FARA

One such location is Mandeville’s FARA building, the national headquarters for FA Richard Associates, Inc., a Louisiana-based company that provides nationwide insurance claims administration, benefit services, loss prevention, healthcare management and a variety of other business-related services. If you look around the building, you will discover that FARA also provides its employees, clients and visitors the opportunity to experience the art of our time outside of museums and galleries.

FARA has gathered a lively contemporary art collection that includes a mix of contemporary paintings, mixed media and sculpture juxtaposed against boldly colored walls. The FARA public spaces and private offices include the works of local living artists Lauren Leonard, Kat Fullilove, Gail Hood, Robin Hamaker and Rick Brunner, just to name a few.

To help pull the art portfolio together, FARA worked with gallery owner Susan Brunner, who FARA’s Camilla Davis describes as “amazing and wonderful when she pulled out all of the stops to assemble and hang an art collection that would be both inspiring and beautiful.”

The company placed a more traditional collection at its office building on the southshore, with the help of Terri Hamilton of the Pineapple Gallery in Mandeville. The artist of choice for this location is Robert Rucker. The halls are filled with Louisiana scenes, and the boardroom with prints of local Louisiana lighthouses. One employee remarked that a particular scene reminds him of his “childhood days, catching the streetcar and walking past iron fences along St. Charles Avenue.” Davis says that they looked for some real “feel good pieces” for both locations.

FARA’s strong artistic statement extends to the outside of its offices, as well. In Mandeville, the courtyard, visible to many of the interior spaces in the building, houses a large water sculpture featuring a rain-like waterfall that interacts with nature’s own wind and rain.

PAMLAB

A bit further north in Mandeville sits the high-energy offices of PAMLAB, where employees are greeted by bubbling outdoor fountains surrounded by lush landscaping. The welcoming entrance is breathtaking, but the attention to flowering plants and landscaping is just the beginning.

PAMLAB’s co-owner and secretary-treasurer, Judy Camp, has quite a flair for art. Originally from Homer, Louisiana, Judy and her husband, Sam, relocated their pharmaceutical sales, manufacturing and distribution company to the northshore in 1989, three years after they bought the New Orleans-based business. In no time, they found the need to expand. “We were fortunate to be able to work with the building’s original architect, Ron Kilcrease,” she says. They re-worked the façade and added a second story, connected to the lobby by a circular stairwell encased in glass.

Once the building was complete, the patterned-marble floors, the richly textured carpets and the neutral-colored walls evolved into a canvas ready for Camp’s artistic touch. They also called in Susan Brunner to help them round out their collection and to find pieces by Louisiana artists to complement the paintings and prints that they had collected over the years. “We are a Louisiana company, so we chose Louisiana artists to decorate the walls of our building,” Camp comments.

Abita Springs artist Ed Whiteman’s bold hand-made paper piece, sandwiched in glass, dominates the lobby. Brunner, who works with individual collectors, corporations, designers and architects at all levels of collection, says, “The artwork hanging in a business says a lot about who you are as a company, and should reflect the company as a whole.” She adds, “I can walk into a building, see a piece of original art placed in the reception area and immediately understand the quality of that business.”

The conference rooms are a study in rich reds, deep terra cotta and watery teal blue walls. The works of contemporary local Louisiana artists Kat Fullilove, Bernard Mattox and PAMLAB’s own employee Cindy Guilliot fit seamlessly into the interior landscape of these rooms. Brunner studied the traffic flow, the lighting and the energy in each workspace and then set about collecting from artists represented in the Brunner Gallery, as well as regional and national artists in other galleries, to present a variety of choices for each location.

Of course, no Louisiana collection would be complete without a swamp scene. A premiere piece and focal point, Don Wright’s murky mural depicts a swampy Louisiana landscape. It embraces the downstairs boardroom and balances quintessential Louisiana prints and paintings of magnolias, moss-draped bayous and ducks—dead and alive—that are found in the Camps’ executive offices.
A favorite of Judy Camp’s is Tanya Dischler’s “White Walls,” which depicts three old-fashioned tire swings. “ It reminds me of my childhood,” she says. Other works by Louisiana artists offer colorful punctuation marks above desks and workstations. Camp points out a particularly outstanding piece by Camille Camp, her six-year-old grandchild, a fledgling Louisiana artist.

Camp is passionate about art, but it has to be just the right piece. She points out a long, patterned marble hall with absolutely no pictures at all. Her vision for that space is a gallery of photographs. “But,” she says, “the photographs will have to be something really special.” She seems to enjoy the fact that PAMLAB’s art collection is ever changing and in process. It is special to her because the pieces have a personal meaning—and even seem to whisper to her in the serene PAMLAB setting.

The Neill Corporation

In the same bold and daring way that Debra Neill, CEO of the Hammond-based Neill Corporation, and her late husband, Edwin, built the largest Aveda distributorship in the world, shaped the Paris Parker Salons and Spas, and all of their other myriad endeavors, they amassed an amazing collection of original art pieces.

The Neill Corporation not only buys art—it also curates its own collection and commissions paintings and sculpture for specific locations in the company’s headquarters, salons and coffee shops.
Throughout her travels, Debra Neill relies on her own taste and style when making a purchase for one of the corporation’s venues. And sometimes she even takes her interest in art a step farther.

With a discriminating eye and an expansive heart, Neill collects not only strong imaginative works of art—she sometimes collects the artists, too. With an almost clairvoyant sixth sense, she respects the mystical powers that abide in the soul of an artist. Neill was among the first to recognize the genius of local artist William Hemmerling, and to begin collecting his work. A stellar collection of his exuberant pieces can be found in the coffee shop and spa at the Salon Paris Parker complex in downtown Hammond.

The work of Russian artist Alexi Kazantsev is displayed in the bold, even startling, sculpture garden surrounding the Neill Corporation headquarters. The garden was created to represent the aesthetic values of the corporation, which include harmony between people and nature. Kazantsev’s large, whimsical and exquisitely carved Carera marble pieces evoke curiosity and dynamic discussion.

The Neills have sponsored emerging artists, commissioned a body of work from them and often provided them a place to live and a studio. Debra Neill has found that if there is room in her heart for a particular piece of art, there will be room in one of the corporation’s properties—and perhaps even a room for the artist in one of the corporation’s homes.

Holy Ghost Church

It’s not your typical big corporation, yet Holy Ghost Church in Hammond commissioned the work of several local and regional artists to create statues, sacred vessels, the baptismal font, the candleholders, the cross, the altar and the soon-to-come magnificent stained glass windows for the sanctuary of the church.

Understanding the power that art has to enhance the spiritual experience of a religious community, Father Robert Perry, Holy Ghost’s pastor, collaborated with the architects and the church’s design and building committees. Some lively conversations have resulted among the parishioners regarding the contemporary artistic interpretation of their familiar traditional Roman Catholic icons.

Corporate art:
good for Louisiana

Crafting notable art collections is becoming a part of the master plan for decorating our region’s hospitals, upscale hotels and gathering spaces in universities. The Hotel Intercontinental in New Orleans has assembled a collection of work by New Orleans artists and is listed in the International Directory of Corporate Art Collections. Just recently, the Loews New Orleans Hotel installed a dreamy, hand-colored photograph by award-winning northshore artist Harriet Blum in each guest room.

Many outstanding corporations focus on hanging the art of living artists. When art is integrated into the workspaces, those visionary businesses contribute to the support of contemporary artists and their galleries. Corporate art collections are good for business and good for Louisiana. When clients, employees and visitors from other parts of the United States and the world gather in their artful Louisiana- based corporate offices, Louisiana looks good.