The art world is bifurcated into the things you read about in art publications and in the news (art fairs, auction prices for contemporary art, and a handful of art stars) and things you never hear about. Art in Shreveport is in the latter category. Here, artists toil away in obscurity like the rest of us. The things they make may never sell or make headlines, but I would argue that they are as important to what defines Shreveport as any other legacy industry or organization in the city. In that way, the artists here are like artists everywhere else across the country.

Of the over 100 artists who submitted to Shreveport Regional Art Council’s Critical Mass 11 exhibition, a handful emerged as artists that made me return to their works for second and third looks. With some direction, mentorship and perseverance, these artists could continue to make the things that they make and become a part of the larger art conversation – the one we read about in art publications and in the news.

Greg Ellis’s photograph “Grace+Modesty” is in conversation with the legacy of Black photographers such as Roy De Carava and Gordon Parks, whose careful consideration of their subjects and a mastery of tonal balance created a legacy of Black photography that continues today.

In a similar way, Irene Gallion’s portrait of a young girl getting her hair done in the era of Covid-19, “Blackberry Cry,” inhabits the powerful way in which artists can signal to what is happening now, while engaging conversations around culture and inclusivity.

Felix Moon was another artist whose work I kept returning to, one that surprised me and made me reconsider a style and opinion that isn’t part of the conversations I have about contemporary art. His “design designation” painting is complex and earnest – both in conversation with the history of drip painting and speaking in a language all his own.

I found that same level of intensity and depth in “Lost in the Shadows” from Urian Oxford. It shared a similar curiosity with another painting in the exhibition – one selected for the top prize in this year’s Critical Mass. Oxford’s painting is dense and restrained simultaneously – a rare quality in painting and art in general.

Joey Slaughter is an artist’s artist. There is an inside baseball quality to his work. This is an artist who has a lot of intentionality and precision in making the things that he does and folding that knowledge and experience back into work that is, at the same time, tongue-in-cheek and deliberate.

Another artist in the exhibition, Ron Smith, recalls the exquisite subtleties of artist Norman Lewis’ abstractions. His work “Freedom in the Midst” threads the needle between abstraction and conceptualism, and I was surprised at how much I liked this painting. His use of materials in other works in his portfolio really connects what he is doing with abstraction to materials that dive deeper into what his practice is about.

Selecting the artist who combined all the qualities of these artists into one body of work was an easy task. Michael H. Miller’s painting “Living and Dying in the Nuclear Winter” combines abstraction, craft and materiality into a really great work of art. It lives between the Art Brut movement and self-taught outsider-ness. It is successful because of the bold and daring ways in which painting, drawing, experimentation and risk come together to make a beautiful work of art.

Bravo to all the artists who showed up and shared their works with Shreveport. The city is all the better for your choice to be artists and to make your work here.

Christopher Blay is an artist, writer and curator. He currently works as the chief curator of the Houston Museum of African American Culture.