prospect.3 Art Biennial in New Orleans. The work will be installed October 25, 2014 through January 25, 2015 on the side wall of Liberty Lumber Yard.

A short video and more specs on "Reckon" are here.

(click)

Scarlet Georgia, oil on antique Congoleum flooring (circa 1920) mounted on aluminum, 72" diameter.

In the Spring 2014 issue of Louisiana Cultural Vistas Magazine, pg. 64. You can also pick up a hard copy of the magazine at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art.

This painting, originally shown at Martine Chaisson Gallery in the exhibition, Memory Logos, is done on old flooring from the early 1920's that I collected many years ago. The image, of a heritage Scarlet Okra blossom, is presented as an ode to a favourite painter/hero, Georgia Okeefe. I'm thrilled that this piece is now in the collection of the "O"!

Opens April 24th, 2014 (through July 20th)

I'm very happy to announce that my painting "Scarlet Georgia" (Memory Logos) has been acquired by The Ogden Museum of Southern Art  and will be seen in this upcoming show... hope you can come by to check it out.

"A Sense of Place II" continues the celebration of The Ogden Museum of Southern Art's 10th anniversary by bringing together a survey of acquisitions, original to recent, from their permanent collection. 

... thanks to Cheryl Castjohn for her review here. 

Click to see some studio footage of "White Sand", video-loop unit.

The exhibition is open on Saturday & Sunday afternoons until April 6th.

I will be gallery sitting on Sunday March 23rd - come on by!

Coming up this March 2014: "Jack Lake Redux" at Staple Goods Collective, New Orleans. Opens March 8 at 6 pm, continuing through April 6th. Gallery hours - 12 to 5 pm Saturdays & Sundays. Artist talk Sunday March 9, 3:00 pm.

These evolving works combine a number of threads and themes that I’ve worked with in various forms: signage, billboards, Motel & road culture, itinerant travellers, spastic chronologies and past lives. The title contains a nom de plum that I have used often, having discovered it scrawled, with notes and dates, on the interior of a demolished wall in a renovation project. I’m trying to pick up the pieces anecdotally to tell the tale of Jack Lake’s progress, fantasies, premonitions and regrets.

Pelican Bomb's Taylor Murrow reviews Jack Niven's "Memory Logos" exhibition at the Tulane School of Architecture.

"Niven’s graphite drawings surely recall the naturalistic detail of nineteenth-century science texts, but the animals are personified in subtle, endearing ways more reminiscent of children’s storybooks from the 1950s." 

Read the entire review at the Pelican Bomb.

A new store section on the website full of interesting merchandise, archival print editions and occasionally offerings of original work from the vault! Look for it...

An itinerant conference started in 2011 by ThreeWalls in Chicago for independent visual arts organizers working at the crossroads of creative administration and studio practice; those engaged in the pragmatic realities and imaginative possibilities of organizing exhibitions, re-granting programs, publications, residencies, public programs, pedagogical experiments, platforms for projects, and a variety of other programming that challenges traditional formats for the production and reception of art at the grassroots level. Participating/Co-hosting along with Staple Goods Gallery. http://hand-in-glove.org/

A selection of recent drawings from this body of work that feature animal characters engaged in conflict resolution with titles parsed from civil war era poems and songs. At Tulane University school of Architecture - artist talk on Weds Oct 23rd at noon in room 204. 

A survey exhibition of New Orleans artists whose work skirts the fringe of contemporary aesthetics. The Big Top Gallery, 1638 Clio St., New Orleans, LA. Curated by Emily Lovejoy.

A national exhibition that examines people’s complex relationship to the natural world. Artists: Raina Benoit, Sarah Cusimano Miles, Courtney Egan, Siodhan McBride, Jack Niven, Blade Wynne. SELU Gallery, Hammond, LA. Curated by Dale Newkirk.   http://www.southeastern.edu/acad_research/depts/vis_art/gallery/

Our newly minted Universal Mule tee shirts are now available in the Museum Shop at the Ogden Museum.

A new street mural, Liberty's Mule, will be going up at 5383 Tchoupitoulas St. as a Satellite exhibition of P.2 on October 20, 2011.