Artist Rabea Ballin creates her own sense of ‘home’

An art exhibit by Rabea Ballin, “The Reclamation Project,” is continuing through Friday, Jan. 25, at the Black Heritage Gallery.

Free and open to the public, hours of viewing are 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday at the gallery, which is located in historic Central School Arts and Humanities Center on Kirby Street.

Ballin was born in Germany and raised in southern Louisiana.

She earned her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts at McNeese State University and her Master’s of Fine Arts in drawing and painting at the University of Houston.

While at McNeese she studied art history in Rome and Florence, Italy.

In a description accompanying some of her art for “The Reclamation Project,” Ballin states: “My interest in personal narratives began as a result of constantly moving around. Never having a traditional place called home, I have created my own sense of it and always brought it along with me. These are significant records of my self-initiated salvage operations and close examinations of personal artifacts. Never seeing art and collecting as mutually exclusive activities, the products of both are being archived through nontraditional printmaking in hopes of enabling informed personal identifications.”

Currently a professor of fine art, Rabea is living and working in Houston’s historical Third Ward community and exhibits her works nationally.

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For more information, visit the Black Heritage Gallery’s Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/HeritageGalleryLakeCharles/.

At right: “Remixing Delphine,” A 2017 digital image by Rabea Ballin.