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Discover what's happening in New Orleans. Use filters to find events to attend, support, or participate in across the local arts community.
Jonathan Ferrara - Offerings - Exhibitions - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY Press Release (New Orleans, Louisiana) FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is proud to present Offerings, the first solo exhibition in twenty-three years of New Orleans-based artist and gallery co-owner, Jonathan Ferrara. For his gallery return, Ferrara unveils over thirty new wall-mounted sculptures – returning to and reclaiming his artist-self and creative process. This suite of sculpture was catalyzed by his installation Offering, which was debuted in the exhibition This City Holds Us -Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina at Fidelity Bank White Linen Night 2025. Subsequently, the artist experimented with the arrangement of multiple sets of the individual hands, at various scales, articulating patterns and orientations which convey message and meaning. These compositions symbolize and embody the various modes of human connection. Ferrara’s intention is that of a universal relatability, presenting the viewer with the freedom to contemplate and interpret the works whilst seeing themselves within it. These works are his Offerings. The exhibition will be on view 27 May through 11 July 2026 with a collector preview on Thursday 4 June from 5:30 – 7:30pm and a public opening reception on 6 June from 5-8 PM as part of the Arts District New Orleans’ First Saturday Gallery Openings. Ferrara discusses the inspiration for his latest body of work . . . This new body of work is an extension of my installation from “This City Holds Us (2025)” entitled “Offering”. It consisted of thirty-five life-size sets of my hands extending from the gallery wall in a grid measuring ten by six feet. That piece began my work with creating sculpture from a unique process that I developed with the new medium of 3D printing. I cast my hands in plaster and then collaborated with the 3D printing lab at Tulane’s School of Architecture to render them in polylactate. Once printed, I take these hands and put them through a process in my studio with epoxy, paint, and varnish that transforms them, en masse, back to the texture of actual hands with various finishes that replicate diverse media from ceramic to glass to stainless steel. The versatility of this material and process allows me to be dynamic in the production of sculpture as the creative process unfolds. Various concepts and themes run through the work in the exhibition depending on orientation within the work. “Dissemination”: the flow of information in an outward motion from the center, from large to small and vice versa. Knowledge is spread from one source to the masses. Voices become louder as they grow in number. “Worship”: where the hands move from smaller to larger as to emulate the movement inward where the group’s energy is moving towards a focal point, a common goal, desire, or belief. “Community and Protection”: where the larger hands (people) are protecting the growth and development of their community, their family, their people. “Meditation” and “Contemplation”: the active process of reflection, consideration and imagination with a focus inward. All of these are messages I am trying to convey via the arrangement and orientation of the individual sets of hands. Most of the works are monochromatic in nature with gold, black, copper and chrome. This is meant for the viewer to focus on the form and the content without any distraction of color. Punctuating the exhibition is an installation of 20+ works entitled “In Bloom”. This suite of colorful works embraces the concepts of the aforementioned artworks while utilizing visual references to flowers such as a Japanese Magnolia, a Chocolate Tuber, a Ring of Fire Sunflower, or a Pink Zinnia. Blooming flowers are nature’s dissemination, just as there is a protection system as they begin to bloom. The larger flower works are joined by smaller individual “buds” that reference the act of protection as the flowers begin the process of blooming. Often, we look for the human form in nature, in clouds, in trees, and many other visuals from nature and I find it interesting to be able to utilize the human form to create works that can emulate nature. The shape and form of the hands are important. They are a universal symbol of an offering - a gesture of peace, vulnerability, sharing, and receiving. These hands gesture to the viewer, inviting them into the idea that is presented, welcoming them to be a part of the work and to see themselves in the messages offered. Conceptually, my work has often involved the use of multiples. I find an inherent power and emphasis in repetition - rows, grids, stacking, and sets have appealed to me visually. Composed of 12 – 75 hands each, they are printed at various scales and arranged to create movement and undulation within the piece. To be able create these works in unison, I developed specific technical processes to be able to work on multiple hands at once achieving the result of one piece made from numerous sets of hands. Jasper Johns once said “I don’t know what kind of artist I am” which reflected his reluctance to categorize his practice, emphasizing process over labels amid his explorations in various media. I feel the same about my practice as it encompasses so many different areas. My artwork has a wide breath. In my 35-year career, I have created paintings, sculpture, installation art, and photography alongside curatorial and entrepreneurial projects. I am a painter, sculptor, photographer, author, gallery owner, curator, cultural producer, and poet. I consider all of these to be my artwork. Jonathan Ferrara has maintained his own studio practice as artist for over 35 years ago. With an educational and professional background in finance and fundraising, he did not attend art school or pursue formal art training. Ferrara first started painting on t-shirts when he was a banker in Boston from 1989-1991. After moving to New Orleans in 1992 to pursue a career in fundraising at United Way (under former Mayor Ray Nagin‘s leadership), he began to experiment in painting on wood and canvas in his free time. Corporate fundraiser by day, aspiring artist by night - fading corporate aspirations made way for rising artistic inspirations. In 1995 he partnered with 3 other artists to open his first gallery, Positive Space, on Magazine Street in the Lower Garden District. From 1995-1998, Ferrara exhibited his own work at the gallery while learning the intricacies of the gallery business. In 1996 the gallery hosted the first iteration of the now well-known Guns In The Hands of Artists exhibition and that same year founded the annual international juried exhibition entitled “No Dead Artists” (currently open for the 30th annual call) for artists around the globe to get their first break into the contemporary art world). In 1998, Ferrara opened his eponymous gallery in the Warehouse Arts District on Baronne Street and shortly thereafter expanded to a larger, 8000 sq ft, building on Carondelet Street which he completely renovated. Ferrara grew the gallery and its programming to be among the most exciting and dynamic art spaces in New Orleans. All the while, creating, and exhibiting his own work. He began to show elsewhere in group exhibitions across the South - from Nashville to Atlanta and beyond in New York, Miami, and Europe. In his gallery work, he developed a greater focus on curation, namely through travel, research, and subsequent exhibitions of contemporary Cuban art. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina brought new challenges and opportunities for the gallery and Ferrara’s work, giving birth to the international traveling exhibition New Orleans Artists in Exile exhibition to provide support and exhibitions to New Orleans artists as they rebuilt. In the following decade Ferrara became an active board member of the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, the Arts Council, and the Downtown Development District. He also co-founded ARTDOCS, a no-cost medical program for artists without health insurance that operated from 1999 to 2012, and from 2013-2024 he was an invited guest, panelist, and participant at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. In 2007, the gallery re-located to its current Julia Street location in the heart of the Arts District New Orleans. Over the past 20 years, the gallery has grown to become one of the most well-known galleries in the South, with international projects in Cuba, Germany, Jordan, Mexico, Switzerland, and across the US. In 2024, the partnership with long-time gallery director Matthew Showman was finalized and the gallery name changed to Ferrara Showman Gallery. This enabled Ferrara to return his focus to making his own artwork, his original intention of opening a gallery over 30 years ago. He built a new studio in his home and in 2025 debuted new work at Fidelity Bank White Linen Night exhibition, This City Holds Us, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In his diverse and decorated career, art-making has always remained central for Ferrara. Two additional recent projects of note include the 2015 Guns In The Hands of Artists exhibition (which he also curated and traveled to seven cities across the country and published a corresponding 240-page book with essays by over 20 well-known authors and an introduction by Walter Isaacson. In 2020 , he created the Hope Photo Project responding to the pandemic, for which he took over 500 photographs of New Orleanians such as John Goodman holding the iconic HOPE street sign. Ferrara exported this project to Amman, Haiti, Jerusalem, and Minneapolis where photogrpahers from those cities added their voices of hope to the project. in 2019, he was commissioned by a private collector to create a twelve-foot-tall cast bronze version of his Excalibur No More sculpture from the Guns exhibition - incorporating a 3000-pound boulder. Ferrara’s career has taken him all around the world – all the while calling New Orleans home. It is only fitting that for his first solo exhibition 23 years, his return starts at the gallery he created for that explicit purpose. --- For more information, press, or sales inquiries, please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on social media: @FerraraShowmanGallery + @Jonathan.Ferrara.12 + @ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.
(New Orleans, Louisiana) FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Seattle-based painter Becca Fuhrman entitled Tan Lines. On the heels of two previous, successful collaborations - an online exclusive in Summer 2025 and presentation at San Francisco Art Fair in April 2026 - this exhibition surveys ten new and recent works capturing the artist’s diversity of medium, subject matter, and motif. True to Fuhrman’s distinctive visual language, Tan Lines explores the charged space between beauty and chaos, play, and provocation. Mixed-media paintings on canvas, wood panel, and sewn banners construct a world precariously teetering on the edge of revelry. Is the figure flailing or dancing? Are these hands moving to touch or pulling away? Playful upon first viewing, this body of work is seeded with peculiarity - upon further inspection, pushing and pulling perception and leaving fate to be determined only by the viewer. The exhibition will be on view 27 May through 11 July 2026 with an opening reception on 6 June from 5-8 PM as part of the Arts District New Orleans’ First Saturday Gallery Openings. Fuhrman expounds on this suite of paintings . . . “Tan Lines” is s a sun-drenched fever dream—a vibrant, sweaty escape into a manic poolside summer’s day. In my latest body of work, I’ve created a surreal world grounded in concepts of freedom and earthly pleasures. Exploring moments that make us feel alive, I invite the viewer to lose themselves amongst colors that pulse, patterns that vibrate, and figures that wiggle, swim, and dream. Fields of color, nuanced patterns, and materials like gold leaf and fringe elevate the work’s emotional intensity. Using a method called “cut-outs,” I blur the edges of foreground and background by revealing portions of the substrate beneath. Swirls of wood grain abut planes of striking color, blurring the edges between foreground and background. In the way one recalls a dream, bits and pieces of imagery, materiality, pattern, and color are stitched together to create an otherworldly impression unique unto itself. This exhibition pulses with sticky summer heat. In a world where freedom and connection feel fleeting, this exhibition celebrates the small moments that make us feel alive - the good, the bad, and the strange. Becca Fuhrman is an interdisciplinary artist known for her vibrant large-scale paintings that showcase her sustained interest in materiality and emotion. Born in Boise, Idaho, Fuhrman moved to Seattle in 2009, where she studied at the University of Washington, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture in 2015. Trained in art and architecture, Fuhrman’s interests lie in understanding and illustrating the personal narratives that exist between people and their environment, blurring the lines between inner and outer worlds. Exploring what it’s like to be alive - the beauty and the chaos - is central to her work. Capturing emotional landscapes, often centered on feminism, water, and place, she seeks to provoke curiosity and connection in viewers. Highly considered colors and patterns are deployed to heighten sentiment, build worlds, and create tension. Since graduating, she has worked across a variety of disciplines connecting art and architecture including: working as Head of Visual Creative for The Mighty Union, a boutique hospitality group; contributing to the Starbucks Art Program; creating public mural installations for community arts organizations such as Forest For the Trees; working with national galleries such as Hashimoto in Los Angeles and Ferrara Showman in New Orleans; and most recently, installing a multimedia mural at Cannonball, a contemporary arts center in downtown Seattle. Additionally, she has partnered with notable collaborators, including Fernet Branca, Bumbershoot, The Fillmore, Elysian, and Starbucks. Since 2009, Fuhrman has lived and worked in Seattle. --- For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on social media: @FerraraShowmanGallery + @FUHRMZ + @ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.
Jonathan Ferrara - Offerings - Exhibitions - FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY Press Release (New Orleans, Louisiana) FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is proud to present Offerings, the first solo exhibition in twenty-three years of New Orleans-based artist and gallery co-owner, Jonathan Ferrara. For his gallery return, Ferrara unveils over thirty new wall-mounted sculptures – returning to and reclaiming his artist-self and creative process. This suite of sculpture was catalyzed by his installation Offering, which was debuted in the exhibition This City Holds Us -Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina at Fidelity Bank White Linen Night 2025. Subsequently, the artist experimented with the arrangement of multiple sets of the individual hands, at various scales, articulating patterns and orientations which convey message and meaning. These compositions symbolize and embody the various modes of human connection. Ferrara’s intention is that of a universal relatability, presenting the viewer with the freedom to contemplate and interpret the works whilst seeing themselves within it. These works are his Offerings. The exhibition will be on view 27 May through 11 July 2026 with a collector preview on Thursday 4 June from 5:30 – 7:30pm and a public opening reception on 6 June from 5-8 PM as part of the Arts District New Orleans’ First Saturday Gallery Openings. Ferrara discusses the inspiration for his latest body of work . . . This new body of work is an extension of my installation from “This City Holds Us (2025)” entitled “Offering”. It consisted of thirty-five life-size sets of my hands extending from the gallery wall in a grid measuring ten by six feet. That piece began my work with creating sculpture from a unique process that I developed with the new medium of 3D printing. I cast my hands in plaster and then collaborated with the 3D printing lab at Tulane’s School of Architecture to render them in polylactate. Once printed, I take these hands and put them through a process in my studio with epoxy, paint, and varnish that transforms them, en masse, back to the texture of actual hands with various finishes that replicate diverse media from ceramic to glass to stainless steel. The versatility of this material and process allows me to be dynamic in the production of sculpture as the creative process unfolds. Various concepts and themes run through the work in the exhibition depending on orientation within the work. “Dissemination”: the flow of information in an outward motion from the center, from large to small and vice versa. Knowledge is spread from one source to the masses. Voices become louder as they grow in number. “Worship”: where the hands move from smaller to larger as to emulate the movement inward where the group’s energy is moving towards a focal point, a common goal, desire, or belief. “Community and Protection”: where the larger hands (people) are protecting the growth and development of their community, their family, their people. “Meditation” and “Contemplation”: the active process of reflection, consideration and imagination with a focus inward. All of these are messages I am trying to convey via the arrangement and orientation of the individual sets of hands. Most of the works are monochromatic in nature with gold, black, copper and chrome. This is meant for the viewer to focus on the form and the content without any distraction of color. Punctuating the exhibition is an installation of 20+ works entitled “In Bloom”. This suite of colorful works embraces the concepts of the aforementioned artworks while utilizing visual references to flowers such as a Japanese Magnolia, a Chocolate Tuber, a Ring of Fire Sunflower, or a Pink Zinnia. Blooming flowers are nature’s dissemination, just as there is a protection system as they begin to bloom. The larger flower works are joined by smaller individual “buds” that reference the act of protection as the flowers begin the process of blooming. Often, we look for the human form in nature, in clouds, in trees, and many other visuals from nature and I find it interesting to be able to utilize the human form to create works that can emulate nature. The shape and form of the hands are important. They are a universal symbol of an offering - a gesture of peace, vulnerability, sharing, and receiving. These hands gesture to the viewer, inviting them into the idea that is presented, welcoming them to be a part of the work and to see themselves in the messages offered. Conceptually, my work has often involved the use of multiples. I find an inherent power and emphasis in repetition - rows, grids, stacking, and sets have appealed to me visually. Composed of 12 – 75 hands each, they are printed at various scales and arranged to create movement and undulation within the piece. To be able create these works in unison, I developed specific technical processes to be able to work on multiple hands at once achieving the result of one piece made from numerous sets of hands. Jasper Johns once said “I don’t know what kind of artist I am” which reflected his reluctance to categorize his practice, emphasizing process over labels amid his explorations in various media. I feel the same about my practice as it encompasses so many different areas. My artwork has a wide breath. In my 35-year career, I have created paintings, sculpture, installation art, and photography alongside curatorial and entrepreneurial projects. I am a painter, sculptor, photographer, author, gallery owner, curator, cultural producer, and poet. I consider all of these to be my artwork. Jonathan Ferrara has maintained his own studio practice as artist for over 35 years ago. With an educational and professional background in finance and fundraising, he did not attend art school or pursue formal art training. Ferrara first started painting on t-shirts when he was a banker in Boston from 1989-1991. After moving to New Orleans in 1992 to pursue a career in fundraising at United Way (under former Mayor Ray Nagin‘s leadership), he began to experiment in painting on wood and canvas in his free time. Corporate fundraiser by day, aspiring artist by night - fading corporate aspirations made way for rising artistic inspirations. In 1995 he partnered with 3 other artists to open his first gallery, Positive Space, on Magazine Street in the Lower Garden District. From 1995-1998, Ferrara exhibited his own work at the gallery while learning the intricacies of the gallery business. In 1996 the gallery hosted the first iteration of the now well-known Guns In The Hands of Artists exhibition and that same year founded the annual international juried exhibition entitled “No Dead Artists” (currently open for the 30th annual call) for artists around the globe to get their first break into the contemporary art world). In 1998, Ferrara opened his eponymous gallery in the Warehouse Arts District on Baronne Street and shortly thereafter expanded to a larger, 8000 sq ft, building on Carondelet Street which he completely renovated. Ferrara grew the gallery and its programming to be among the most exciting and dynamic art spaces in New Orleans. All the while, creating, and exhibiting his own work. He began to show elsewhere in group exhibitions across the South - from Nashville to Atlanta and beyond in New York, Miami, and Europe. In his gallery work, he developed a greater focus on curation, namely through travel, research, and subsequent exhibitions of contemporary Cuban art. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina brought new challenges and opportunities for the gallery and Ferrara’s work, giving birth to the international traveling exhibition New Orleans Artists in Exile exhibition to provide support and exhibitions to New Orleans artists as they rebuilt. In the following decade Ferrara became an active board member of the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans, the Arts Council, and the Downtown Development District. He also co-founded ARTDOCS, a no-cost medical program for artists without health insurance that operated from 1999 to 2012, and from 2013-2024 he was an invited guest, panelist, and participant at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. In 2007, the gallery re-located to its current Julia Street location in the heart of the Arts District New Orleans. Over the past 20 years, the gallery has grown to become one of the most well-known galleries in the South, with international projects in Cuba, Germany, Jordan, Mexico, Switzerland, and across the US. In 2024, the partnership with long-time gallery director Matthew Showman was finalized and the gallery name changed to Ferrara Showman Gallery. This enabled Ferrara to return his focus to making his own artwork, his original intention of opening a gallery over 30 years ago. He built a new studio in his home and in 2025 debuted new work at Fidelity Bank White Linen Night exhibition, This City Holds Us, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. In his diverse and decorated career, art-making has always remained central for Ferrara. Two additional recent projects of note include the 2015 Guns In The Hands of Artists exhibition (which he also curated and traveled to seven cities across the country and published a corresponding 240-page book with essays by over 20 well-known authors and an introduction by Walter Isaacson. In 2020 , he created the Hope Photo Project responding to the pandemic, for which he took over 500 photographs of New Orleanians such as John Goodman holding the iconic HOPE street sign. Ferrara exported this project to Amman, Haiti, Jerusalem, and Minneapolis where photogrpahers from those cities added their voices of hope to the project. in 2019, he was commissioned by a private collector to create a twelve-foot-tall cast bronze version of his Excalibur No More sculpture from the Guns exhibition - incorporating a 3000-pound boulder. Ferrara’s career has taken him all around the world – all the while calling New Orleans home. It is only fitting that for his first solo exhibition 23 years, his return starts at the gallery he created for that explicit purpose. --- For more information, press, or sales inquiries, please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on social media: @FerraraShowmanGallery + @Jonathan.Ferrara.12 + @ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.
(New Orleans, Louisiana) FERRARA SHOWMAN GALLERY is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Seattle-based painter Becca Fuhrman entitled Tan Lines. On the heels of two previous, successful collaborations - an online exclusive in Summer 2025 and presentation at San Francisco Art Fair in April 2026 - this exhibition surveys ten new and recent works capturing the artist’s diversity of medium, subject matter, and motif. True to Fuhrman’s distinctive visual language, Tan Lines explores the charged space between beauty and chaos, play, and provocation. Mixed-media paintings on canvas, wood panel, and sewn banners construct a world precariously teetering on the edge of revelry. Is the figure flailing or dancing? Are these hands moving to touch or pulling away? Playful upon first viewing, this body of work is seeded with peculiarity - upon further inspection, pushing and pulling perception and leaving fate to be determined only by the viewer. The exhibition will be on view 27 May through 11 July 2026 with an opening reception on 6 June from 5-8 PM as part of the Arts District New Orleans’ First Saturday Gallery Openings. Fuhrman expounds on this suite of paintings . . . “Tan Lines” is s a sun-drenched fever dream—a vibrant, sweaty escape into a manic poolside summer’s day. In my latest body of work, I’ve created a surreal world grounded in concepts of freedom and earthly pleasures. Exploring moments that make us feel alive, I invite the viewer to lose themselves amongst colors that pulse, patterns that vibrate, and figures that wiggle, swim, and dream. Fields of color, nuanced patterns, and materials like gold leaf and fringe elevate the work’s emotional intensity. Using a method called “cut-outs,” I blur the edges of foreground and background by revealing portions of the substrate beneath. Swirls of wood grain abut planes of striking color, blurring the edges between foreground and background. In the way one recalls a dream, bits and pieces of imagery, materiality, pattern, and color are stitched together to create an otherworldly impression unique unto itself. This exhibition pulses with sticky summer heat. In a world where freedom and connection feel fleeting, this exhibition celebrates the small moments that make us feel alive - the good, the bad, and the strange. Becca Fuhrman is an interdisciplinary artist known for her vibrant large-scale paintings that showcase her sustained interest in materiality and emotion. Born in Boise, Idaho, Fuhrman moved to Seattle in 2009, where she studied at the University of Washington, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture in 2015. Trained in art and architecture, Fuhrman’s interests lie in understanding and illustrating the personal narratives that exist between people and their environment, blurring the lines between inner and outer worlds. Exploring what it’s like to be alive - the beauty and the chaos - is central to her work. Capturing emotional landscapes, often centered on feminism, water, and place, she seeks to provoke curiosity and connection in viewers. Highly considered colors and patterns are deployed to heighten sentiment, build worlds, and create tension. Since graduating, she has worked across a variety of disciplines connecting art and architecture including: working as Head of Visual Creative for The Mighty Union, a boutique hospitality group; contributing to the Starbucks Art Program; creating public mural installations for community arts organizations such as Forest For the Trees; working with national galleries such as Hashimoto in Los Angeles and Ferrara Showman in New Orleans; and most recently, installing a multimedia mural at Cannonball, a contemporary arts center in downtown Seattle. Additionally, she has partnered with notable collaborators, including Fernet Branca, Bumbershoot, The Fillmore, Elysian, and Starbucks. Since 2009, Fuhrman has lived and worked in Seattle. --- For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@ferrarashowman.com. Please join the conversation with FSG on social media: @FerraraShowmanGallery + @FUHRMZ + @ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.
