Looney prints donated to City of Minden

A piece of art history has come home to Minden, all by a chance meeting at the Louisiana Municipal Association convention in Shreveport.

Two prints from the late artist Ben Earl Looney, a native of Webster Parish, were given to the City of Minden from two original paintings of the State Capitol and the Pentagon Barracks in Baton Rouge. Mayor Tommy Davis said he met Keith Ardoin, a councilman for the Town of Krotz Springs, when they sat next to each other at the convention.

“We discussed the paintings, and they are beautiful,” Davis said. “One of them is a little faded, we think, due to the age of it. It was painted in the 1960s.”

Ardoin is an art collector and owns the original paintings; he had the prints made to give to the City of Minden. He bought them at an estate sale from the Diesi family, of which Frank Diesi was a member of both the House and the Senate in the early 1960s and owned Little Capital Restaurant in Krotz Springs.

“I’m assuming Looney and Diesi were friends since Diesi commissioned Looney to paint the restaurant and he had several assorted prints of Looney,” Ardoin said in a letter to Davis.

Looney was born in the Yellow Pine Community in June 1904. He is a 1923 graduate of Minden High School where he was the art editor of the yearbook staff. He attended the Louisiana State University School of Journalism and Centenary College in Shreveport as well as the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC. He also attended the Summer School of Arts in Eastport, Maine, and studied watercolor under George Ennis.

His work has been displayed in the Smithsonian Institution.

While he was born in Webster Parish, he died in Lafayette, where he spent the last days of his life. He died of complications from Parkinson’s Disease.

The Pentagon Barracks are barracks located next to the State Capitol where they have the distinction of being the place of the birth of a nation, however briefly, of the Republic of West Florida. It has a long history of being a military post, and later military barracks.

Today, they are used to house the offices of the lieutenant governor and private apartments for legislators.
The paintings will be hung in the Cypress Room at Minden City Hall.

Comments

comments

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Los Arboles Apartments - 17 Photos - Apartments - 201 4th St, Del Mar, Del Mar, CA - Phone Number

8 201 4th St Del Mar , CA 92014 (858) 481-9585 Been here for 5 months now. These are definitely old apartments; the floorplans aren't modern or laid out super efficiently. But if you want to live within line-of-sight to the ocean, this place is as affordable as it gets. The manager is hands-down one of the nicest dudes I've met and has been extremely accommodating to us. Although the property is old, it's clean and decently kept up. The pool and hot tub are nice. We're on the 2nd floor in a corner unit and it's been very quiet for us. We haven't had any issues with bugs or vermin of any sort; in fact, we keep our porch door wide open all day long so our kitties can get some fresh air. This results in maybe 1 fly per day inside. There are surfer trails very nearby that lead down the cliffs for beach access. Bottom line, if you're looking for luxury, don't live here. It's too old to ever be luxurious. But if you're looking for line-of-sight to t
Read more

Charlotte affordable housing forum raises possible solutions

There’s a big demand for more affordable housing in Charlotte, where rents and home prices have shot up much faster than wages over the past few years. Many of the apartments being built now target more affluent renters, waitlists for housing vouchers are long and starter homes are snapped up almost immediately. So why aren’t developers building more affordable housing ? That was one of the main questions at a candidate education panel hosted by the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association on Friday, where about two dozen candidates for Charlotte City Council turned out to learn some of the basics on a complicated subject. “ Affordable housing is one of the topics you’ll talk about a lot,” Bryan Holladay, who supervises the group’s government affairs outreach , told the candidates. The subject is an alphabet soup of acronyms (like NOAH, or “ Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing ”) and overlapping terms and definitions. Sometimes when people say “ affordable housing ” they mean go
Read more

Parents of Student Murdered by Maintenance Man Sue Apartment Complex

He pleaded guilty to murder late last year, now the case of a maintenance worker who killed a Blinn student is back in court. The parents of 20-year-old Jenna Verhaalen are suing the Bryan apartment complex where she was killed. Verhaalen was strangled at the Autumn Woods Apartments in 2008, by 27-year-old maintenance worker Jeremiah Rosser . The suit claims Autumn Woods ignored complaints made about Rosser. Specifically, a complaint they claim Jenna made to Rosser's boss, when he entered her apartment while she was in the shower. The suit alleges the complex's negligence led to Jenna's death. Attorneys for Autumn woods said management had no reason to believe Rosser was a risk. However, that's not what the complex's corporate office told News Three in 2008. Back then, a spokesperson said Jenna complained to the maintenance supervisor about Jeremiah Rosser , but never filed a complaint with the office. Rosser quit his job at Autumn Woods several day
Read more