Once Upon a Bayou: A 60-year Retrospective

LSU Rural Life Museum, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2013

This landmark exhibit included more than 70 pieces of art. Works were grouped to represent six themes: Music; Doing the Work; Land of Dreams; Mothering; Rituals and Religion; and Folk Housing. The Gathering, a large oil painting, was the centerpiece of the exhibit.

Once Upon a Bayou also featured some of the earliest examples of Chestee’s work in her signature medium, polychromatic bas-relief, which were created in the late 1960s.