Taking pictures with her

This winter, when the streets of East Lansing, Mich., are dashed with snow, painter Elise Toups will be in the throes of what she expects will be an extended period of introspection and hard work while earning her MFA degree and teaching a drawing class at Michigan State University. The 28-year-old will be able to greet her far-flung friends back home in Louisiana with her own uniquely quiet and colorful hello.

This month, her new exhibit through the LSU School of Art will be more than a series of colorful costumed paintings and quirky, pocket-sized illustrations. It will be an invitation—a call for anyone intrigued by the creative process to move from passive patron to active participant.

It will be a fond farewell, too. Just before migrating north to Spartan Country, Toups will turn a portion of the Glassell Gallery inside the Shaw Center for the Arts into a bespoke photo booth. The exhibit runs Aug. 16-27, and in a nod to crowdsourced art, Toups will invite any and all visitors into the booth to get their pictures taken. The artist and LSU graduate just hopes all of her friends can make it, because she’s committed to using each of these new photo portraits as source material for future paintings. In that way she will be able to keep her long-distance friendships alive with creative collaboration.

“It’s almost like I’m saying, ‘I want to take you with me,’” Toups says. “I’ll be so far from home, but I’ll have all these images of people that I know and care about to paint from.”

The bulk of the exhibit will showcase Toups’ lively slice-of-revelry paintings, pieces based largely on her collection of photos taken over several years at the French Quarter’s raucous St. Anne Parade. One thing New Orleans is never short of is characters.

“At 17, that parade was like, ‘Let’s break out of the box,’ and it became a ritual for me and one of my favorite days of the year,” Toups says. Since then she has photographed a wild stream of the decadent Mardi Gras masses and turned their curious and candid moments into works of art both vibrant and reflective. With her next series zeroing in on the more serene realm of national parks, this month’s Glassell Gallery show is, in a way, another goodbye—to the carnival world of South Louisiana she has called home for so long.

“Elise’s paintings pop with color like Gauguin or contemporary painter Dana Schutz,” says Kelli Scott Kelley, one of Toups’ painting instructors at LSU. “Her rich surfaces are meticulously built up with many layers of paint.”

Whether her subject wears a feathered costume for a parade or, as Toups describes it, the “daily game face we all put on,” the Opelousas native is intrigued by the textures and patterns that envelope an individual’s personal style. She’s also fascinated by the idea that masks can become more; how a fuzzy cap, a high collar, a pastel scarf or thick-framed glasses can scream louder than words, “This is me.”

“It’s all about self-expression,” she says.

Toups hopes to set a mood for her upcoming photo-booth project that, like so many of her other shows, is far from formal.

“Elise breathes life into her subject matter,” says Malia Krolak, gallery coordinator at the LSU Museum of Art. “Her tree leaves are moving, just like her people are about to leap out of the frame and say something. If you ever spend any time with Elise you’ll notice her personality is warm and endearing, and her paintings reflect that shimmer, that light, that life.”

Similarly, Toups wants her opening and the resulting portraits to be intimate and genuine, just like the friends and supporters she is leaving behind.

“For me, these are not about getting the perfect posed photo,” Toups says. “I like it when something is a little funny or interesting or offers a glimpse of a rare face. It’s not about the smiley senior-portrait photo. It’s more about capturing a moment that mattered.”

Concurrent to the Glassell Gallery exhibit, a selection of Toups’ landscape paintings will hang as part of a joint show at Ann Connelly Fine Art. elisetoups.com

Art lovers have two chances—and two exhibits—to see the latest work from Elise Toups this month before she leaves Baton Rouge to teach and earn her MFA degree at Michigan State University.

Toups’ landscape paintings, like the one seen here, will be on display this month at Ann Connelly Fine Art.

Besides her well-known costumed portraits, illustrations like these that line Toups’ desk inside her Mid City studio will be on display at her Glassell Gallery show Aug. 16-27.