About the Artist
Cameron Richert is a New Orleans-based artist who originates from Sulphur, LA. They work in mixed media with a focus on printmaking using natural, reclaimed, and upcycled materials. They often venture into textile arts, papermaking, painting, and collage as well.
They are influenced by a lifelong love of Louisiana's landscapes both natural and urban, as well as the diverse people and culture of the state. They draw inspiration from the intersections of nature and human creation: Live Oak roots rising up through broken sidewalks, the Mississippi River rolling unbothered through the city's cacaphony, and Mardi Gras beads being ground by car tires into the dirt beneath our feet, which is now made of plastic and glitter. Their cardboard block prints are especially textured and multi-faceted, being composed of layers of paper, pigment, found items, and unexpected ingredients.
Cameron holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College and has no business making visual arts academically speaking but doesn’t really care.
Artist Statement
Every revolution is an attempt at transformation, but until we as a community transform ourselves, the process fails to come to fruition.
We must learn to direct our energy, to own ourselves, and to embody our wisdom. Otherwise, bold ideas die half-baked. Saintly-hearted heroes become murderous dictators, and every-man advocates become paranoid autocrats. Instead of transformation, we get a changing of the guard. That is because real transformation cannot be enforced from any direction, and attempts to violate this immutable law of the universe typically result in trauma -- spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
My intent as an artist and a participant in my community is to engage in the personal work of transformation; to bring playfulness, curiosity, and creativity to the foreground; and to hold space for exploration, learning, growth, and ultimately the transformation we all seek.
My art arises naturally from this ethos paired with the natural human drive to create. Reclaiming materials that would otherwise be out in our ecosystem causing harm is also a way of symbolically reclaiming all of the human potential that has been subverted and turned against us via our entrapment in capitalism. My subject matter celebrates all those things that are threatened by capitalism: queerness, weirdness, trees, rivers, animals, and dignity.