Louviere and Vanessa: Dust of the Stars

Louviere and Vanessa: Dust of the Stars by Aline SmithsonSeptember 11, 2025

©Louviere and Vanessa, Extinction is the Rule

Ten years ago I was blown away by the groundbreaking project, Resonantia, created by artists Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown, aka Louviere and Vanessa. The work took their artistry into new terrains by creating an album of artwork and sound with a symbiotic relationship of connectedness. Over the years, they have continued to break new ground by pushing the ideas of photography into unique incarnations.

Tomorrow, these remarkable artists will open an exhibition of new work, Dust of the Stars, at the Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe running from September 12th, from 5 -7 pm through November 8th, 2025. The work explores the intrinsic connection between the celestial and the earthly through a unique medium that combines bone and water to form handmade bio plastics, symbolizing the organic and the intangible.

©Louviere and Vanessa, Freedom from Gravity

Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown make their home and art in New Orleans. Their work combines the mediums and nuances of film, photography, painting, and printmaking. They utilize Holgas, scanners, 8mm film, destroyed negative, wax, gold, and blood. They have a long fascination with themes of duality and paradox: beauty as horror, creation as destruction, the personal as a universal. Craft, concept, and history are the devices they use to explore the gray zone within those themes.

Since Louviere + Vanessa began showing professionally in 2004, they have been in more than 80 exhibits and film festivals in America, Australia, China and abroad. Louviere + Vanessa’s photographs and films are held in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, George Eastman House, New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, as well as the Ford Foundation and the film archive for Globians International Film in Potsdam, Germany.

Instagram: @louviere.and.vanessa

©Louviere and Vanessa, Liberité, Egalité, Gravité

Dust of the Stars

Our latest series “ Dust of the Stars” explores the intrinsic connection between the celestial and the earthly. We have created a unique medium by combining bone and water to form handmade bio plastics, symbolizing the organic and the intangible.

These images represent what the natural world is made of: bone, water, cartilage, the essence of life and a symbol of fluidity and change. Bone and water then come together again to fuse these images into a state of permanence, something the living world is not afforded. This collection delves into the delicate interplay between human life and the Cosmos; with Carl Sagan’s poetic assertion that we are all make of “Star Stuff” as inspiration.

These photographs came to be from a time of intense personal transformation, V’s ongoing struggles with major spinal surgeries and the continuous challenges and changes she faces.

Vanessa and her father handmade the frames of all our past work and with his passing, we chose to leave the art unframed but still include him by adding a trace of his ashes into each piece… star stuff. Instead the pieces are floating off the wall with magnets, giving them room to change their form as if they were alive. ~L+V 2025