Christina Juran! A wonderful artist as well as a long time friend and steady advocate for my own artistic endeavors. She and her partner Herman Kron are an art power couple, an example of my belief that art is about a broadly encompassing lifestyle and not just an object or product. And speaking of products, BRISTLE MAGIC!!! The all natural non-toxic paintbrush cleaner! Herman invented and manufactures it and Christina swears by it! https://bristlemagic.net

I realize this is a little bit tangential to Christina’s show, “River Beat”, but I can’t help it! It’s exciting when artists and artistic people are able to reach across multiple areas of creativity! For a time, Tina and Herman ran “The New Orleans Arts Center” farther down on Saint Claude. It was a giant hub of community on Saint Claude Avenue, and they still maintain an excellent online gallery! https://www.theneworleansartcenter.com/warehouse-originals-limited-editions-standard-products/original_art_products/christina-juran-edn56cyfcve They helped to keep me connected to my artistic evolution by including and encouraging me, which was particularly valuable during occasional feelings of artistic disenfranchisement.

In front of the New Orleans Arts Center, springing off the top of an otherwise empty sign post, was a serpent like garden hose, maintaining this shape because of a circuitous length of scrap metal that Tina had stuffed inside it. Christina Juran is an accomplished and academically trained painter, who possesses a profound wackiness, that really resonates with me. She can sooth us with bucolic scenes, pastures of cows in Louisiana landscapes. Or poetic documentation of the strangest southern storm, a field of oaks, blanketed in snow. A flurry of butter colored ducks, tangling with the squirrels of city park! Dark river currents pushing past riverbank tree lines. These are regional scenes of life along the Mississippi River. Some of her sculptures would seem to come out of left field if we didn’t know that they may be the most regional of all. There are some very strange objects to be plucked from the banks of the mighty river. Christina is courageous enough to claim them and declare their power.

-Adam Farrington