The Still & the Light: A Conversation with Leslie "Lulu" Sherman

Leslie “Lulu” Sherman opened Still Gallery with a reception on November 15th - which happened to be a rain-drenched evening, and yet she packed the place for the inaugural exhibit, "How the Light Gets In" with four female artists: Sherman, Emily Thomas MaHarry, Stephanie Hubbard and JoJo Alderson, based on their exploration of light - referencing Leonard Cohen's son. Sherman's portraits stop you in your tracks — luminous, intimate, and rendered in charcoal with a precision that feels almost like quiet revelation. In this episode of Ojai Talk of the Town, we sit down with the artist behind Ojai’s new Still Gallery to explore her creative journey from New Orleans to NYU Tisch to the film world, and finally to the deeply interior practice of portrait drawing.Lulu talks about what drew her away from directing and screenwriting and toward the stark honesty of charcoal, how she approaches capturing a person’s presence on paper, and the story behind her striking portrait of Joan Didion. We also dig into the vision of Still Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, How the Light Gets In, and how Ojai’s landscape and community are shaping her next chapter, NYC's downtown music scene in the early aughts, Creole culture and much more. We did not talk about maple-beech forest canopies, Brazilian gold-mine dredges, or the geological formations of the Kalahari Desert.If you love art, storytelling, or the alchemy that happens when an artist finds the medium that finally fits, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Check out more about Lulu Sherman at https://www.stillgalleryojai.com/