Join The Front!
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Open Call for Artists!
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Apply by Oct. 16th
〰️
Join The Front! 〰️ Open Call for Artists! 〰️ Apply by Oct. 16th 〰️
September 12th - October 4, 2026
Gallery open hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 12-5pm & by appointment (reach out to an artist)
Programming This Month
Saturday September 12th, 6-10pm
Opening Reception, Second Saturday
Saturday September 19th, 3pm
Risky Play (Room 4)— Artist talk with Sara Nyquist and Ann Haley
Saturday September 26th, 3pm
phoneme, morpheme (Room 3) — A divination exercise with Patrick O'Connor
Room 1
Elizabeth Shannon, Completeness of Action (process), tin graveure plate, alligator skin, 16 x 20 x 2 inches, 2026.
Completeness of Action
Elizabeth Shannon
A series of exercises utilizing common objects from my studio inventory placed on unusable photograveure tin plates from the Josephine Sacabo Studio.
The tin plates create a background that inspires the placement of stones, small wood planks, replica objects, moss, etc.
The ritual of placement - then rest - then re placement in building a dimensional collage is and has been part of my practice, whether large-scale installations or small-scale vignettes.
In addition, I will present a photographic diptych originally titled Atchafalaya Basin from 1992, as it continues to comment on Louisiana's fragile coast and wetlands, especially with the looming SpaceX development.
Elizabeth Shannon was born in Louisiana on the Atchafalaya River at the foot of this vast basin wetlands, a waterway teaming with the activity of seafood and oil-related industries. Shannon continues to be fascinated by this landscape and the codependent relationship. The intersection presents cautionary allegories responding to the threats that befall the natural and urban environment. The patina of this small river town and the Mississippi River culture and its environs have influenced work constructed out of time-worn salvage found and selected objects, subjects of fabrication and photography in explorations about humanity and the environment. Shannon has been active for almost 50 years and is represented in museum, corporate, public, and private collections.
Room 2
Room 3
phoneme, morpheme
Patrick O'Connor
Each word, syllable, and letter in a sentence or story holds its own meaning separate from a constructed context. When those parts are put together, they enter a conversation that the reader deciphers. phoneme, morpheme is a visual representation of that concept and is an exercise in making meaning out of disparate parts.
Patrick O’Connor, originally from Cambridge, Mass., has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2019. He is a multidisciplinary artist, and has explored music, experimental photography, 3D rendering tools and machines, textiles, and installation. Patrick hopes to make spaces for others to learn and relate to each other. He is interested in the multiple identities of the natural world. Each thing is known to itself in ways that other things won’t know. With this guiding force in mind, Patrick has traversed many landscapes with a mind open to seeing the reflection of an accumulation of time in an instance.
A divination exercise, September 26 at 3 pm
room 4
Ann Haley & Sara Nyquist, Cut yourself Out of yourself (detail), lace, liquid latex, red thread, 30 x 5 x 4 inches, 2026.
Risky Play
Sara Nyquist & Ann Haley
With surreal figurative painting, skin-like soft sculpture, and mixed-media installation, Sara Nyquist and Ann Haley explore the tension between danger and desire, control and surrender, violence and vitality.
In Haley’s exposing and confrontational paintings, the act of eating is both violent and sensual. Obsessive and compulsive. The dichotomy of eating and hunting tells a story of what it means to be well-fed and unafraid to risk injury in the pursuit of reclaiming one’s body. The gutting of fruit and shedding of skin release the parts of oneself that have been contained or restricted for the sake of survival.
Nyquist’s textile sculpture aims to give physical shape to early memories of vulnerability, isolation, and desire. Satin is used formally and conceptually for its plasticity, calling to the slippery and mutable nature of memory. Shellac is applied to create a supple and hidelike surface. The resulting structure exists somewhere between a body and its contents. Shellacked satin peeks through the papery shedding skin on bars, evoking soft tissue, fat, blood, puss: all the wet and messy byproducts of transformation.
The carnal delicacy of Haley’s soft sculptures explores the nuance of trusting the natural process of shedding one’s skin and considers how sometimes we must do something drastic to reach freedom. In their collaborative piece, “Cut yourself Out of yourself,” together, Haley and Nyquist honor the body’s ability to mend despite destruction.
Risky Play is dangerous, seductive, and on the verge of unraveling.
Sara Nyquist is a sculptor and production designer in New Orleans, LA. In 2015 she earned her MA in Critical Theory and Creative Research at The Hallie Ford School of Graduate Studies, and her BFA at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon in 2013. Working primarily with fiber, clay, and wood, her works often tease the softness of the body into rigid and non-figurative structures. Professionally, her creative direction has been showcased at independent film festivals in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Capri, and New Orleans, among others. She is proud to exhibit her latest sculptural works alongside her friend and collaborator, Ann Haley at the Front Gallery in New Orleans, September 2026.
@alwaysalreadyyours
saranyquist.com
Ann Haley (Atlanta, GA, b.1991) is a multimedia artist, curator, and educator in New Orleans, LA. She received a BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2014, and is currently pursuing a Master's of Education in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of New Orleans. As a collective member of The Front Gallery since 2020, Haley has curated, collaborated, and solo-exhibited numerous art shows rooted in themes of identity, grief, and the body. In New Orleans, she has also exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center, SHED Gallery, Carroll Gallery, Antenna Gallery, Staple Goods Gallery, and Burnt Canoe Gallery. Outside of New Orleans, she has exhibited at Ashmore Gallery in Savannah, GA; Plug Gallery in Kansas City, MO; and Vernissage in Lacoste, France. Beyond her personal art practice, Haley has taught and developed Art Ed curricula for New Orleans youth since 2015, most prominently at Waldo Burton Boys Home.
@annhaleystudio
annhaleystudio.com
Nyquist and Haley have nearly a decade of creative endeavors together in New Orleans, but this will be their first time showing art together in a gallery.