Ernest Milsted

President's Award for Excellence in Artistic Activity

Disappearing Shores of Louisiana a Focus of His Art 

Milsted

The endeavor of any artist, whatever their medium, is a search for meaning, to make connections to the worlds around and within ourselves. Good artists know this, and some are able to grasp these connections and frame them for an audience.

Photographer and printmaker Ernest Milsted, associate professor of art and this year’s winner of the President’s Excellence Award in Artistic Activity, is one such artist.

Milsted uses his photographer’s eye and printing presses to document Louisiana’s vanishing Gulf Coast, paying homage to the endangered creatures that call it home. Many of his subjects are locations that Milsted had visited as a boy but have since drastically changed. His photography depicts decayed and crumbling structures, many of which were once vital parts of coastal life, now surrounded by water – forgotten and consigned to the sea.  

“When I came home from Indiana, I fell back in love with this landscape,” he said. “I started going on trips to the barrier islands with Dennis Sipiorski [professor of ceramics] and Gary Lafleur, a biologist at Nicholls State University. They were photographing the islands for a class they were teaching that was equal parts biology and art.

“There was a place I had visited as a kid, and it had changed completely,” he said. “I was in a place where I had spent time with my dad and uncles, and I couldn’t even recognize it.”

A native of Terrebonne Parish, Milsted possesses more than a passing relationship with these ephemeral places; many of which may also be swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico within the decade.

“He grew up in Houma and has watched these changes to the state’s coast throughout his life,” said Dale Newkirk, interim head of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts. “He has friends and family who make their living in that economy, which has been affected by these changes. This personal connection gives his artwork more credibility and depth than any other artist I’ve seen who works on this same subject.”

Since 2007, Milsted’s art has been displayed in over 60 exhibitions. His depictions of Louisiana’s coastline have been seen across the United States and around the world in museums and galleries as far as Australia, Spain, France, Estonia, Bulgaria, and the United Kingdom.

Though his passion rages for the wild places of Louisiana, Milsted did not always create art with the Gulf Coast or its plight in mind. He began his foray into the art world as an undergraduate student at Nicholls State University, but began to tackle the big questions while attending graduate school at the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts in 2006. He confronted the big questions art was made to answer – “Why are we here?” and “What happens to us after we die?” He quickly realized his work wasn’t answering these questions.

“It was pompous and arrogant to think I could answer these questions without any kind of personal connection to the work I was doing,” said Milsted. “When I started making work about the coast, there was this narrative that created a personal connection. I’m still asking the big questions, but there’s a more personal element that explores how these places have changed and how I’ve changed. A mentor of mine once told me that if you keep making art about the place you’re from, you’ll never run out of ideas. He was right.”

The topic of coastal erosion and climate change are charged with politics, but Milsted’s work isn’t intended to be political; but instead he hopes it will start a dialogue and prompt questions.

“You don’t create in a vacuum; I want people to look at this and get a message from it,” he said. “At the same time, I don’t want to shape what people think. In the art, I am asking questions, and the only thing I ask of viewers is that they do the same.

“Creativity is vital because it’s the only way we’re going to do things differently,” he said; “without it we just repeat the same mistakes over and over.”