On a hill just off Barret Avenue near Rubel Park is one of Louisville’s cultural gems: the Quonset Hut. Leslie Millar and her husband, James Millar, have owned the space at 599 Rubel Ave. for more than 25 years. The prefabricated corrugated galvanized steel structure with its distinctive semicircular cross-section was originally developed for military use. But since 1999, this particular building has been a printmaking studio for James and an art gallery with curation by Leslie.
On Friday, June 27, the Quonset Hut will host an opening reception for the visual art of Letitia Quesenbery titled “Phosphenes.” Quesenbery’s art will be accompanied by a performance of live music by Tara Jane O’Neil. This will be O’Neil’s first musical performance in Louisville since 2018.
Letitia Quesenberry: Phosphenes
Trained in drawing at the University of Cincinnati, visual artist Letitia Quesenbery constructs three-dimensional objects focused on geometric forms and patterns. At a glance, her squares bounded by rectangles might recall the visual schema of Josef Albers with the color shifted to neon—but for Quesenbery, these forms refer to “the iconic structure of SX70 Polaroids, as well as ephemerally surfaced tondi, sometimes populated with lights,” she said in an artist statement.
Quesenberry lives and works in Louisville, where her investigation of belief, sight, and perception has preoccupied her for more than 30 years. Her body of work includes painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. Serialization and repetition inform her work, which gives it both aesthetic cohesion and the potential for narrative.
On Friday, June 27, her show “Phosphenes” will open at the Quonset Hut. Phosphenes are the phenomena that occur when the cells of the retina are stimulated by pressure, the luminous, floating stars, spirals, and other shapes that we can see through our own closed eyes. Quesenberry’s art recalls these phenomena.
The “Phosphenes” show will introduce the “Hyperspace” series. “These are optical lightboxes, geometric and minimal with LED lights,” Quesenberry said. “More of an experience, and difficult to describe. Definitions and boundaries only provide conjecture, nothing concrete to hold onto.”
Quesenberry is interested in attention, endurance, fluidity, and opacity, as well as natural phenomena (like phosphenes), visual bewilderment, and the unreliability of memory. “For each [piece], I hand-build the wooden frames,” she said. “My chosen materials—wood, plaster, graphite, beeswax, lacquer, resin, paint, Plexiglas, glitter and iridescent film—remain specific and essential rather than decorative.” Alongside “Hyperspace,” the “Phosphenes” show will include selections from two other series: “Little Darlings” and “Unicorn Meadow.”
In “Little Darlings,” Quesenberry examines the passage of time as well as how the passage of time is documented and by whom. “Images reinforce memory,” she said of this series. “As digital culture continues to alter personal and collective experience, it is critical to question what we see and how we choose to remember.”
Quesenberry said that her favorite camera as a child was the Polaroid OneStep Land Camera. For her, each photograph this camera produced was “a singular magical experience—to watch a blank off-white square develop in front of my eyes. More often than not, what appeared did not match my expectation, so these images were not so much photographs but some sort of genius gift of alchemy. I seek this quality everywhere.”
The use of wax and resin in “Little Darlings” allows Quesenberry to recreate her childhood excitement of watching an image develop over time. These elements provide her with “a barrier of sorts, which requires a ‘settling down’ and slowed movement around to peer through.”
In “Unicorn Meadow,” a discrete series of 21 pieces created from 2018 to 2019, Quesenberry arranged layers of translucent color film embedded in resin or wax. She was interested in using leftover scraps of material rather than throwing them away, and doing so allowed her to incorporate new elements and to push her work in a new direction.
Fragments of lyrics from some of her favorite songs provide the theme and the title for each piece. “Imprecise patterns, moments and ideas encompass the limitations of memory plus a fleeting attempt to balance attentiveness and beauty.” For example, one work on panel made with lacquer, film, resin, and wax is titled “Into We Will Wade,” a fragment of lyrics from the song “The Way” by Louisville singer-songwriter Bonnie “Prince” Billy (also known as Will Oldham).
Another work made with the same media is titled “Lay Down Yr Armor,” a fragment of lyrics from the song “Elemental Finding” by Tara Jane O’Neil. Whether O’Neil will perform this song from her album “Where Shine New Lights” (2014, Kranky) will only be revealed during the show on June 27.
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The interplay of Quesenberry’s vibrantly hued visual art with O’Neil’s textured songcraft will create an unequivocal experience at the Quonset Hut. “I am so excited,” Quesenberry said. “Music has always been a major motivation, but Tara Jane’s work inspires me exponentially. I’m always thrilled when our creations can coexist for any amount of time.”
Tara Jane O’Neil: Beyond Okayness
Multi-instrumentalist, composer, audio engineer and visual artist Tara Jane O’Neil has been playing music publicly since 1992. Her work is stylistically fluid, crossing genres from lo-fi pop to folk and from psychedelia to noise. O’Neil’s body of musical work is lyrically introspective yet sonically expansive.
Born in Chicago, she was introduced to Louisville audiences as the bass player for Rodan, a four-piece who helped codify and transform math rock and post-hardcore in 1992. Rodan disbanded after releasing only one still-influential long player in late 1994. O’Neil soon founded The Sonora Pine (1995–1997) while simultaneously making music as Retsin with Cynthia Nelson, who had been the bassist and lead vocalist in Ruby Falls and would go on to play drums in Naysayer. Restin released four albums between 1995 and 2001, which overlapped with O’Neil’s nascent career as a solo songwriter.
Since 2000, O’Neil has released nine solo albums, three full-length collaborations—one with Daniel Littleton (formerly of The Hated, Liquorice, and Ida), another with Japanese vocalist Nikaido Kazumi, and most recently, with enigmatic drone-maker Eleh—and eight extended players. She has scored short films by Portland-based nonbinary filmmaker Rankin Renwick and the feature film “His Lost Name” by Japanese director Nanako Hirose.
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O’Neil has performed on stages all over the world, from the legendary music venue Lounge Ax in Chicago to Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris. Returning to Louisville for a performance at the Quonset Hut promises to be a singular experience.
“In the early ’90s, I had a couple dates and would go with my Rocket Housemates [Rocket House was a home, a practice space, a venue, and a hangout downtown in the late 1980s and 1990s] to the Quonset Hut when it was an ice cream parlor and statuary,” O’Neil said of the venue. “The vibe was weird and cool. We could eat ice cream and watch humid sunsets over downtown while bungee jumping happened just across the street. It felt like a secret place. I’m happy to be there again and with Leslie and James as the stewards.”
For her performance, O’Neil will be playing a survey of songs from her now-classic solo debut, “Peregrine” (2000, Quarterstick Records), all the way to the recent “The Cool Cloud Of Okayness” (2024, Orindal Records). “I had to cancel my tours last year, so this solo interpretation of the music from [“The Cool Cloud Of Okayness”] feels new to me, and I bet it will feel new to Louisville too.”
The last time O’Neil performed live music in collaboration with Quesenberry’s video art was in the English Renaissance Room at the Speed Art Museum in 2011. At that time, O’Neil was accompanied by Tim Barnes. An experimental percussionist and avant-garde multi-instrumentalist, Barnes was recently diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
Friday, June 27 is not only the day of O’Neil’s performance at the Quonset Hut; it is also the release date for two albums by Barnes: “Lost Words” and “Noumena,” both on the Chicago-based Drag City label. “The recordings feature many of his friends, and I’m honored to be among them,” O’Neil said. “Hopefully, there will be a corner of the Quonset Hut that night to celebrate the release of this project.”
Tara Jane O’Neil
Solo Performance
Letitia Quesenberry
“Phosphenes”
Quonset Hut
599 Rubel Ave. (accessible entrance from Hull St.)
Friday, June 27
7 p.m.
$10 (cash only at the door)
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This article appears in Jun 6-19, 2025.
