The Bluegrass and Beyond

While I appreciate the kind words about my writing in Urban County Councilman Ed Lane’s letter to the editor today, his critique of my Dec. 20 column shows that he completely missed the point of it.

I did not suggest that a government-subsidized art museum like the Guggenheim Bilbao — or a government-subsidized anything — should be built on the CentrePointe site. I merely used the Guggenheim, the Humana Building in Louisville and the Ascent in Covington as examples of how quality architecture can contribute to a city.

The point of the column was that the high-profile CentrePointe site is an opportunity for outstanding architecture, something rarely produced by Lexington’s commercial developers.

Improving Kentucky’s economy will require more capital. Finding that capital, both human and financial, is likely to involve more small steps than big leaps.

Two groups are taking steps worth noting. They are the Young Professionals of Eastern Kentucky and the Lexington Venture Club.

The Young Professionals of Eastern Kentucky is a new organization that hopes to help talented young people stay in — or return to — Eastern Kentucky’s mountains. It is having its kickoff event Monday night in Hazard.

“We really want to combat the brain drain,” said Bradley Parke, 24, of Knott County, the group’s vice president. “There are a lot of people who leave and want to come back, but there’s just not the opportunities for them.”

The free event, which begins with a 6:30 p.m. reception at First Federal Center on the campus of Hazard Community and Technical College, will include speeches by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers and former Gov. Paul Patton.

Kevin Smith, 26, a Laurel County native who lives in Inez, was inspired to start Young Professionals of Kentucky after reading Visioning Kentucky’s Future, a 2008 report by the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center.

“There was a need for young professionals to come together,” he said, not only to create new economic opportunities for themselves and their communities, but to be more aware of opportunities already in the region.

“Many of us have a passion for this region,” he said. “We want to live and work here.”

Smith, Parke and others formed a steering committee and then a board of young professionals from across Kentucky’s 32 Appalachian counties. They applied for non-profit status and organized small get-togethers in London, Hazard, Prestonsburg, Somerset, Whitesburg and Pikeville.

“We’re pretty spread out, so we’re trying to reach every part of the region so everyone feels like they’re included,” said Parke, adding that online networking tools will be key. The organization has created a Web site (www.ypek.org) and a Facebook group with nearly 1,200 members.

In addition to networking, Smith and Parke said the group plans to form working groups to study and undertake projects around six themes: economic development; energy and environment; education; health care; technology; and civic engagement. That work will get started at the group’s next regional meeting, tentatively scheduled for early April.

They said the organization’s board includes Republicans and Democrats, and they’re being careful to avoid political associations that could limit their effectiveness in the region.

“We’re trying to say, no matter what your background or ideology is, we’re here to make a difference,” Smith said.

Meanwhile, the Lexington Venture Club gathered last week to discuss the state of venture capital funding in Kentucky.

The club reported that entrepreneurial companies in Central Kentucky attracted $47.5 million in venture funding last year for a two-year total of $116 million — not a bad showing considering the overall economic climate.

The 88 companies surveyed by the club said they hired 386 people last year, up from 230 in 2008 and 162 in 2007. The average salary for full-time jobs at those companies was $69,800, up from $61,000 two years ago.

Venture funding comes from a variety of non-traditional sources outside bank lending, such as venture capital funds, private investors and entrepreneurs and their friends and families.

It is a vital source of capital for young companies in fields such as technology and bio-sciences. Innovation is often a risky investment, but it can pay off big, both for investors in those companies and for their communities.

The gathering at Lansdowne’s Signature Club attracted nearly 200 people, prompting UK President Lee Todd to remark that Lexington’s venture capital and entrepreneur community “could not have filled a closet 10 or 15 years ago.”

The keynote speaker was David Jones Jr., chairman and managing director of Chrysalis Ventures in Louisville, the region’s oldest and largest venture capital firm with about $400 million under management. He also is non-executive chairman of Humana Inc., which his father helped found.

Jones said Kentucky is behind many neighboring states in creating the kind of innovative companies that can attract venture funding. A key to improvement, he said, will be for Kentucky to emphasize and invest more in education at all levels.

Sunday before last, the Herald-Leader published letters to the editor from two local men deriding those of us who are less cynical about Lexington than they are.

“This vanilla white-bread snobbish city has never been, and will never be, creative,” one wrote. Added the other: “… Lexington is not, and probably never will be, a great city. It is, however, the most pompous, insecure and deluded town I’ve ever seen.”

I waited to see if anyone would respond, and I was pleased Sunday to see letters from three citizens taking them to task.

Ask any coach or entrepreneur and they will tell you that two of the most important ingredients to success are attitude and timing. It’s as true for cities as it is for individuals.

Lexington needs an attitude adjustment, and there’s no better time than now. Some people will continue to carp, of course, but beginning this year, the rest of us should just ignore them.

This city has always had a lot going for it, from a beautiful landscape to good people to a stable economy. But those advantages often have bred complacency — a willingness to accept good enough rather than to strive for better. There’s a can’t-do attitude among many Lexingtonians that I’ve never understood.

We often approach local problems in one of two ways: We complain loudly and blame others. Or — polite folks that many of us are — we avoid debate and constructive conflict and simply ignore the problems.

Fortunately, I’ve noticed a shift in just the past few years. Some business leaders are more progressive and inclusive than in the past. Some elected officials are more willing to embrace new ideas and tackle tough issues.

Most encouraging of all, I have noticed an increasingly young and diverse group of citizens and entrepreneurs who are not beholden to traditional structures and stigmas. Empowered by technology, they are getting involved and creating a broader community conversation.

This year could be a turning point, though, if we seize the moment. That’s mainly because of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, which will focus international attention on Lexington from Sept. 25-Oct. 10.

Cynics are quick to dismiss the Equestrian Games as an elitist party for rich horse snobs. That attitude misses the transformative effect major international events have had on cities that embraced them and used them as catalysts.

I lived in Knoxville before and during the 1982 World’s Fair. Knoxville had plenty of naysayers and a huge civic inferiority complex. But when a Wall Street Journal reporter described Knoxville as a “scruffy little city,” angry locals became determined to make the most of their energy-themed exposition.

The World’s Fair wasn’t perfect, but it got Knoxville’s highways fixed, jump-started a downtown renaissance and did wonders for the municipal ego. On the fair’s closing day, many people wore buttons proclaiming, “The scruffy little city did it!”

I also lived in Atlanta before and during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Atlanta’s Olympic bid was a long-shot, and there were many skeptics. In the end, though, the Games helped transform a dowdy downtown and secured Atlanta’s place among international cities.

Much of the skepticism in Knoxville and Atlanta focused on whether they could actually pull off the events. I have little doubt about Lexington’s ability to do that. The Equestrian Games are run by experienced horse people, and the Kentucky Horse Park may be the world’s finest equestrian facility.

My concern is whether Lexingtonians will embrace and take advantage of the Equestrian Games in ways that will have a lasting impact on community development, economic growth and Kentucky’s international image.

When the spotlight shines on Lexington, what will the world see? When Lexington looks back on the Equestrian Games years from now, what will the legacy be?

April will be another big month. Lexington hosts the Creative Cities Summit, where about 600 people will gather April 7-9 to discuss ideas and strategies for making cities more successful.

Also in April, several groups are organizing events to promote Lexington as a place for emerging technology companies, especially those related to health care. Speakers include former Indian President Abdul Kalam, a scientist and engineer. It’s a perfect opportunity to bring the city and its universities together to focus on economic development.

Despite a tough economy, 2010 presents unique opportunities for Lexington to shape a better future. Do we have the right attitude to take advantage of them?

I recently bought a CSA share, but I won’t get a weekly basket of fresh vegetables. I’ll get a monthly limited-edition art print by Alex Brooks of Press 817.

This isn’t community-supported agriculture; it’s community-supported art.

Brooks adopted the CSA business model for the same reason many small farmers have: It gives him a reliable stream of income so he can focus on his passion.

He earns much of his living as a letterpress printer, book binder and maker of archival storage boxes. Brooks works for many local clients, as well as several New York customers. He also creates art for prints, cards, books and posters.

Brooks said he wants to spend less time printing other people’s wedding invitations and business cards and more time creating art with the antique printing equipment that fills the two front rooms of his small home and shop (www.press817.com).

“I think of it as a way to preserve that spot on time,” said Brooks, who since launching his CSA in mid-December has sold more than 80 of the 100 shares for $60 each — $4 per print, plus postage.

Brooks figures the CSA income will free him one week a month to focus on those pieces of art, his writing and other creative endeavors.

“A lot of artists I know want to steal the idea, and that’s great,” he said.

The 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville, which tries to support the region’s contemporary artists, bought two CSA shares.

“That’s a little intimidating,” Brooks said, because the pressure is on to create outstanding work.

Brooks, 29, was a math, science and technology major at Louisville’s duPont Manual High School when a favorite teacher exposed him to creative writing. He came to the University of Kentucky as a math and English major and was selected for a Gaines Fellowship in the Humanities.

His writing led him to book binding, which led him to volunteer at UK’s King Library Press, where director Paul Holbrook taught him letterpress printing.

“I would have never guessed I would be doing this,” Brooks said. “Setting type by hand is almost meditative. It’s like reading really, really slowly.”

Lexington has a rich heritage of letterpress printing, thanks to Victor Hammer and his disciples. The Austrian printer and type designer came here in 1948 as an artist in residence at Transylvania University. His wife, Carolyn Hammer, helped found the King Library Press.

Brooks, the first in his family to graduate from college, thinks he inherited craft skills from his father, a woodworker, and mother, who knits and spins wool.

“There’s something about making things with your hands and doing it as well as you can and knowing that a book I make will last 100 years,” he said.

Press 817 was named for the address of Brooks’ former apartment. Five years ago, he bought a century-old house on North Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and set up shop there because he couldn’t find affordable downtown commercial space to rent.

Letterpress printing experienced an artistic renaissance in the 1960s, when it was replaced commercially by offset printing. Unfortunately, though, some of the best old presses ended up in scrap yards.

Brooks said a lot of old metal type is bought by gun enthusiasts, who melt it down for bullets. “I have to beat them to it,” he said.

Brooks’ equipment includes a platen press from 1887, a guillotine paper cutter from 1897 and a standing press from about 1900 that is used to form books. His newest press was made in 1961. Most of the equipment was given to him or found at estate and garage sales.

“I like old stuff,” said Brooks, who built computers as a kid. “I like that it’s not in a museum. It all works, and I use it.”

The more he got into printing, the more he wanted to explore visual arts through such techniques as woodcuts and linoleum cuts. He’s still thinking about what he wants to create for me and his other CSA customers over the next 12 months.

“I don’t really know what I’m going to do,” Brooks said. “That’s part of the fun. Everybody will find out when they get it in the mail. Hopefully, that will be exciting.”

Brooks was taught how to make conservation boxes by a woman who learned the craft at the Library of Congress. He has applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to study book conservation in England.

“But I’ll be a little conflicted if I get to go,” he admitted. Brooks wants to travel, see new places and try new things. But he has found a community with a powerful hold on him.

“I love this neighborhood; it’s the first place I’ve lived where I know all my neighbors,” he said. “A lot of my neighbors have bought my art. I like to think they like my art, but it’s also probably out of a sense of neighborliness.”

Brooks said the concept of community-supported art seemed like a natural idea. He said he tries to patronize local businesses whenever he can, such as Pat Gerhard’s Third Street Stuff Café and Steve and Kristy Matherly’s Sunrise Bakery on Main Street.

“When you think about it,” Brooks said, “there’s not much difference between me making art and Steve making bread.”

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Urban County Councilman George Myers wrote a commentary in the Herald-Leader recently. He recalled wasteful spending by the Lexington Public Library’s director, who was subsequently fired, and criticized a state law that guarantees library funding.

Myers, who with other elected officials is scrambling to maintain services in a tough economy, questioned the wisdom of requiring that 5 cents of every $100 in Fayette County property valuation go to support libraries.

It’s a legitimate question, and I understand why Myers is raising it. But, like many issues, this one requires a longer view than today’s crisis. We must look back three or four decades and ahead to what kind of city we want Lexington to be.

For a look back, I went to visit Joe Hayse, 72, a retired state map maker, Scoutmaster and father of four who lives with his wife, Heidi, in a modest home on Clay’s Mill Road.

You won’t find Hayse’s name on a plaque in Lexington’s handsome Central Library or any of the five modern branch libraries around town. Without him, though, they probably wouldn’t exist.

After moving here from Louisville in 1971, Hayse became a frequent patron of the old main library at Gratz Park and its Southland branch, which was then housed in a cramped building that later became a bicycle shop.

The main library — now the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning — had a leaky roof, outdated wiring, crumbling plaster and peeling paint. A wet basement threatened irreplaceable records of Lexington’s early history. Art treasures that had been donated to the library were being sold off to meet operating expenses. Building inspectors finally closed the second floor because they were afraid it might collapse.

Hayse said he became so frustrated that one day he left the library and walked to the office of his high school classmate, lawyer William Jacobs.

“Lexington is a rich city, but we have a library you can’t even use,” Hayse recalled telling Jacobs. “Surely this city can afford to do better than this.”

Lexington could afford to do better — and was required to by state law. City officials were simply ignoring the law, as they had for years, because they didn’t want to raise taxes.

Library board members, who were appointed by the mayor, had agreed to accept only about half the funding they were entitled to receive. Hayse and Jacobs thought the law was clear, and when the library board refused to demand the law be enforced, they filed suit in 1979.

The city fought the lawsuit for nearly five years, but the courts sided with Hayse and Jacobs. Finally, Lexington was required to properly fund the library — plus make back payments owed since the lawsuit was filed. That paved the way for construction of the Central Library on Main Street.

Since then, the Lexington Public Library system has become a model instead of an embarrassment. Its modern buildings, resources and services have made Lexington a more literate community whose citizens are better able to compete in a knowledge economy.

Since the final Court of Appeals decision 25 years ago, the percentage of Lexington residents with library cards has risen from 30 percent to 46 percent. Last fiscal year, nearly 2.75 million items were checked out from public libraries — an average of 10 per Fayette County resident, up from four per resident in 1984.

Computer literacy is now essential for people to keep up and get ahead, and Lexington’s libraries last year provided computer-skills classes for 4,192 people. Libraries contain 237 public-access Internet computers that were used 482,710 times last year.

Sure, the former library director wasted taxpayer money on travel and fancy meals. Taxpayers are cheated by wasteful government spending, just as stockholders are cheated by wasteful corporate spending. The way to solve those problems is through better management, oversight, transparency and accountability.

Nobody likes paying higher taxes — or any taxes at all. It doesn’t matter whether the economy is good or bad. Appealing to personal selfishness has always been good politics. But that’s the difference between politics and leadership.

At a recent symposium in Frankfort, several economists pointed out that Kentucky taxes property less than most states do. They also noted that Kentucky law gives cities and counties few ways to raise revenue to meet their special needs and make long-term investments in their communities.

Rather than seeking state permission to turn an excellent public library system into a mediocre one, Urban County Council members and Mayor Jim Newberry should take another approach.

They should keep pushing for better management, more transparency and greater accountability of taxpayer-supported agencies to make sure money is being spent wisely.

They also should lobby the General Assembly for more local taxing authority — and not be afraid to use it to fund important public services and investments that will make Lexington a more just, prosperous and pleasant place to live.

FRANKFORT — A century ago in June, Kentucky’s magnificent Capitol building was finished. Well, not exactly finished.

It’s still not finished, but it’s getting there.

Before festivities scheduled for June 4 and 5, murals will be installed high in the Capitol rotunda, on four pendentives, the corner spaces just below the dome.

Murals have always been planned there, but the artist originally consulted for the work, Frank Millet, went down with the Titanic in 1912. The project didn’t get going again until last year.

That’s when Marion and Terry Forcht of Corbin donated $225,000 to create and install the murals. They own Forcht Bank and Forcht Group of Kentucky in Corbin and Lexington, which has 95 different companies with more than 2,100 employees.

“We’re very much looking forward to seeing (the murals) in place,” said Marion Forcht, a member of the state Historic Properties Advisory Commission.

After hearing at commission meetings that murals were intended for the pendentives, she talked with her husband, and they decided to donate them.

“Obviously, at this time in our economy, the state couldn’t spend money on something like this,” she said. “It’s just something we wanted to do. We’ve been very blessed in our lives, and we thought this would be a nice thing that people could enjoy forever.”

The murals, which are still being designed, will be allegorical representations of agriculture, industry, civilization and integrity. They will be created and installed by Evergreene Architectural Arts of New York.

The Forchts’ gift to the Kentucky Executive Mansions Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps preserve and maintain state-owned historic properties, is the largest ever for the Capitol.

The murals will highlight a $460,000 state-financed restoration of the dome and rotunda. That money was appropriated in 2006, before the recession put a squeeze on the state budget, said David Buchta, the state curator.

“It will give people a chance to see what can be done with the rest of the building eventually, as resources allow,” he said.

A contractor had to brace and pad the rotunda’s marble floors to erect 175 feet of scaffolding, weighing 115,000 pounds, so workers could clean the marble walls and paint the corners and dome for the first time in about 40 years. The work was completed a little more than a week ago.

While they were at it, workers replaced the dome’s original incandescent light fixtures with energy-efficient LED lighting, the color of which can be changed for special events.

It’s hard to tell how much electricity the new LEDs will save, though, because much of the dome’s lighting hasn’t worked in decades, Buchta said. Bulbs in the lower dome have been replaced with compact fluorescents while he searches for LED lights that will work there.

Kentucky’s Capitol is a legacy from the turn of the last century, when state government was briefly flush with cash, thanks to $1 million in federal payments for Civil War reparations and Spanish-American War reimbursements.

The state already had a beautiful Capitol — a Greek Revival gem designed in 1827 by Lexington architect Gideon Shryock. But it became too small for a growing state, and there was no room to expand. So, in 1905, the General Assembly voted to buy 30 acres across the Kentucky River and start over.

Ohio architect Frank Andrews’ design for the Capitol borrowed heavily from imperial France. The dome was copied from the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, where Napoleon is buried. The State Reception Room, like the governor’s mansion next door, was modeled on the palaces at Versailles. Staircases evoke the Grand Opera House in Paris.

The building is covered in Indiana limestone and filled with columns, porticos and hallways of Vermont granite, and marble from Georgia, Tennessee and Italy.

The Capitol was renovated 1955 and 1996. To mark its centennial, Buchta is publishing a book of old photographs of the Capitol, with all profits going to the foundation.

The new murals will join two famous ones in the “lunettes,” half-circle spaces over the entrances to the House and Senate chambers.

One mural depicts Daniel Boone and his companions viewing the Bluegrass for the first time from Powell County’s Pilot Knob; the other shows Boone and Transylvania Company officials negotiating to buy Kentucky land from the Cherokee.

Two more lunette spaces, above the governor’s office and the elegant State Reception Room, remain blank.

Eventually, Buchta hopes, other generous Kentuckians will step forward to pay for murals there. If you’re interested, give him a call. No need to wait a century.

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I can only imagine what the late Martin Luther King Jr. must think, gazing down on our 25th celebration of the national holiday that honors him and the civil rights movement he led.

America still too often falls short when it comes to peace, justice and racial harmony. But we keep inching closer to realizing some of our nation’s highest ideals.

In Lexington – where one of the South’s busiest slave auction blocks once stood, and where some lunch counters of my childhood were still segregated – the downtown streets were packed Monday with marchers of every age, color, creed and cause.

Hundreds of people stretched the length of downtown as they marched in a big oval, down Vine Street and back up Main.

This annual celebratory march is a symbolic reminder of those tense and sometimes violent civil rights protests of the 1960s. There are no police to fear now; they’re marching, too. Lexington’s top leaders in government and education lead the parade.

I’ve attended many of these marches over the past dozen years, and Monday’s crowd was the biggest I’ve ever seen. It may have been because the weather was unusually nice, with sunshine and temperatures rising well into the 30s. But I like to think social progress had something to do with it, too.

After a quarter-century, this finally seems to be shedding its image as a “black” holiday and becoming simply an American holiday.

One of my barometers is the fact that I see more white children marching each year, some with black and Latino friends. Many come in groups from churches and schools, which have the day off.

Jill Montgomery, a 15-year-old sophomore at Mercer County High School, came with a youth group from Burgin Christian Church. They had attended the Sunday night service honoring King at Lexington’s Central Christian Church, followed by a “lock-in” program about King’s legacy.

“It made me realize the struggle that people went through to get equality,” she said. “We learned how our country has evolved.”

About 35 students and parents from The Lexington School were enthusiastic marchers. Last week, the private school held a special program about King featuring pre-school students, said Headmaster Charles Baldecchi, who was marching Monday with his wife, Erin, and their three young children.

“Our school really emphasizes the importance of everyone getting along, and how important it is to accept others,” said pre-school teacher Shelly Rogers.

In addition to the school and church groups, many families came on their own. Some said it was their first march. Others march every year and have been since the kids were infants in strollers.

“I just want them to know about racial harmony and how important it is for our country,” said Stacey Kimmerer, who was there with children Allison, 6, Greg, 9, and Will, 12.

As a white family living in the historically black East End neighborhood, Sherry Maddock said she thinks it’s especially important for her son, Isaac, 6, to appreciate the values this holiday represents.

“We’re teaching our children that this is really a day of blessing,” said Rabbi Marc Kline of Temple Adath Israel, who was there with his daughter Rachel, 10. “We keep getting stuck in 1963, but these kids have to make it real in the 21st century.”

Van Knowles and Susan Pollack bring their daughters Katie, 12, and Lucy, 8, each year for similar reasons.

“More’s still ahead for justice for everyone of all colors, and immigration statuses and sexual orientations … none of these things is finished,” Pollack said. “Marching alone is not enough. There’s a lot of work to do.”

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Bourbon is one of Kentucky’s oldest products, and distillers have always cloaked themselves in nostalgia.

Even a century ago, distillers promoted their whiskey with images of log cabins and white-suited “colonels.” Brands included Old Crow and Old Barbee, which was made by a long-gone Woodford County distillery run by my wife’s great-grandfather.

Today’s brands include Old Forester, Old Fitzgerald and Old Weller. A glass of Pappy Van Winkle is about as good as bourbon gets.

But beneath this antique image is an innovative and growing industry.

The Kentucky Distillers Association last week released its first-ever economic impact study, prepared by University of Louisville economist Paul Coomes. Its findings may surprise some Kentuckians.

While other Kentucky manufacturers cut 20 percent of their jobs over the past decade, distilling employment grew by 6 percent.

The 19 distilleries in eight Kentucky counties employ 3,200 people with an annual payroll of $244 million, plus benefits. They represent 43 percent of all distilling workers in the United States.

Each distilling job creates more than twice as many spin-off jobs as other Kentucky “signature” industries such as horse breeding, tobacco farming and coal mining.

More than $1.5 billion worth of bourbon is produced in Kentucky each year. It accounts for 26 percent of the value of all distilled spirits produced in the United States. Kentucky bourbon is exported to 126 countries.

Kentucky now makes 95 percent of all bourbon, although it is seeing new competition from micro-distilleries elsewhere.

Bourbon’s fortunes have improved considerably since the 1970s, when “brown” spirits declined in popularity and many young adults saw bourbon as an “old people’s” drink.

Innovations such as super-premium brands in the 1980s and fresh marketing made bourbon popular again and fueled an international following that has caused exports to soar.

In the past decade, distilleries have invested millions to turn their factories into successful tourist destinations on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Distilleries have recorded more than 1.5 million tourist visits during the past five years.

“The best thing we can do is bring a tourist to Kentucky and give them a pleasant experience,” said Louisville hospitality consultant Peggy Noe Stevens, who comes from a famous bourbon family and worked 17 years in branding for Brown-Forman. “We create, in essence, ambassadors for Kentucky.”

The economic impact study was commissioned last year after the bourbon industry was slapped with yet another tax in the General Assembly’s scramble to balance the state budget.

The study notes that Kentucky spirits production and consumption produce $125 million each year in state and local taxes.

Kentucky has the highest distilled spirit taxes of any open-market state except Alaska. About 60 percent of the price of a bottle of bourbon bought in Kentucky is some form of state, federal or local tax.

“With the legislature actively talking about comprehensive tax reform, we would like to have a seat at the table,” said Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers’ Association. “We think we’ve earned a seat at the table.”

Bruce Burris is best known in Lexington for helping other people create art — and for pushing the boundaries of what art is and who artists are.

He directs (with Crystal Bader) the Latitude Artist Community on Saunier Street, which for nearly a decade has helped people with disabilities express themselves through visual art. Latitude artists’ work has been displayed at galleries in New York and Paris, France.

Burris started ELandF Gallery, a “small-projects accelerator” for art in public spaces. It has sent poets to read in nursing homes and on LexTran buses. And it has paid small honoraria to people who wrote winning essays about why they wanted to watch clouds or read a book while sitting in a streetside parking space.

At the height of the controversy over Dudley Webb’s now-stalled CentrePointe development, Burris paid performance artists to publicly “mourn” the demolition of the block’s old buildings and to walk Main Street as “town criers,” giving dramatic readings of a defensive speech that Webb made to the Urban County Council.

Away from Lexington, Burris has gained notoriety for his own art. He has had solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Philadelphia and cities in California and Michigan, but never in Lexington. Until now.

“Nobody really knows about that aspect of his personality,” said Phillip March Jones, who organized Burris’ first solo show in a decade, which opened Thursday at Institute 193 and continues through Feb. 20 (Thursday through Saturday, 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.).

Jones opened Institute 193 last fall at 193 North Limestone. It is a little gallery with big ambitions: to showcase the work of this region’s unsung contemporary artists.

“Everything with Bruce is about Latitude or ELandF, but it’s never about him. … His own art never gets presented,” Jones said. “And, for me, it’s some of the most interesting stuff he does.”

The show is called We Will Someday, Someday We Will. The name was inspired by this season of New Year’s resolutions, when we all promise to become better people.

Burris’ sculptures, drawings, paintings and installation pieces use humor, irony and parody to comment on and raise questions about community dynamics and cultural stereotypes. He wants his art to promote activism and awareness of regional issues including poverty and mountaintop-removal coal mining. His art isn’t intended as decoration; he wants it to make viewers think.

One piece, Welcome to Lonely Mountain Community Center, is a bulletin board filled with fictional news and notices that speak to issues, concerns and cultural conflicts in contemporary small-town Appalachia.

Burris is as much a storyteller as an artist. He densely weaves words and messages into his paintings and drawings, some of which are reminiscent of funk-art album covers from the 1970s.

“What really carries the work is this text,” Jones said. “He’s dealing with the very problems we’re dealing with every day. These are serious issues, but he deals with them in a visually lighthearted way to get people into them.”

I met Burris for lunch at Third Street Stuff on a cold, snowy day. The first thing he wanted to do, before talking about himself, was to show off drawings and paintings by Latitude artists on the wall behind our table.

Burris, 54, grew up in Wilmington, Del., seeing art in everyday life. His mother was constantly taking him to museums and cultural events, “which, of course, I didn’t appreciate at the time,” he says.

He also was influenced by a boyhood neighbor, the famous artist and illustrator Frank Schoonover, who was well into his 80s but still painting and teaching. “He had an open studio where neighborhood kids could wander in,” Burris said.

“I grew up feeling like the visual arts were an approachable thing,” said Burris, who studied at San Francisco Art Institute. “But the better way for me to make art is not in an isolated environment. Collaboration and community and support; it’s a very natural thing for me.”

That belief, and a public service ethic picked up while attending Quaker schools, led him to a career that has combined art, community and social work — working with homeless and abused children in San Francisco and with disabled artists in Kentucky.

Burris moved to Lexington 16 years ago with his wife, Robynn Pease, who came to the University of Kentucky to earn a doctorate. She is now UK’s director of work life, teaches sociology and social work, and was elected last year as staff representative on the university board of trustees. They live near Southland Drive.

Originally, Burris thought he would be here three or four years then move back to San Francisco. “So I stored all my unimportant stuff in a friend’s garage,” he said. “I hope he’s had a big yard sale by now.”

After his last solo show a decade ago at a major San Francisco gallery, Burris said he ran out of steam and stopped creating work for several years. He resumed only recently, sparked by concern about mountaintop-removal mining and other issues.

Burris’ art, like the projects he sponsors through ELandF, are reactions to what he sees around him.

“I like all the projects I’ve done, but I know in my heart that they’re not innovative enough,” he said. “I don’t always feel like taking risks in this environment. You won’t see people taking these risks here; it’s a small town. But we should take risks.”

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FRANKFORT — This is the time each year when Kentucky lawmakers usually engage in their own version of insanity: doing the same things over and over and expecting different results.

The situation has gotten so crazy, though, that this year could be different.

Kentucky’s tax system has been out of sync with the economy for more than a decade, creating ever-larger deficits despite frequent budget-cutting and quick-fix tax increases.

The General Assembly is finally considering comprehensive tax reform, and lawmakers got some good advice Wednesday at a standing-room-only symposium organized by the University of Kentucky’s Martin School of Public Policy and State Treasurer Todd Hollenbach.

In presentations by six economists and other experts, it quickly became clear that the tax system’s inability to reliably provide enough revenue to meet Kentucky’s needs isn’t the only problem.

Compared with surrounding states, most of the economists agreed, Kentucky taxes property and the sales of goods and services too little and taxes income too much. That hurts economic growth because it puts Kentucky at a competitive disadvantage for attracting human capital and the businesses that employ it.

“We are discouraging younger, more-educated workers from moving to the state,” said UK economist Kenneth Troske.

Kentucky’s low property taxes are a legacy of rural heritage, political pressure from property owners and 1979 legislation that capped property tax increases at 4 percent a year, even though property values have often risen much more than that.

“We have a great tax code for a manufacturing economy and an agrarian economy and a poor tax code for a knowledge economy,” said Joseph Reagan, president of Greater Louisville Inc.

Kentucky’s 6 percent sales tax applies to goods but few services.

“The fastest growing part of the economy is services, and you’re not taxing them,” said William Fox, a University of Tennessee economist who first outlined the problem in a report to the General Assembly in 2002.

In addition, there are many special-interest tax breaks, but little analysis of whether they give Kentucky overall economic benefits.

Those factors create a narrower tax base and result in higher tax rates. A better system would be just the opposite: a broader base with lower rates.

Rep. Bill Farmer, R-Lexington, has proposed broadening the sales tax to cover services and closing loopholes so the 6 percent tax rate could be lowered and the individual and corporate income taxes could be eliminated.

Farmer said states without income taxes have shown more economic growth. But critics of consumption-based tax systems say they can be unfair to low-income people.

UK economist James Ziliak said that could be offset if Kentucky joined 23 other states in creating an earned-income tax credit. He recommended one modeled after the 35-year-old federal credit, which has been widely praised as a cheap and effective way to ease poverty.

Kentucky’s economy is actually a collection of at least six very different regional economies, many tied to cities in other states and all with their own special needs and issues, Troske said.

A highly centralized, one-size-fits-all state tax system doesn’t fit any region well.

A lot of tax revenues from cities go to support rural areas. But the rural-dominated General Assembly has given cities few ways besides payroll taxes to raise revenues to meet their special needs and compete for economic growth with similar-size cities in other states.

“This has hurt our local governments’ abilities to collect revenue and made us more reliant on the state,” said University of Louisville economist Paul Coomes.

Coomes said local-option sales taxes are common in neighboring states, and he noted that taxpayers are often more willing to pay taxes when they can see tangible local benefits from them.

David Adkisson, president of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, said that while the tax code needs improvement, the state also needs to spend money more wisely. In particular, he said, huge recent increases in state spending for employee benefits, prisons and Medicaid need to be curbed.

Kentucky needs tax and spending reform now, both to solve the potential $1.5 billion shortfall over the next two years and to create a brighter future for this historically poor state.

Ignoring the problems any longer would simply be insane.

Want to know what makes a home or neighborhood vulnerable to crime? Ask police officers; they see it every day.

That’s the basic idea behind Safe by Design, a program that will be launched soon by the Lexington Police Department and Eastern Kentucky University’s Center for Crime and the Built Environment.

The voluntary program will help Lexington developers, architects, planners and property owners build and renovate safer homes, neighborhoods and commercial buildings by using design principles known to discourage crime.

The program will include standards and certification that could lead to marketing opportunities for builders, and eventually insurance discounts for property owners.

Safe by Design might be the first program of its kind in the nation, but it is based on a successful 20-year-old program in England, said Derek Paulsen, director of the EKU center and a member of Lexington’s Planning Commission.

Last March, Paulsen took several Lexington developers and police officials to England to see that program, Secured by Design. It has been credited with sharply reducing crime, especially in public housing projects.

“I thought it was too good to be true,” Lexington Police Chief Ronnie Bastin said. “But once I saw it, it was very convincing. The beauty of this is in its simplicity.”

The idea behind the program is that police officers and academics who research crime know which design factors in buildings and neighborhoods have been shown to encourage or discourage crime.

Those factors include the design and strength of doors, windows and locks; landscaping considerations, such as shrubbery height; sidewalk, window and garbage can placement; the style, placement and height of fencing; and site plans that maximize visibility.

Some of the guidelines are common sense, but not all are. For example, Bastin said he would have assumed that the more outdoor lighting around a building, the better. But research has shown that it’s not necessary to create a lot of light pollution. The key is to put the right amount of light in the right places to discourage criminals and make people feel safe.

Most of these factors don’t limit architectural expression or esthetic. It’s not about designing fortresses, just avoiding known mistakes.

“A lot of these things we’re looking at are things the police have been seeing forever … but architects or builders may not know about, or naturally think about,” Paulsen said. “If you do it up front, you fix these problems with a pencil at little cost.”

Common building design issues in Lexington that encourage crime include overgrown shrubs, tall privacy fences and a lack of windows on the sides of houses, Bastin said. They give criminals places to hide and can conceal a burglary or other crime in progress.

“There are areas of town where we wish we had had the opportunity to point out some of these things” before construction, Bastin said. “Once it’s built, (police) inherit it, and then we have to pour in resources that could be conserved or used for other things.”

Paulsen said he plans to work with manufacturers and use British testing data to create a certification program for burglar-resistant doors and windows.

Paulsen said he and police officers are working with the developers of new pedestrian and bicycle trails to make sure they are designed with crime prevention in mind. Design factors include ensuring good visibility at all points.

A common myth is that trails increase neighborhood crime. Paulsen said studies have shown that homes beside well-designed trails experience less crime than other homes.

Paulsen would like to see the Safe by Design standards made mandatory for future public housing in Lexington.

He also said he thinks most developers of new property, and people renovating older buildings, will be eager to participate in the program voluntarily. Some already have contacted the police department for advice, he said.

“We’re not trying to be planners or architects,” Paulsen said. “We’re just trying to bring some expertise to the table that might avoid problems before they happen.”

People with ideas or who want to learn more about the process for putting public art along the Legacy Trail are invited to a public meeting Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. at the Downtown Arts Center, 141 East Main St.

At the meeting will be Todd Bressi and Stacy Levy, an urban designer and artist who were chosen to coordinate the project. They have done similar work elsewhere, including Washington, D.C., and Pinellas County, Fla.

Marnie Holoubek, who helped form the Legacy Trail Public Art Consortium, said organizers want to continue the strong public participation that has marked planning for the Legacy Trail, a 9-mile walking and bike path from the Kentucky Horse Park to downtown Lexington’s East End.

There will be another public meeting before the public art master plan is completed in April, said Steve Austin, director of the Blue Grass Community Foundation’s Legacy Center. For more information, contact Austin at the Legacy Center at (859) 225-3343 or saustin@bgcf.org.

Lexington’s political and business leaders often talk about the importance of the “creative class” in building a vibrant 21st-century economy.

It makes sense that an economy based on innovation and technology needs young, creative, well-educated innovators.

On the Sunday after Christmas, I spent the afternoon listening to members of the creative class — a dozen or so of the smartest young people Kentucky has produced in recent years.

We sat in a circle of chairs inside the Miller House, a little-known landmark of modernist architecture that a small group of fans rescued from vandals, restored and is struggling to preserve.

Most of the people there were in their late 20s or early 30s. Some were former Gaines Fellows at the University of Kentucky. Others were Lexington natives, spouses and significant others with educations from Harvard, Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

They were architects, educators and entrepreneurs in the arts and technology. Some were back in Lexington after a few years in larger cities. Others were home visiting family, on break from successful careers in New York and Boston. I could sense, though, that they hoped to return to Lexington. Someday. If only.

The question that brought them together was this: How can Lexington do a better job of keeping its brightest young people and attracting more? Rather than suffering from brain drain, how could this city become a brain magnet?

Several of them had begun the discussion Labor Day weekend at a retreat organized by former Gaines Center director Dan Rowland and Vice Mayor Jim Gray. After I left, the talk continued at a reception at Gray’s home.

Among the laments: Lexington doesn’t have enough economic opportunities, especially in technology. UK and other universities aren’t integrated enough into civic life. Too few people are risk-takers. Lexington leaders look elsewhere for innovation but often don’t recognize it under their noses. The local arts community is vibrant — and growing more so — but lacks the acceptance and philanthropy found elsewhere.

Their expectations weren’t unrealistic. They didn’t want to change Lexington so much as to expand its horizons. Things are moving in the right direction, they said, just more slowly than in many of the cities Lexington competes with economically.

What they loved about Lexington was its beauty, people and authentic culture. It’s a place big enough to have world-class amenities yet small enough that an individual can make a difference.

They loved Lexington’s quality of life, livable neighborhoods and the potential of its human-scale downtown. They wondered why there wasn’t more connectivity with Louisville and Cincinnati, which are so close yet seem so far away.

They saw great potential for reviving parts of town that have seen better days, such as the Distillery District and old Northside neighborhoods. They wondered why Lexington doesn’t do more to capitalize on local treasures, such as McConnell Springs, the Kentucky Horse Park and the Miller House.

None of these young professionals seemed to be horse people. Yet they were excited about next fall’s Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, and they were surprised more people in Lexington seem not to be.

These young people understood that an international event like the Games can have a transformative effect on a city. But when they started talking about how people should take advantage of it, there was an interesting dichotomy.

Several of those living here said they were confused about how they could harness the Games to develop or promote their slice of Lexington. Who is in charge? What is the process?

It doesn’t really matter, the people living in Boston and New York replied. Organize your own events, activities and celebrations around the Games. While it’s nice to be part of the official program, it’s hardly necessary. Seize the day and put your stamp on it. Just do it.

It’s good to read books and listen to consultants. But if Lexington really wants to tap the creative class, we must recognize and listen more to its members. Many of them are right under our noses. And many more would like to come home, if given the right opportunity.

Richard Levine has heard all of the arguments about why solar energy won’t work in Kentucky.

And he has been defying them for three decades.

Levine, a University of Kentucky architecture professor, designed and built one of the nation’s first solar homes on 32 acres he bought in 1974 near Raven Run Nature Sanctuary. He has been living there ever since.

Last month, he finished adding new high-tech solar panels to the roof of a studio next to his home that will make both buildings “net zero.” That means, over the course of a year, the photo-voltaic cells will produce as much electricity as the buildings consume.

“But to do it I may have to unplug my hot tub and convince my daughter to turn off her computer at night,” Levine said with a smile.Raven Run House has been written about in books, magazines and architecture journals all over the world but has received little attention in Kentucky. That’s mostly because Levine’s late wife, artist Anne Kemper Frye, who died in 2005, wanted privacy.

Levine, co-director of UK’s Center for Sustainable Cities, is continuing to use his live-in laboratory to explore new home design and energy technologies he thinks will become more important as utility rates rise and environmental concerns grow.

“All of these things are pointing to the fact that in the coming years we’re not going to be building houses the way we do now,” he said. “It’s coming very quickly.”

Levine was a young architect in the early 1970s when the Arab oil embargo and the fledgling environmental movement first got Americans thinking about renewable energy.

At the time, solar energy was the province of scientists and hippies; few architects paid much attention to it. Levine thought buildings would need to become more energy-efficient, so he decided to explore the possibilities.

He spent nearly a year researching and designing his home to use both kinds of solar energy: “passive,” in which design exploits the sun’s natural light and warmth, and “active,” in which mechanical devices capture and store it.

Levine began work on the house in 1975. The project took eight years, mostly because he and students did most of the construction — and because the Levine family lived there the whole time. He has never figured the total cost, but said, “It wasn’t terribly expensive.”

The design Levine created was a 40-foot cube, sliced diagonally to create a large hexagonal surface. That surface faced south at a 54-degree angle, the optimal position to catch winter sunlight.

On that 32-foot sloping surface, Levine installed vertical rows of solar collectors, which warmed air and stored it in bins of crushed stone in the basement to provide heat with a system he patented. He alternated those collectors with rows of narrow windows he called “sundows” that let in natural light and warmth.

A greenhouse at the base of the slope also helps light and heat the home, and it provides a year-round growing environment for vegetables and exotic plants.

The tall sides of the home that face northeast and northwest have many small, square windows of three kinds. Double-layered glass windows provide views and light. Screened ones provide ventilation; cool night breezes coming up from Raven Run Creek make summer air conditioning unnecessary. Translucent windows made of six layers of plastic (for insulation) light each room.

The home’s walls were well-insulated by 1970s standards, but the materials weren’t nearly as good as the super-insulation available today. Likewise, most of today’s high-efficiency windows didn’t exist then, so Levine designed and made his own window systems.

Levine installed two composting toilets in the house, which have worked well with minimal maintenance. There are several experimental energy systems he installed — but rarely needs to use — such as a geothermal heat pump, a highly efficient wood-burning boiler and an air-circulating fireplace.

Levine’s decision to take 1970s technology as far as he could resulted in a home that is as weird-looking outside as it is strikingly beautiful inside.

The living area is open and airy, with white walls, oak woodwork and a central oak staircase that provides a visual centerpiece. Variously shaped rooms on multiple levels open to the staircase, making the 3,000-square-foot space seem larger.

Levine just added 30 new photo-voltaic panels to the roof of his studio to generate electricity. The panels have micro-inverters that make solar-generated power usable at a lower cost than old inverter systems did. Each panel’s performance can be monitored by computer; you can see it from a link on Levine’s Web site: www.cscdesignstudio.com.

He doesn’t need batteries to store the power his photo-voltaic cells produce, because “net metering” allows him to feed power to his utility company on sunny days and draw from it on cloudy ones. Over the course of a year, it should balance out.

Some utilities, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, buy from small renewable power producers, allowing them to make a profit. In Central Kentucky, though, utilities are only required to swap power, so the best a solar-generating homeowner can do is break even.

Levine thinks changing Kentucky’s net-metering law to allow producers to profit would encourage more solar generation by both homes and commercial buildings.

In addition to Levine’s studio renovation, construction is wrapping up on a weekend home he designed on Herrington Lake for another UK professor. It has well-insulated walls and windows and a $10,000 photo-voltaic system that will make the home net-zero.

“That’s really very little to pay for energy independence,” Levine said. Solar systems are getting better and cheaper all the time, and tax credits provide attractive incentives for installing them.

Once the first energy crisis passed in the early 1980s, Americans went back to then-cheap fossil fuels and paid little attention to renewable energy. European countries have become the technology leaders.

“It’s just amazing how far ahead they are in many ways; even China is ahead of us,” Levine said. “It’s very sad, really. They used to come here for ideas.”

About 40 percent of all U.S. energy is consumed by buildings. Levine thinks “green” architecture for new buildings — and retrofitting of old ones — will become more popular as energy prices rise. Homes offer some of the best opportunities for better design, better insulation and small-scale renewable energy systems.

“I think it’s something that any rational homeowner will want to consider,” Levine said with the pride of a pioneer. “I can’t see a better, more guaranteed investment.”

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I’m mainly a writer. But I’ve found the camera to be a great story-telling tool, too. Here are some of my favorite photos from 2009, most of which I shot to illustrate columns. I hope you like them.