Artist Stefanie Huguet comes home with her art

Stefanie Diez Huguet remembers the paint set she received for her twelfth birthday as the beginning of considering herself an artist. After using up the acrylic paints in the set, she turned to other media to create her images. She hasn’t stopped since then.

“Art isn’t a part of me; it is me,” she says.

Huguet grew up in the south Louisiana town of Dutchtown in Ascension Parish. Following her marriage, she moved with her husband’s job. She lived in Kansas City, MO and Moultrie, GA. Now she’s back in her native Louisiana, residing in Opelousas.

Through Colquitt County Arts Center in Moultrie, she learned oil painting and realized art was still her dream. As the oldest of her four children entered college, she realized her time had come and enrolled. She earned a BA from Valdosta State in 2006, completing the degree she began right out of high school but left unfinished to marry. After graduation, she created a studio in her home. For about five years, she worked as a graphic designer and put in about a year as the coordinator of a children’s museum.

When the economy crashed and outside jobs became scarce, Huguet began to focus on her own art from her home studio. Her work includes landscape oils en plein air, live painting, live sketches, and watercolor portraits of children, as well as oil portraits.

To her skills in watercolor and oils, Huguet added encaustic. The ancient art form employs colored wax to create an image and results in a more textured image that traditional paints. “It’s just so much fun,” she says of the medium, while acknowledging the high cost of getting started. She spent several years purchasing the materials before she began producing works.

Her website includes a blog of her journey and a link to her online gallery. One of the brick-and-mortar galleries hanging her works is Artists’ Galleries de Juneau in Olde Towne Slidell, LA where Huguet is honored as the Artist of the Month for December 2016.

Contact Huguet by email with commission inquiries.

© 2016  Mary Beth Magee

Dancing's loss is the art world's gain with artist Carol Fucci

     Carol Fucci studied art at LSU but spent her working career in another artistic medium, the dance. She taught dancing in her own studio, Dance with Carol, for thirty-five years. When the youngest of her five children left the nest for college, she found herself with time on her hands.

Carol Fucci with a work in progress in her back yard

     “We had a lot of wall space in here that didn’t have any art on it,” she says of her Northshore home. She and her husband Eddie visited some friends who had decorated their home with several big, beautiful paintings. Carol and Eddie decided to do the same.

     “Then I looked at the price of big pieces of art,” she laughs. “I thought maybe I should paint my own big pieces of art.” Reasoning that the results would be in her own home and not subject to public scrutiny, she began recalling her college classes. When Carol returned to painting five years ago, she found the lessons coming back as clearly as if the classes had been only weeks ago instead of decades. Family and friends gave her kudos for her work. Her topics were people in her life, favorite places and things and subjects suggested by loved ones. Soon people were requesting art for their homes.

     “The very first time that a piece of art left my home and went to someone else, it was very traumatic for me,” she remembers, “because your art becomes like one of your children…It was very tough to do.” She overcame the feeling and now regularly paints beautiful portraits and scenes on commission, to the delight of satisfied clients everywhere. 

     About a year ago, Eddie suggested she try to sell some of her paintings. Her earliest sales were paintings of the world of ballet, a world she knows well. She sold them at her dance studio and gained the confidence to approach galleries with her work. Her art hangs in several galleries, including Artists’ Galleries de Juneau, where she is the Artist of the Month for October 2016. The gallery, in Historic Olde Towne Slidell, displays several of her works.

     Carol might still be dancing full time and painting for a hobby had a hip injury not sidelined her in the last year. A total hip replacement surgery led her to sell her dance studio and focus on the visual arts side of her art. 

     Responsive to the public’s desires, she has paintings hanging in restaurants throughout the Northshore as well as the galleries. She participates in the Mandeville Arts and Crafts Farmers Market on Saturday mornings in Mandeville. In addition to the “big, beautiful pieces” she initially set out to paint, Carol also paints smaller pieces of iconic local images. Another popular item is her souvenir state road maps, typical maps with the addition of a pertinent image over a special location. 

     Dearest to her heart though are the commission paintings of children. Based on photos provided by the person ordering the image, she brings the child to pulsating life with the perfection of aspect and setting only a painting can provide.

     To contact Carol, visit her website or visit Artists’ Galleries de Juneau, 2143 First Street, Slidell, LA. She will be featured at the October Third Thursday celebration at the gallery on October 20 between 5 and 7 p.m.

© 2016 Mary Beth Magee