The Bluegrass and Beyond

Julie Warren Conn uses a grinder to carve a piece of Minnesota limestone in her studio near downtown Winchester. Her fork lift often doubles as a work table.  Photos by Tom Eblen

WINCHESTER — When Julie Warren Conn was a student at the University of Tennessee, she hoped to be a French major, but couldn’t speak the language. She became an art major instead, but continued to struggle with some basics.

“I couldn’t paint, couldn’t draw, but I loved working with my hands,” said Conn, who in 1965 became the UT School of Art’s first sculpture graduate.

Over the next dozen years, Conn mastered steel welding. Then she took up stone carving. Since 1977, the artist formerly known as Julie Warren Martin has developed a national reputation as a stone sculptor, with dozens of pieces in prestigious museums and collections.

Her work is in places ranging from the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., to the Holiday Inn headquarters in Stamford, Conn. Her largest piece is a 30-ton installation of New Mexico travertine outside what is now GlaxoSmithKline’s U.S. headquarters in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

After her husband of 12 years, Philip Conn, retired as president of Western Oregon University in 2005, they moved to Lexington and she opened a small studio and gallery in Winchester (Juliewarrenconn.com). But she has shown little work in Kentucky, until now.

A collection of Conn’s sculptures, titled Stories in Stone, will be featured during Gallery Hop, 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, at the Central Library Gallery, 140 E. Main St. The free exhibit opened June 15 will remain up through Aug. 11.

Conn, 70, grew up in Knoxville, where her father, Millard Warren, owned a specialty concrete business and had an interest in design. Access to his company’s heavy equipment made it easier for her to begin carving and polishing stone.

Knoxville has had a significant marble processing industry since the early 1900s, thanks to East Tennessee’s quarries of pink marble. Conn said she learned cutting and shaping techniques from marble mill employees who let her work in their shop.

“I became their resident artist,” she said. “One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about my work is the opportunities to become connected with people.”

Marble remains a favorite medium for Conn, although her gallery also includes pieces made of travertine, granite, onyx, alabaster and various volcanic and fossilized rocks.

Conn’s typical day at the office involves driving a fork lift. It doubles as a workbench for large hunks of stone, such as the column of Minnesota limestone she was grinding down the day I visited her studio. Her tools include grinders, saws, chisels and a big exhaust fan to clear out clouds of gritty stone dust. There’s a good reason her studio is zoned industrial.

The most time-consuming part of Conn’s work is polishing her sculptures, which can take three-times longer than cutting the basic shapes. After progressing through sandpaper between 80 and 1,000 grit, she finishes each piece with paste wax.

The petite Conn said she has never been intimidated by the physicality needed to work with hard and heavy slabs of stone. While careful to avoid injury, she said she has fallen off ladders and scaffolding and once had a grinder disk fly apart and send her to the ground.

Some of Conn’s work is representational, but most pieces are abstracts dictated by the stone she is working with. That often includes openings and holes, which give the sculpture a lighter feel — and can be useful for securing belts to move it.

“I let the rock guide me,” she said. “I love to take a volume of stone and begin carving. I won’t have a clue what it will be. Then it will start to look like something to me, or somebody will come in and interpret it.”

Conn said she sometimes likes to see how far she can push a piece of stone without breaking it. She also enjoys experimenting with new and different kinds of rock, such as the small sculpture she made from a chunk of common Kentucky limestone she found outside her studio. Once highly polished, it was unrecognizable.

Conn has recently started making bronze sculptures cast from her stone pieces, as well as bas relief stone drawings inspired by ancient Egyptian ruins.

On one side of Conn’s studio are a dozen large wooden boxes filled with rocks awaiting her attention, including a few her husband found and suggested she might want to experiment with.

“When Philip starts toward me with a rock, I run,” she said with a laugh. “Because it usually means trouble.”

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Cynthia Bohn started Equus Run Vineyards in Woodford County 15 years ago as a retirement business for when she was ready to end her 30-year career with IBM as a computer engineer and marketing executive. The business now makes 15 varieties of wine and has a successful event business at the 48-acre winery. Photos by Tom Eblen

MIDWAY — Cynthia Bohn lived all over the country, as well as in England and the Netherlands, during her 30-year career as an IBM computer engineer and executive. Collecting wine became her hobby.

So, when she began planning for a retirement career, Bohn thought it might be fun to start a winery in Kentucky, where she had grown up in Louisville and on a Hart County tobacco farm.

“It was like a hobby that became a passion that became a business,” said Bohn, whose Equus Run Vineyards just celebrated 15 years in business and is about to launch a major expansion.

Although Kentucky had the nation’s first commercial winery in 1799, there were only three wineries operating in the bourbon state when Bohn started planning her business in the mid-1990s. Now, Kentucky has 67 operating wineries, with more on the way.

“It’s a very viable business model if you run it as a business,” she said.

Bohn said that after three flat years during and after the Great Recession, her revenues were up 17 percent in 2012 and 23 percent this year.

Equus Run now produces about 9,100 cases a year of 15 varieties of wine. The grapes come from her own eight acres of vineyards, and from contract growers in Western Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio and California.

“There’s no way I could grow everything I need,” she said, noting that some grape varieties don’t do well in Kentucky’s soil and climate. Plus, having growers elsewhere is “sort of like an insurance policy” against unpredictable Kentucky weather, she said.

But Bohn has discovered that it takes more than grapes and good wine to make a successful winery of her size.

“The key thing with us is we diversified,” Bohn said as we sat on a deck outside her tasting room overlooking her vineyards — and gardens and sculptures and a putting green and an amphitheater. Coming soon: bike trails.

“We are in the hospitality and tourism industry; we just happen to sell wine,” she said. “It’s all about the experience. It’s about a day in the Bluegrass. It’s about a lifestyle, not just wine.”

In addition to the recreation facilities and places for hosting weddings, receptions and corporate events, Equus Run schedules programs where visitors can enjoy art, music and even learn to fly fish.

An equine artists’ group will be coming to the winery this summer to paint. Several “foodie” events are scheduled, including a shrimp boil and a “pizza and pinot” evening. There is a dinner theater series built around murder mysteries.

Several non-profit groups use Equus Run’s facilities for fundraisers. The winery donates the facilities and keeps only the revenues from alcohol sales, Bohn said.

“It’s been a great model,” she said. “It has worked for them and it has worked for us.”

Equus Run’s biggest annual event is this weekend: the 10th annual Francisco’s Farm Arts Festival, produced in conjunction with the Lexington Art League and Midway Renaissance. This is the third year Equus Run has hosted the regionally acclaimed arts festival, which was formerly at Midway College. Bohn expects as many as 10,000 people to attend.

She is looking for more ways to expand Equus Run, which now has 16 employees. She recently bought 10 acres across Moore’s Mill Road to add to her 38-acre property.

Until now, Bohn has been the winery’s sole owner. But she said she is partnering with local investors to build new hospitality venues and wine-production facilities to replace the ones in a former tobacco barn she has outgrown. Other future plans include finding a partner to offer regular food service.

Equus Run is surrounded by several horse farms, and Bohn said she tries to be a good neighbor by doing such things as ending concerts at 9 p.m., rather than the required 11 p.m.

“I love my neighbors; they are wonderful,” she said. “We could have easily been shoved aside. Instead, they embraced us. I think that speaks highly of the community.”

Bohn thinks businesses such as Equus Run can play a valuable role in increasing tourism in the Bluegrass, as well as just making this a more fun and interesting place to live. Personally, it is not only a good retirement business, but a lot of fun.

“You’ve got to love people, and you’ve got to love dealing with Mother Nature and her erratic weather patterns,” said Bohn, who added that tending grapes isn’t nearly as hard work as the tobacco-stripping she did as a teenager. “I very affectionately say I started with dirt and I have now retired with dirt.”

If you go

Francisco’s Farm Arts Festival

When: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. June 22, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. June 23

Where: Equus Run Vineyards, 1280 Moores Mill Rd., Midway

Admission: $10 per vehicle.

More information: Lexingtonartleague.org, Equusrunvineyards.com

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The University of Kentucky honored Gray Zeitz, center, last Friday on the 40th anniversary of his Larkspur Press in Monterey, which publishes hand-crafted books by  Kentucky writers. Before the ceremony at Margaret I. King Library, Zeitz, center, talked with Gay Reading, left, whose aunt, Carolyn Reading Hammer, taught Zeitz the art of printing at the King Library Press at UK. At right is Zeitz’s wife, Jean.  Photos by Tom Eblen 

Richard Taylor recalled that when Gray Zeitz was establishing his Larkspur Press in the mid-1970s, he received a printing commission from the Kentucky Arts Council. Anxious state officials asked for a deadline, but Zeitz would not be rushed.

He replied to them with a metaphor drawn from his love for Kentucky’s native plants: “Who knows when the phlox will flower?”

Taylor, a former Kentucky poet laureate, told that story last Friday evening as more than 130 writers, artists, friends and fans gathered at the University of Kentucky’s Margaret I. King Library to honor Zeitz for four decades of continuous flowering.

Zeitz was lauded by Taylor and eight other writers and artists whose work the small press in rural Owen County has published over the years: Wesley Bates, Gabrielle Fox, Nana Lampton, Ed McClanahan, Maurice Manning, Maureen Morehead, Mary Ann Taylor-Hall and Jeff Worley.

The ceremony opened an exhibit of pieces produced by Larkspur Press, which has published more than 100 handmade books and countless broadsides since 1974. The free exhibit will be up through August. The library at 179 Funkhouser Dr. is open 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday.

Larkspur Press, on Sawdridge Creek Road near Monterey, has a public open house each November, on the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Last Saturday, Zeitz led a letterpress printing workshop at the King Library Press on UK’s campus. That was where he learned his art and trade, first as a student and then as an apprentice to director Carolyn Reading Hammer.

In the 1950s, Hammer and her husband, Austrian artist Victor Hammer, began a Kentucky tradition of fine letterpress printing using hand-operated presses, hand-set type and woodblock engravings.

Zeitz, 63, is one of their most successful protégés. Using century-old presses and thick, creamy paper, he prints elegant books that are hand-stitched and bound, in both fancy collector’s editions and affordable paperbacks.

“Gray is stubbornly and endearingly independent,” Taylor explained in his remarks. “He has steadfastly refused to become ensnared by the Internet. One of his friends designed a web page (larkspurpress.com) that Gray has no means or desire to see.”

But, as the writers and artists explained, Zeitz is much more than a printer. A poet himself, he carefully selects the writers, artists and works he wants to publish. Most are from Kentucky.

In addition to those who spoke Friday, they have included Wendell Berry, Bobbie Ann Mason, Silas House, Erik Reece, Gurney Norman, Frederick Smock and the late Guy Davenport and James Baker Hall.

Bates, a Canadian wood engraver, said he first encountered Larkspur Press nearly two decades ago and was impressed by the quality of the printing, the large volume of books produced and Zeitz’s curatorial skill in choosing work to publish.

“It was above and beyond the idea of book as art,” Bates said. “It was book as communication, as preservation of culture.”

As for Zeitz, a burly man with a long beard who always wears blue jeans and suspenders, Bates said, “I thought he looked like he was part of the band ZZ Top.”

Taylor-Hall talked about how Zeitz consults with writers about how their books should look, down to such things as the color of ink. Worley joked that even if readers hate his poetry, they won’t throw away his Larkspur Press editions because the books themselves are too beautiful.

Several others remarked on Zeitz’s craftsmanship, exacting standards and placid demeanor. “Every time I see him, he seems filled with joy,” Manning said.

When it finally came time for Zeitz to speak Friday, he was, as always, a man of few words. He introduced two longtime collaborators, Carolyn Whitesel and Leslie Shane, and thanked audience members for writing and illustrating his books, buying and reading his books and even helping him on occasion move heavy, iron presses.

Then, Zeitz read a poem he had written, which the King Library Press printed as a broadside to give those in attendance:

Printer’s Note

Sweet rain yesterday.

We have put your book on the press.

My hands do not tremble

because I’m unsure,

but shake in the finalizing of page

as a foal, newborn,

begins to stand.

It should be said

there will be absolutely no deadline.

Who knows when the phlox will flower? 

Eric Sutherland, founder of the monthly Holler Poets series, poses outside Al’s Bar at the corner of North Limestone and East Sixth Streets. The series will celebrate its fifth year, and 60th session, on May 29. Photo by Tom Eblen 

As the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War approached in March 2008, Eric Scott Sutherland was frustrated and angry. So he fought back the best way he knew how: with poetry.

The writer organized Poets for Peace, a protest reading in the newly reopened Al’s Bar at the corner of North Limestone and East Sixth Street. The event featured an all-star lineup of local literary talent, including Jane Gentry Vance, who was then serving as Kentucky’s poet laureate. Nearly 100 listeners packed the house.

“It was just electric,” Sutherland recalled. “You could sense it.”

Sutherland had tapped into more than public outrage over a tragic, costly and unnecessary war. People seemed hungry for poetry and a venue for self-expression.

“There was pent-up demand for what this guy was doing,” said Josh Miller, one of the bar’s owners. So Miller’s brother, Lester, asked Sutherland if he would organize an event like that at their bar every month.

The Holler Poets Series was born.

The series celebrates its five-year anniversary, and 60th session, on Wednesday. The free event will begin, as always, with an open microphone for any writer wanting to share his or her work.

Then there will be the featured writers. This month’s are Frank X Walker, Kentucky’s current poet laureate, and his fellow Affrilachian poet, Mitchell Douglas. The evening concludes with a musical act. This month’s is Christian hip hop artist Justin Long, who performs under the name JustMe.

Holler’s format has changed little since the series began in 2008 with the award-winning poet Maurice Manning, who now teaches at Transylvania University. Since the beginning, events have been promoted with unique posters created by artist John Lackey, whose Homegrown Press Studio is a couple of doors down from the bar.

About 80 writers have been featured at Holler, including other well-known Kentucky names such as Nikky Finney, Silas House, Richard Taylor, Erik Reece, Ed McClanahan, Gurney Norman, Crystal Wilkinson, George Ella Lyon, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Bianca Spriggs and Leatha Kendrick.

Lexington’s poetry scene has flourished in recent years. Holler Poets — some of whom were born in mountain “hollers” or like to speak loudly — is a big reason why.

Since the beginning, Holler’s goal has been to both raise the profile of experienced poets and encourage the development of new ones. “The open mic has inspired a lot of people to develop their craft, given them something to work toward every month,” Sutherland said.

“Holler Poets has been extremely important in encouraging new voices to emerge, to go from writing for themselves to writing for an audience,” said Katerina Stoykova-Klemer, a Bulgarian-born poet, WRFL radio host, and owner of the Lexington poetry book press Accents Publishing.

“I thought I would go and mingle with like-minded people,” said Tina Andry, who had written poetry all her life but mostly kept it to herself. “Everyone was so welcoming, and the next thing I knew I was publishing a book.”

The Poets for Peace event on March 30, 2008 was followed a year later by Peace in the Mountains, where writers decried what environmentally destructive methods of surface mining for coal is doing to Kentucky’s land, water and air. Holler readers frequently critique an American society that values money more than people. Several of the events have been fundraisers for peace and environmental groups.

“For me, everything is political,” said Sutherland, 41, a Shelbyville native who studied natural resource conservation at the University of Kentucky and has earned his living as a baker and arborist. “It has been rewarding to use art as a way to inform people about what’s going on.”

Sutherland has been surprised by Holler’s popularity. He can’t remember an event where Al’s Bar wasn’t filled with people.

“I knew that our literary heritage would support it and that it was needed,” he said. “But I didn’t know it would catch on. I think the time was just right.”

Sutherland knew he had arrived when, at Holler’s three-year anniversary, Lester Miller surprised him on stage with a fancy certificate proclaiming him as the poet laureate of Al’s Bar.

Accents Publishing will soon publish Sutherland’s fourth poetry collection, Pendulum, inspired by his experiences working at the lobby café of Lexington’s downtown Central Library. Books are important, but Sutherland thinks Holler shows that performance can make poetry a more powerful artistic medium.

“When you hear people up on stage baring their soul, which takes a lot of courage, it ignites something in the listener,” he said. “I think people yearn to feel connected to other people. Poetry is really the last vestige of a direct expression of humanity.”

If you go

Holler Poets 60: Five-year anniversary

When: 8 p.m., May 29

Where: Al’s Bar, 601 N. Limestone

Who: Affrilachian poets Frank X Walker and Mitchell Douglas, hip hop performer JustMe. Open microphone for other poets, with sign-up beginning at 7 p.m.

Cost: Free.

More information: EricScottSutherland.com

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Link Henderson of Kentucky Mudworks makes one of the ceramic pint glasses that will be part of her fundraiser for Seedleaf on April 27 at West Sixth Brewery. A $15 donation to the community garden group will come with a beer in one of her handmade pint glasses. Photo by Tom Eblen 

Link Henderson moved here after college in 1997 because her best friend got married, got a teaching job in Lexington and bought a duplex where Henderson could rent the other half.

“I always wanted to own my own business, ever since I was a kid,” said Henderson, who grew up in North Carolina and majored in Latin and ceramics at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa. “I just didn’t know what it was or how it would happen.”

After working as a waitress and baker, Henderson got a job teaching ceramics classes at the city-owned Loudoun House.

When it was closed for a major renovation, she rented studio space in an old carriage house downtown, offered her own classes and made pottery to sell.

As the business grew, she moved to larger quarters on Jefferson Street. One thing led to another, and Kentucky Mudworks LLC is now a full-service ceramics studio, school and store at 825 National Avenue.

The company will have one of its two annual charity fundraisers April 27 at West Sixth Brewery. Called Pints for Plants, the event benefits Seedleaf, a nonprofit organization that works to provide affordable, nutritious food for people at risk of hunger in Central Kentucky.

Henderson is hand-making more than 300 ceramic pint glasses. Donors get a pint of beer in a glass for a $15 donation to Seedleaf, from 3 p.m. until they are all gone.

Henderson said Kentucky Mudworks’ success has been all about diversification.

“Knowing my market and being willing to have a toe in every facet of the business,” she said.

When Henderson began making pottery and teaching classes, she was frustrated that there was no good place in the region to buy clay. There are fewer than a dozen ceramic clay manufacturers in the country, and mail order is expensive.

“A box of clay is only $30, but it costs $20 to ship it,” she said. “So, if you have a local supplier, it’s a really great thing.”

Henderson started selling clay to potters, schools and universities. Kentucky Mudworks now stocks 80 kinds of clay in its 11,000-square-foot facility, along with kilns, wheels and a full range of pottery materials and supplies.

When online retailers started taking a bite out of her margins several years ago, Henderson created her own line of tools.

“Instead of trying to compete with 30 or 50 online stores, I wanted to have products in those stores,” she said.

Dirty Girls Pottery Tools now has about 40 distributors in the United States and Canada. Henderson also sells them at her shop and website: Kentuckymudworks.com.

Henderson and her five employees make commissioned pottery, such as trophies and awards. They also offer ceramics classes for adults and children. Kentucky Mudworks recently partnered with Zig Zeigler, a stained-glass artist whose studio is down the street, to offer stained glass classes.

The hardest thing about building the business was financing.

“In the beginning, it was credit cards, which is an absolute no-no,” Henderson said. “But I was 25 and had no collateral.”

As the business grew, she was able to get a conventional loan, which she plans to pay off in September. Henderson owns 90 percent of the business. Eight percent is owned by a friend and investor, and a longtime employee owns 2 percent.

But, for many years, much of Henderson’s capital came from living simply and plowing most of her earnings back into the business.

“I probably lived on 700 bucks a month for I don’t know how long, literally living above the shop,” she said. “Ramen noodles: that’s how I financed my business!

“I didn’t have a family or a mortgage,” added Henderson, 38, who now lives on a farm near Lawrenceburg. “I started when I was so young because I figured if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it if I have something to lose.”

In addition to constant financial discipline, Henderson said she does a business plan every five years to stay on track.

Kentucky Mudworks has been a lot of work, but it has been worth it, she said.

“I wish more young people would start businesses,” Henderson said. “I was very, very lucky. I found a niche, a hole in the market that I was able to capitalize on.

“But it takes so much more than you think.”

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Martin Demaine, left, and his son, Erik, with one of their paper origami sculptures. 

Martin Demaine became a single parent when his son was 2. Suddenly, the visual artist went from being a workaholic who spent little time with Erik to his constant companion, teacher and collaborator.

It has worked out well for both of them. Amazingly well.

When Erik started designing puzzles at age 6, they created a company to sell them. After first grade, Martin home-schooled his son, including teaching him a lot about art. Erik started playing with computers and teaching his father, who has gone on to do computer science research.

At age 20, Erik finished his Ph.D. in computer science and became the youngest faculty member in the history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then came a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant at age 21 and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship.

Erik, 31, and Martin, 70, both now teach at MIT. Earlier this month, they were awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Their current research into paper folding holds promise for breakthroughs in fields ranging from engineering to pharmaceuticals.

The Demaines will be in Lexington this week to give two free, public lectures about their research and open an exhibit of their work at The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, which will be on display until May 26.

The Demaines will speak on “Algorithms Meet Art, Puzzles and Magic” at 5 p.m. April 24 at the Worsham Theater in UK’s Student Center. The next day, at 4 p.m., they will talk on “Geometric Puzzles” at Transylvania University’s Cowgill Center, room 102.

Their visit was initiated by Dr. Sylvia Cerel-Suhl, a Lexington physician whose son, Adam Suhl, studies with the Demaines at MIT.

Between those lectures, the Demaines will go to Danville to blow glass with Centre College artist Stephen Powell, who they met through mutual friend Lino Tagliapietra, the renowned Italian glass artist. In January, the Demaines plan to spend a week or two at Centre, creating art with Powell and lecturing on mathematics.

In separate telephone interviews last week, the Demaines said they work at the intersection of mathematics and art.

“We have used one to help solve problems with the other,” Martin said. “They are very similar in many ways. They both have these exciting moments when you discover things, when you succeed in visualizing something.”

“It’s all about creativity,” Erik said. “All about having clever ideas and executing those ideas. We look for mathematics in the art we do, and art in the mathematics we do.”

Many grants now require an artist to be part of the team of research scientists, because it brings a different kind of thinking to the problem-solving process. Much of the Demaines’ work at MIT involves acting as “translators” between artists and scientists.

In addition to creating art, the Demaines teach and have published about 80 scientific papers with each other and a variety of fellow researchers.

The Demaines’ current work began with a fascination for origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. The orgiami pieces in their UK show involve precise circular folds that cause paper to bend itself into distinct shapes. The sculptures are composed of several interlocking pieces of folded paper, sometimes enclosed in a blown-glass vessel they made.

“Origami has always been seen as a recreational art,” Erik said. “But we embraced it as a serious thing. That turned out to be a good bet, because there are a lot of applications to science and engineering.”

For example, their origami research has led to safer automobile airbags. Their research discovered new ways to fold up airbags so that, when they deploy, the force is spread more evenly so drivers and passengers are not injured.

Future applications of such folding techniques include self-supporting structures or even space station modules that could deploy themselves when they reach their destination. But the most exciting possibilities are microscopic.

“I think the big application for us would be if we could help develop techniques for protein-folding that would be better for drug design,” Martin said.

“It’s quite exciting,” he added. “It makes life for us an adventure. We are just hoping that more doors will open up.”

Lina Tharsing’s new show appears at UK Hospital through August. Photos by Tom Eblen

Lina Tharsing‘s paintings place the viewer between the real and the unreal. This month, as the artist celebrates her 30th birthday and opens her last Lexington show for a while, she finds herself in a similar position.

“I’ve been fortunate to have such strong support in Lexington,” Tharsing said. “But I would like to branch out more.”

Tharsing’s six-painting show, Making a New Forest, recently went up at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center‘s East Gallery, which is free and open 24/7. An opening reception is planned for 6 to 8 p.m. April 27.

When the show comes down at the end of August, the title painting will remain at the hospital, thanks to several donors. Any unsold pieces will be part of a show of Tharsing’s newest work this fall at Poem 88 gallery in Atlanta.

The Atlanta show will be the second solo exhibition outside of Kentucky for Tharsing, who last year was chosen as No. 5 on Oxford American magazine’s list of 100 “new superstars of Southern art.” Conduit Gallery in Dallas showed her work in 2011.

Tharsing’s recent shows have featured paintings based on the famous dioramas built in the 1930s at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The paintings displayed in Dallas were small, colorful pictures that looked like natural scenes of animals in the wild — until the viewer notices the edge of a display case or the telltale glint of light on a plate-glass window.

Making a New Forest offers a different perspective on the dioramas. These striking pictures are 4 feet tall and 6 feet wide, and painted completely in black and white. In addition to animals and landscapes, they show men in lab coats and ties, positioning the stuffed animals or fabricating scenery. The paintings are based on 1930s black-and-white photographs of the museum’s staff at work.

“I liked the idea of these people creating new environments, and what these environments stand for,” Tharsing said. “I also thought it would be interesting to see what happens when you take a black-and-white photograph and make a black-and-white painting.”

Painting the old photos of the dioramas being built allowed Tharsing to incorporate human figures into natural landscapes, and to play with size and scale.

“I was interested in that tension between real and unreal,” she said, “showing multiple truths existing in the same space.”

Tharsing is excited about exhibiting in the hospital’s hallway gallery, which thousands of people walk by each day.

“It’s a good opportunity to show your work and see what the general public thinks of it, and not just the art public,” she said.

Although it sometimes seems a little unreal, Tharsing is pleased with the attention her work is getting beyond Lexington, where she graduated from Lafayette High School and earned a bachelor of fine arts at UK.

Many people here know her as the daughter of Robert Tharsing, a painter and retired UK art professor, and Ann Tower, a painter and gallery owner.

The exhibition was organized by Lexington native Phillip March Jones, an artist who started the Institute 193 gallery and works as a curator for UK hospital and in Atlanta.

Her next project will continue her fascination with mixing real and unreal imagery. These even-larger paintings, in color, will be based on cellphone photographs she has taken, including a startling image of the ceiling collapsing in an abandoned Atlanta paint factory.

Tharsing expects to spend more time in New York during the next few years, making connections and, she hopes, showing and selling her paintings. But she has no plans to move there.

“Lexington is such a great place to be able to live inexpensively and have a good support network,” she said. “There’s just a great community here. There are a lot of young people here doing entrepreneurial, exciting things, and I want to see that happen.”

Richard Gersony was a pre-med student at Columbia University in New York City when he started drawing illustrations for the campus newspaper. Soon he faced a dilemma: which career path to choose?

“I was going toward medicine,” he said. “But I knew inside that what I was best at was making visuals, illustrating and creating art.”

Then a professor suggested he become a medical illustrator. After an internship and rigorous graduate program at the University of Michigan, Gersony moved to Lexington for a medical illustration job at the University of Kentucky. There he met his wife, Kim, who studied three- dimensional animation and interactive design.

After eight years of training and work in Chicago and Baltimore, they returned to Lexington in 2000 and started Medmovie to take medical illustration into the digital world of online multimedia.

This past weekend in San Francisco, at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, Medmovie unveiled its newest product: an iPad application that explains how the heart works, its common problems and treatments.

CardioSmart Explorer will sell for $5.99 to the public through Apple’s online App Store. The American College of Cardiology, which sponsored development of the app, will give it to physician members.

This is the company’s third iPad app but the first sold to the public. Gersony said it represents an important step toward what he sees as the future of his company: developing educational tools that use the ever-growing library of cardiovascular multimedia imagery he and his staff are developing.

The Gersonys and their three employees all have master’s degrees and other advanced training in science, medical illustration and animation. Their job is to take complex medical information and translate it into simple, understandable visual stories.

“The idea is you are making a visual decision between highly realistic and symbolic, then you are putting it in a storyline that’s understandable,” Richard Gersony said. “We want people to have that visual aha moment: ‘Wow! Now I understand.’”

There are many markets for such stories: educating and making sales to physicians and other health care professionals; explaining complex medical information to juries; and helping patients and their families understand medical problems, procedures and treatments.

For example, a physician could use an iPad with the CardioSmart Explorer app to sketch out a heart patient’s problem and explain how it will be treated. Then the illustration can be instantly emailed to the patient for future reference.

Medmovie’s newest staff member is Pina Kingman, who moved here from Vancouver, British Columbia, after graduating from the University of Toronto’s prestigious biomedical communications program. Her background in cell biology and animation will help Medmovie develop animations to show how drugs work in the body. They could be used to create educational tools for pharmaceutical salespeople, physicians and patients.

Gersony, who grew up in the New York City suburbs, said he and his wife did a national search when deciding where to start Medmovie. Lexington had an edge, because they had met here and Kim Gersony’s mother lived in Frankfort.

In the end, though, they chose Lexington for a variety of reasons that have also attracted other small, high-tech startups: a good talent pool; a central location with decent airline service; attractive and reasonably priced downtown office space; local universities; and a good quality of life.

Medmovie’s offices were in the circa 1913 Fayette National Bank Building at Main and Market streets until recently, when the company had to relocate so Lexington’s first skyscraper can be converted into a 21c Museum Hotel.

Gersony was able to find even nicer quarters around the corner: a loft-like space in another former bank, a circa 1924 building at the corner of West Short and Market streets. The offices have big windows with a commanding view of the old Fayette County Courthouse square.

Gersony said Lexington’s low cost of living, vibrant arts community and planned improvements downtown such as Town Branch Commons will make it easier for Medmovie to attract top talent as the company grows.

“Lexington is a fantastic size for a company like ours,” he said. “Almost all of us here can ride our bikes to work. The kind of space and the costs here are way, way lower than San Francisco and New York.”

I got a lot of response to last Sunday’s column. Many readers shared my dislike for Lexington’s clunky official name, Lexington Fayette Urban County Government, and its even more awkward acronym, LFUCG.

And then there was the silly sounding State of the Merged Government address, the annual speech the mayor gives at a high-profile luncheon sponsored by the Lexington Forum, a civic discussion group.

Why not, I asked, just call it the State of the City speech?

Board members of the Lexington Forum agreed, and, before the day was out, they had voted unanimously by email to change the name.

“We just felt like the old name was passé,” said Winn Stephens, the Lexington Forum’s president. “It was time to think of us all as the City of Lexington. Nobody with any marketing or public relations savvy would come up with a moniker like LFUCG.”

A few readers said they worried that a “city” emphasis might somehow devalue Fayette County’s strong rural tradition.

But others doubted that would happen. Ask anyone from elsewhere what they think of when they think of Lexington and the first things they are likely to mention are horses and green pastures.

Other readers took aim at the city’s official seal. To refresh your memory, the seal is a circle surrounded by the words “Lexington Fayette Urban County Government Kentucky.” Inside the circle are four local symbols: a horse shoe; tobacco leaves; 1775, when Lexington was named for the recently fought first battle of the American Revolution; and Transylvania University’s Old Morrison hall, a symbol of Lexington’s education heritage and historic architecture.

As government seals go, it’s not bad. But, as an all-purpose logo or flag, it doesn’t do Lexington justice.

“Could we redo our city’s flag?” reader James Bright asked in an email. “The current flag seems to be a history lesson that must be read to be understood. Learning is good. I am a teacher after all. But it is way too busy.”

Bright noted other cities, such as Chicago and Cincinnati, that have more elegant and inspiring flags.

I have always liked the flag of Washington, D.C., with its three stars and two stripes taken from George Washington’s coat of arms, and the flags of Louisville and New Orleans, which feature the traditional French fleurs-de-lis.

Bright suggested a competition among local artists to design a new city flag. That could be a good place to start.

Open design competitions often produce better (and less expensive) results than hiring a company to develop ideas. We saw an example of that recently, when the Town Branch Commons design competition attracted some of the world’s top landscape architects and produced impressive results.

Whatever local symbolism is chosen for Lexington’s flag should be adaptable to other “logo” uses, as is done with the fleurs-de-lis in Louisville and New Orleans.

The Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau has gotten a lot of mileage out of the “blue horse” — the Pentagram design firm’s adaptation of Edward Troye’s 1868 portrait of the great stallion Lexington, rendered in Wildcat blue.

I think the blue horse is a brilliant symbol for promoting local tourism. But Lexington is more than a one-horse town. Despite the name Bluegrass and the popularity of University of Kentucky athletics, I see Lexington, with its lush farmland next to urban areas, as more of a green city than a blue city.

Image and marketing are important. They create a brand that both attracts outsiders and engenders pride among locals. Think about it: the guys behind the guerrilla “Kentucky Kicks Ass” promotional campaign have sold a lot of T-shirts.

Of course, Mayor Jim Gray and members of the Urban County Council have bigger issues to worry about, so this probably isn’t at the top of their agenda. There are pensions to fund, budgets to balance and water-quality problems to solve from all of that farmland converted into subdivisions over the years.

But it is good to put these sorts of ideas out for public discussion and debate. When we just leave it up to government, we can end up with things like, well, LFUCG.

Alex Brooks left Lexington for two years of graduate school in England, where he studied book conservation. He has returned and started what may be Kentucky’s only company that conserves old books for individuals and libraries. Photo by Tom Eblen

Work is more rewarding when you find a way to turn your passion into a business opportunity. Kentuckians Alex Brooks and Debra Koerner are doing just that, at different points in their lives and with technology from different centuries.

Brooks, 31, grew up in Louisville and discovered creative writing in high school. He made his first book for poems he wrote. As a Gaines Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky, he earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing.

While at UK, Brooks discovered the King Library Press and learned letterpress printing, which led to him creating block-print art. He also worked in UK Special Collections, which interested him in book conservation.

After college, Brooks acquired some antique printing equipment and operated Press 817, a one-man company that produced everything from wedding invitations to his own block prints. His career took another turn when he won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England. While there, he earned a master’s degree in book conservation at West Dean College.

Brooks returned to Lexington in October and started Alex Brooks Conservation to restore and conserve old books, from rare library specimens to family Bibles.

“The idea in my work is to keep as much of the original as possible,” Brooks said as he showed me a leather-bound volume from the 1830s about horse care that he is repairing for the Keeneland Library.

What he doesn’t try to do is make old books look new, by bleaching pages or replacing old bindings that still have a lot of original fabric. That might make them look good for a few years, but their historical value would be diminished.

“I’m not trying to make a book look like it was never damaged in the first place,” he said, “but to prevent it from further damage and make it usable.”

There is a lot of need for book conservation in Kentucky, yet there are few conservators.

“That’s one of the reasons I chose to move back to Lexington,” Brooks said. “I know the need is out there, but I’m not sure that the finances for that need will be out there.”

Brooks charges about $300 to refurbish a family Bible. Other work is $30 an hour, plus materials. (For more information, email Brooks at alexbrooks@gmail.com.)

In addition to doing work for institutions and collectors, Brooks hopes to build a client base from industries such as Thoroughbred horses and bourbon that realize heritage is important to their brands.

Brooks will be sharing his skills at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, where he will teach bookbinding classes March 2 and 16. Learn more at Carnegiecenterlex.org.

Debra Koerner has started a mid-career television production company to make a health and wellness series for Public Broadcasting called “Journey Into Wellbeing.” Photo provided

Koerner, 45, had written a book about success, been executive director of a spa organization and started a wellness education company. But she had always dreamed of a television career.

“That got me to thinking: if I was going to have a TV show, what am I most passionate about?” she said. “Where can I make a difference?”

Koerner describes herself as a “pudgy insomniac” and former stressed-out working mother. So she decided to borrow from her own experiences to show viewers how they could use local resources to make themselves healthier and happier.

She started a production company and created a self-funded pilot episode of Journey into Wellbeing. The show is planned as a state-by-state series, focusing on creative local wellness initiatives and resources. She gives viewers tips for healthy eating, exercise, natural health care and sustainable living.

The pilot episode focused on Kentucky and will air Tuesday on KET2 and 10 more times through March 21 on Kentucky Educational Television.

In the pilot episode, shot in October, Koerner interviews several Kentucky health experts and travels around the state. She visits an organic farm in Oldham County and Frontier Nursing University in Leslie County. She consults with a doctor and a fitness expert from Lexington and gets advice from a Louisville chef about how to prepare healthier versions of two Kentucky favorites, the hot Brown and corn pudding.

“Every state has great health initiatives, but they are not getting the focus they deserve,” Koerner said. “I also hope my story impresses (viewers) to attempt something they’ve been thinking about and wanting to do. It can happen.”

Don Ament’s photo of a dogwood tree in his front yard was enlarged to 42 feet wide by 11 feet tall to cover a folding wall that separates an employee cafe from a meeting room at TempurPedic’s new corporate headquarters building in Lexington.   Photo by Don Ament

Many artists dream of landing a big commission. For photographer Don Ament, it came from Tempur-Pedic, the Lexington-based mattress company.

Representatives from Tempur-Pedic met Ament last March at Kentucky Crafted: The Market. Then they saw an image on his website of dogwood blossoms in sunlight. The website has images Ament made all over the world, but this one was shot in his yard in Lexington.

The company was furnishing its new headquarters building near Coldstream Park, and executives thought Ament’s photo would be perfect for a folding wall that separates the employee café from a meeting room.

This commission was challenging because it literally was big. The image, taken on a 2.25-inch square piece of film, needed to be enlarged and printed 11 feet tall by 42 feet wide.

Ament scanned the film to create a high-resolution digital file, then, with help from friend and fellow photographer Frank Döring, manipulated the image to sharpen edges and preserve color vibrancy. A company in Maine printed the photo in sections, and last week it was installed like wallpaper. The result is stunning.

“They could go anywhere for art,” Ament said of Tempur-Pedic. “But they seem really dedicated to local.”

Indeed, as Tempur-Pedic settles into its new 128,000-square-foot space, much more local art will be purchased, said Patrice Varni, a senior vice president.

The only other pieces now are two Italian glass and stone mosaics designed by Guy Kemper, a Woodford County glass artist who has done installations all over the world, some as big as airport terminal walls.

Kemper’s mosaics for Tempur-Pedic are abstract evocations, roughly 10 feet square, for the fourth-floor executive area.

One is called After the Storm. “It recalls the feeling of a Kentucky forest after a summer storm, when a steamy sun comes out and everything is dripping wet,” Kemper said.

The other mosaic, called Daybreak, is “a shot of color to energize the work environment and promote creativity,” he said. “A reference that you’ve had a good night’s sleep.” (On a Tempur-Pedic mattress, no doubt.)

Kemper said Tempur-Pedic executives and their interior designer, Gary Volz of Champlin Architecture in Cincinnati, approached him after seeing two mosaics he did for elevator lobbies at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the pieces by Don and Guy,” Varni said. “I’ve really been struck by the positive response from employees.

“There was a steady stream of people stopping by to watch the installations.”

Tempur-Pedic built its new headquarters, which has large windows and expansive views of the Bluegrass landscape, to replace a former warehouse that had evolved into offices and become overcrowded as the company grew.

“This building was designed with a particular focus on collaboration and integrating the various work groups, and engendering creativity and innovative thinking,” Varni said. “Art is a big part of that, that is meant to showcase and inspire creativity and innovation.”

Varni said the company has budgeted purchases of more art during the next few years, as its 360 employees settle into the building, figure out what would complement the space and learn more about the work of local artists.

“We feel very much a part of the community, because the company was founded here,” Varni said. “In our support for the arts, we felt first and foremost we should support local artists.”

Varni said the Kentucky Arts Council has suggested several local artists whose work might be a good fit.

“Art is such a subjective, personal taste kind of thing,” she said. “We like things that have some sense of nature and that run the range from more literal to more abstract. And we’re interested in a different range of mediums.”

As part of its mission to help Kentucky artists be able to earn a living from their art, the council sponsors Kentucky Crafted: The Market, which returns to Lexington Center from March 1 through 3.

Kemper and Ament hope more Kentucky companies will follow Tempur-Pedic’s example because the arts flourishes only in places where artists find good patrons. Plus, when that investment is made in the community, it help’s Kentucky’s economy.

“You don’t have to run to New York or Chicago to look for something great,” Ament said. “There’s more good work being done here all the time.”

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The Headley-Whitney Museum includes a building known as the Shell Grotto, decorated with shells and other objects.  Photos by Tom Eblen

George Headley had the money and talent to create his own little world of art. He did it with jewelry and curios he designed for the rich and famous, and with the gem he left Lexington, the Headley-Whitney Museum.

The designer, collector and socialite died in 1985. His museum now faces some real-world money troubles, just as many other museums have since the 2008 financial crisis reshaped the economy.

Before the Headley-Whitney reopens in March after its annual winter break, the museum’s board is taking steps to shore up finances. It is putting Headley’s home, named La Belle, up for sale and is deaccessioning — that’s museum-speak for selling — several pieces from the collection that are rarely displayed or are costly to conserve.

The goal is to pay off debt incurred when two wings were added to the museum in 2009 and build up operating cash reserves, said Linda Roach, the board chairman.

“There’s no question it is tough,” Roach said of the museum’s situation. “If selling La Belle, deaccessioning and paying off the wings doesn’t work, the museum may not make it.”

George Headley studied art in New York and Paris before going to work for Paul Flato, the first celebrity jeweler in Beverly Hills. Headley then set up his own boutique in the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, designing jewelry for movie stars.

In 1949, Headley moved back to the family farm on Old Frankfort Pike. He lived at La Belle, a house designed by the noted local architect Warfield Gratz and built in 1936. Headley married Barbara Whitney, a sister of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney.

Headley continued designing jewelry and bibelots, small curios made of gems and precious metals with intricate craftsmanship. Dozens of bibelots became the core of Headley’s personal collection, and in 1968 he built a “jewel room” and library of art books beside his house.

He then opened his collection as the Headley-Whitney, adding a museum building in 1978. The grounds also contain the quirky Shell Grotto, a small building whose interior is covered with seashells and other decorative materials.

In addition to being an artist and designer, Headley was quite a character, famous for his personal style, gregarious personality and lavish parties. Roach said she got to know him shortly before his death, when he was hospitalized.

“His robe was a fur coat,” she recalled. “And he would open the bar at 5 o’clock, and the doctors would all make him their last visit of the day.”

The museum suffered a crisis in July 1994, when burglars broke into the jewel room and stole 103 pieces worth $1.6 million, including most of the bibelot collection. The biggest art heist in Kentucky history remained a mystery for five years, and then a group of Ohio thieves was caught and convicted.

Unfortunately, the bibelots apparently had been dismantled and sold as scrap for a fraction of their value. Since then, the Headley-Whitney has commissioned several artists to create bibelots for its jewel collection.

The museum has broadened its scope in fine and decorative arts, said Amy Greene, curator and administrator. The new museum wings have played host to some first-class exhibits, such as a recent display of Chinese woodblock prints.

The museum’s permanent collection also includes huge, elaborate dollhouses commissioned by Headley’s sister-in-law Marylou Whitney.

Like many museums, the Headley-Whitney has faced pressures to cut costs, focus its collection and reach beyond its core audience and financial supporters.

A big step in that process will be the sale of La Belle. The house, along with several outbuildings and 8.42 acres of land, will be put up for sale soon with an asking price of $1 million.

“We hope someone will fall in love with the property and be good neighbors,” Roach said.

The museum bought La Belle after Headley’s death. In recent years, it has been a decorator showcase house and a venue for weddings, receptions and other events. All current bookings will be honored, Roach said.

The Headley-Whitney has contracted with Neal Auction Co. in New Orleans to sell some Asian textiles, Chinese porcelain, a Kentucky coin silver pitcher and a few “politically incorrect” art objects made years ago from such things as endangered animal tusks. They will be auctioned Feb. 23 and 24.

The Headley-Whitney has been an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution since 2003. It also has formed several other partnerships, such as with the Confucius Institute at the University of Kentucky, and is seeking more relationships to broaden its range of exhibits and public appeal, said Christine Huskisson, a board member who teaches museum studies at UK.

The museum has increased education programs, including sponsoring adult and family how-to workshops ranging from woodblock printing to tie-dying. It also has sponsored a faux bibelot competition for middle school students. The best ones this year, which showed some amazing creativity, were displayed at the museum.

“One of the problems we have had is that people look at this as an elitist museum,” Roach said. “We’re trying very hard to be engaged with the community and have the community engaged with us. This isn’t some snob place. This is a place where people can come and learn about the arts.”

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The new documentary, Wonder: The Lives of Anna and Harlan Hubbard, by Louisville filmmaker Morgan Atkinson and narrated by author Wendell Berry, will have its first Lexington showing at 7 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 28, at the State Theatre, inside the Kentucky Theatre, 214 East Main St.

After the showing, I will moderate a panel discussion about the film and the Hubbards with Atkinson, Meg Shaw and Bill Caddell. Shaw is head of the Lucille Little Fine Arts Library at the University of Kentucky, where the Harlan Hubbard Image Collection is archived. Caddell was a longtime friend of the Hubbards.

Doors open at 6:45 p.m. The showing is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Idea Festival University, a project of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corp.

The Hubbards were a talented couple who spent nearly 40 years living apart from the modern world, first on a shanty boat, floating down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and then in a cabin they built along the Ohio River in Trimble County.

I wrote about Atkinson’s film in November.  Click here to read my column. For more information about the film, go to: Annaandharlan.com. For more information about the Idea Festival, go to: Ideafestival.com.

“What Henry David Thoreau did for two years on Walden Pond, the Hubbard’s did for forty years in Kentucky,” Atkinson said. “I hope the film will inspire people to be open to adventure in their own lives, whatever that may be.”

It is a common fantasy: Quit the rat race. Get back to nature. Embrace adventure.

Few people ever do it, at least not for long. Even Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century writer and icon for this fantasy, moved back to civilization after a couple of years on Walden Pond.

But Kentuckians Anna and Harlan Hubbard did it for more than four decades, until their deaths in 1986 and 1988. They floated down rivers on a shantyboat, then lived in a riverbank cabin, both built with their own hands.

The newest telling of the Hubbards’ story is a charming documentary,Wonder: The Lives of Anna & Harlan Hubbard, by Louisville filmmaker Morgan Atkinson. The film (Annaandharlan.com) premiered last week in Louisville. Atkinson is looking for a non-profit group to sponsor a Lexington showing, and he hopes to have the film shown on KET.

Atkinson’s previous work has includeed documentaries about other American originals: Thomas Merton, the Nelson County monk and writer; and John Howard Griffin, a white man who turned his skin dark and traveled the Deep South in 1959 to write the best-selling book, Black Like Me.

Atkinson never met the Hubbards, but he read about them. “One night, I had this very vivid dream about Harlan Hubbard,” he said. “I woke up thinking, that’s odd.”

He started reading more, and, before he knew it, he was making this film.

It tells the Hubbards’ story through old photos and film, re-enacted scenes and narration by actor Will Oldham, who reads from Harlan’s journals, and writer Wendell Berry, who reads from his 1989 book, Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work.

“They were enormously gifted people,” Berry said in an interview. “What made them unique was they were determined to live according to the requirements of their gifts, and that’s what they did.”

Harlan, who was born in 1900, grew up in Northern Kentucky and New York City.

He liked to paint, write, play music and explore nature. He earned money as a day laborer, having little interest in the modern world or its definitions of success.

He met Anna Eikenhout, two years his junior, at the Cincinnati Public Library, where she was a librarian. After several years, they began a courtship by playing music together — he the violin and viola, she the cello and piano. They married in 1944 and chose adventure over conformity.

They lived in a shack on the Ohio riverbank while Hubbard built a shantyboat. They lived on that boat for nearly eight years, five of which they spent drifting down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, fishing, hunting and stopping for months at a time to grow vegetables.

When they ran out of river in Louisiana, they headed back to Kentucky and settled at Payne Hollow in Trimble County, which had been the first long stop on their river odyssey. Harlan bought seven acres, built a cabin and planted a garden. Anna cooked, kept house and had family in Michigan send down her Steinway grand piano.

The Hubbards read to each other after meals — in French and German, as well as English. In the evenings, they played music together. Harlan had studied art in New York and Cincinnati, and he earned what little money they needed by selling his prolific output of paintings and drawings of scenes along the river.

“It’s hard to tell how long work by Harlan will be turning up, because he gave away pictures and traded them for sacks of corn or sold them for $5,” said Berry, who has used Harlan’s paintings on the covers of several of his books.

Harlan wrote three books about their life and adventures, and they attracted a steady stream of visitors to the cabin. Among them was Berry, who said he happened upon it by accident in 1963 while canoeing with a friend. Over the years, Berry and the Hubbards became close friends.

Other visitors included Louisville’s Bingham family, wealthy former owners of The Courier-Journal. Eleanor Bingham Miller, who as a child visited the Hubbards on family boat outings, was a major funder of the documentary, along with the Rivers Institute at Hanover College, across the river from Payne Hollow in Indiana.

“I think a lot of people subscribe to the Hubbards’ values,” Berry said. “There are some very serious flaws in modern life and the life of the industrial world. I think people were attracted by that. They were attracted by curiosity, too.”

Few people really would or even could live as the Hubbards did. But Atkinson thinks there is a lot to learn from them, and he tried to bring out those lessons in his film.

“I would hope that people would be inspired to be open to adventure in their own lives, whatever that may be,” he said. “To be aware of the wonder of the natural world. And just appreciate what a person or a couple can do. It’s being unafraid of what convention might make of what you’re doing.”

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Mayor Jim Gray often talks about Lexington aspiring to be a “great American city.” But two centuries ago, that is exactly what it was. Many visitors hailed Lexington as the most vibrant and cultured city in what was then Western America.

The reality and myths surrounding Lexington’s so-called Athens of the West era are explored in a new book of essays published by the University Press of Kentucky, Bluegrass Renaissance: The History and Culture of Central Kentucky, 1792-1852.

The book is already in stores, but it will be formally launched at a signing party Sunday, Sept. 16, at 4 p.m. at the Hunt Morgan House, 253 Market Street. The event is free and open to the public.

Bluegrass Renaissance grew out of a series of lectures in 2007 organized by the University of Kentucky’s Gaines Center for the Humanities and others. Book editors James Klotter, Kentucky’s state historian, and Daniel Rowland, a UK history professor and former Gaines Center director, compiled essays by 15 historians and writers, including my older daughter, Mollie, and me.

The book begins with essays by Klotter and Stephen Aron that place Lexington in the national context of the time and discuss the city’s quick transition from frontier outpost to cultured metropolis.

Gerald Smith and the late Shearer Davis Bowman write about slavery, the “peculiar institution” that built the region’s wealth and would eventually play a big role in both economic and moral bankruptcy.

Randolph Hollingsworth writes about the role women played in early Kentucky, while Maryjean Wall looks at the origins of the signature horse industry. Mark Wetherington and Matthew Clarke profile several influential characters, while John Thelin explores the role higher education played in development and civic pride.

Nikos Pappas writes about musical culture, and Estill Curtis Pennington explains how outstanding portrait painters helped bring artistic culture to Central Kentucky and left what little visual evidence we have of that era’s key players.

Patrick Snadon writes about how Lexington’s leading citizens embraced early America’s most accomplished architect, Benjamin Latrobe. He was commissioned to design six Lexington buildings. Only one survives: Pope Villa, one of the most avant-garde pieces of architecture built during America’s Federalist period.

Mollie and I wrote about Horace Holley, a minister lured to Lexington from Boston, and his role in transforming Transylvania University into one of early America’s most highly regarded universities. Transylvania played a central role in Kentucky’s early education accomplishments and Lexington’s “Athens of the West” reputation.

The book’s dates are somewhat arbitrary: 1792 is the year Kentucky became a state, while 1852 is when Henry Clay, Lexington’s most famous citizen, died. In reality, Lexington’s heyday didn’t begin until after 1800, and its economic, if not cultural, fortunes started waning around 1815. By the end of the 1830s, Lexington had begun a long slide into mediocrity and provincialism.

Lexington’s early prosperity was the result of rich soil, slave labor and the city’s prime location as a hub for early Westward migration and trade. But the city began to struggle after the invention of steamboats allowed two-way commerce on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, which favored river cities such as Cincinnati and Louisville.

Slavery became a huge economic and social liability for Lexington beginning in the 1840s, limiting economic innovation and sparking increased social and racial strife. By clinging so long to slavery, a huge amount of Lexington’s economic capital was wiped out by the Civil War; racism and violence that followed stifled growth and new ideas.

Lexington had lost its economic edge and pioneer spirit. With a few notable exceptions, such as the creation and growth of the University of Kentucky, the city remained intellectually and economically stagnant for nearly a century.

In a short essay that ends the book, Gray makes the point that the past informs the present, and history provides valuable lessons for those who seek to shape the future.

Mollie and I certainly discovered that while researching and writing our chapter. The spectacular rise and fall of Holley at Transylvania in the 1820s reflected issues and attitudes that have shaped two centuries of Kentucky history.

Holley saw huge potential in Kentucky and its people, but was bedeviled by religious disputes, power struggles and petty politics. He finally gave up and left Kentucky, frustrated by an anti-intellectual governor who saw more political advantage in building roads than investing in education.

This book’s title is something of a misnomer: “renaissance” means “revival.” The Athens of the West era was actually Lexington’s “naissant” period. Achieving renaissance is our challenge, and we would be wise to learn lessons from the past.

Helm Place on Bowman Mill Road. Photos by Tom Eblen

Do political disagreements make things tense in your family? It could be worse. You could have been Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.

They were in a tough spot: He was leading the Union through the Civil War. She had 14 brothers and sisters from Lexington; most were Southern sympathizers, and three were killed in Confederate service. Lincoln threatened to jail one of his wife’s sisters when she came to visit, but she still kept smuggling contraband to the South.

Hardest of all was the strain war created between the Lincolns and their favorite Todd relatives: half-sister Emilie Todd Helm and her husband, Benjamin Hardin Helm, a Confederate general.

After Helm was killed in battle, his grieving widow and her three children made tense visits to the White House. Lincoln’s political enemies howled that he was sheltering a traitor. Even the children quarreled: Tad Lincoln said his daddy was the president, but little Katherine Helm insisted the real president was Jefferson Davis.

You know how most of this story ends: The Union prevails; Abraham Lincoln is assassinated; Mary Todd Lincoln struggles with mental illness. But what about her favorite little sister, Emilie, the prettiest of the Todd daughters? The Kentucky Mansions Preservation Foundation will soon be able to tell that story.

Helm Place, the Greek Revival mansion on Bowman Mill Road where Emilie and her children spent the last decades of their lives, has been donated to the foundation to become a museum. There is a lot of renovation and fund-raising ahead, but the mansion already contains enough Lincoln, Helm, Todd and other local artifacts to get off to a great start.

The foundation will celebrate the gift at a dinner and presentation about Helm Place on Sept. 18 at Malone’s Banquets, 3373 Tates Creek Road. Tickets are $38 for members, $42 for others. For reservations, call (859) 233-9999 by Sept. 10.

“This place is a treasure, and we’re excited about the possibilities,” said Gwen Thompson, executive director of the Mary Todd Lincoln House, which also is operated by the foundation.

Mary Genevieve Townsend Murphy, a co-founder and longtime board member of the foundation, left Helm Place to it in trust after her death in 2000 and the death of her husband, Joseph, in April 2011. The foundation took control of the 150-acre property in March and has spent the past few months installing a high-tech security system and live-in caretaker.

Oddly enough, the first white settler on the property was the Todd sisters’ grandfather Levi Todd, who built Todd’s Station fort there in 1779. But because of Indian attacks, Todd abandoned the claim and moved closer to Lexington.

The land later went to Abraham Bowman for his service in the Revolutionary War. In the 1850s, one of Bowman’s descendants built the mansion, originally called Cedar Hall, which sits on a hill at the end of a majestic lawn.

Emilie Todd Helm and her grown children bought the mansion in 1912 — almost exactly a century before the foundation acquired title. Katherine, an accomplished painter, did several family portraits for the house and painted a dining room mural depicting nearby South Elkhorn Creek at sunset. One of her portraits of Mary Todd Lincoln now hangs in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House.

Emilie Helm remained an unreconstructed Confederate until her death in 1930. When Elodie, her youngest daughter, was getting old, she sold the house in 1946 to William H. Townsend, a Lexington lawyer, author and accomplished Lincoln scholar and collector. His daughter Mary moved in with Elodie, who died in 1953. Mary married Joseph Murphy in 1960.

William Townsend, who died in 1964, amassed an amazing collection of Lincoln and early Kentucky artifacts, many of which remain in the house with the Helm family’s possessions. They include several portraits by Matthew Jouett; a table made by Abraham Lincoln’s father; writer James Lane Allen’s desk and documents signed by Lincoln and Henry Clay.

The foundation’s next step is to conduct a study of the mansion’s possibilities as a museum, decide on a plan and raise the money to make it happen. Thompson said she didn’t know how long it would be before Helm Place could welcome visitors.

“Our big priority since March has been making sure the property is secured and cared for,” she said. “We’re just taking it a step at a time.”

Click on each thumbnail to see larger photo and caption:

Maura Reilly-Ulmanek, 17, enjoys taking care of her friend and neighbor Esther Hurlburt’s garden when she is away. But she never expected it to help her win a trip to New York City and a gold medal in the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

The Given Avenue garden is small but elaborate. There is a well-tended mixture of flowering and edible plants, a small koi pond and sculpture. “It’s just a really lovely place to be,” Maura said.

The little garden became a big inspiration for the young poet, who this fall will be a senior at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts at Lafayette High School.

Maura’s poem, esther’s garden, was one of five she entered as a poetry portfolio in Scholastic’s annual competition. She was one of 32 students from Kentucky to win 41 medals — 15 gold, 23 silver and three special awards — in several categories of writing and visual arts. Maura was the state’s only gold medal winner in poetry.

“I think the poem basically is about spirituality and the similarities between religion and spirituality,” Maura said. “It’s hard to ignore how spiritual nature is, and I think just being surrounded by that much life in a garden is touching.”

Hurlburt didn’t see the poem until it was published in Lafayette’s student literary magazine, The Laurel.

“When I read that poem, I was brought to tears,” said Hurlburt, 56, a nurse and Unitarian Universalist minister. “I think she captured God in nature to perfection. I couldn’t have captured that or described it in the way she did in that poem.”

The gold medal included an invitation to attend the awards ceremony last month at Carnegie Hall in New York, where the keynote speaker was Meryl Streep.

“She was just so humble,” Maura said of the acclaimed actress. “It was really nice to hear people who have made it as artists and still feel insecure about their art. She was just so honest; that was my favorite part.”

After the ceremony, there were workshops and presentations for Scholastic winners at Parsons The New School for Design. She also visited relatives in Brooklyn as several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Maura made college visits to two “dream schools,” Columbia and Yale, during the six-day trip. She also is considering the University of Chicago, Centre College and Transylvania University, where last summer she participated in the Governor’s School for the Arts.

Maura traveled with Rebecca Powell, a close family friend. Her mother, Siobain Reilly, a Montessori teacher, and step-father, Darrell Wiggett, who works with computers, stayed home with Maura’s sisters, 6 and 1.

In addition to writing, Maura likes photography and has a small business making portraits for other high school students. She donated her services to shoot brochure pictures for Legacy Home Ministry, a non-profit organization Hurburt founded that provides housing for elderly women of limited means.

Maura is considering careers in museum curation and journalism. She has loved writing stories for “as long as I can remember,” but has focused on poetry since entering SCAPA as a freshman.

“I like the way words fit together,” she said. “I think I was always intimidated by poems because you have only so many words to express what you’re trying to say. Eventually, I started to enjoy the challenge, because every single word is important.”

Hurlburt thinks her young neighbor will continue to impress others, as she has impressed her. “She’s a cool, sophisticated thinking young woman with immense talent,” she said.

Here are Maura Reilly-Ulmanek’s winning poems:

esther’s garden

i wish you could have seen
mother teresa holding hands
with Him for the first time
their soft fingertips
tasting of lavender
and lemongrass

i’ve tried to tell father daniel
that esther’s rain-glazed benches
are as good as any pews
and i’d like to feel moss and
soil under my knees
when i stoop to pray

you’d think she’s trying
to teach all things to speak
in latin greek and love

can’t the black-eyed susans
say amen?
let the junebugs
baptize us with rain water
we’ll whisper our confessions
to the steady koi

the cicadas hum
the sweetest sermons
you’ll ever hear
listen they’ll coax
the hallelujah
from your lips

i don’t know much about the bible
but you can’t tell me
that He hasn’t written His will
in spiderwebs and slug trails
that we weren’t each born
with a little eden in our bones
teaching us to dance
to the holy murmur
of what is here

hope & dust

this is a poem for anyone
who has ever felt lost
and that is to say
this poem is for you
a stranger once told me
we all feel made of dust sometimes
and i know this to be true
but sister brother silent friend
dust is sometimes beautiful
the way it collects on windowsills
and carries through the air
just as you are beautiful
in the way you wear short sleeves
even with your scars
and the way you hold hope
so awkwardly in your palms

salsa

our kitchen is
paul newman’s vinaigrette
such a sweet saucy smile
plastered to cans
mason jars
and movie screens

we watch him waltz
across the counter
with elvis presley
and he is the queen
as they share a smoke
ignore the jealous glances
from chef boyardee

marilyn monroe is holding
a black umbrella
above them
as they slide towards
the sink

because she is tired
of assuming the same roles
the same compromising positions

she wants it to be love

frail bones

i think i’m
beginning to realize
how afraid you are
of being more
than hips and breasts
and the gap between your thighsi saw your hand slip
while you were cutting
and i saw the look on your face too
realizing that there is only
soft tilapia flesh and
plum patterned blood vessels
separating you from each of your
two hundred and six lovely bonesyou fear them each equally
because it would be such a shame
to realize that even one
inch of you isn’t perfect
and i don’t know that you
would see the beauty
in your mango pulp organs
the pink flesh that puckers
a redblue bundle of nervesi wondered once
what facts were stitched
into the fabric of our skins
if our palms and ankles
and birthmarks
could betray us as brutally
as our wordsi wanted to ask you
if you thought skeletons
were ever ugly

Dear Mona

I love the poem you wrote
and I’m sorry you felt
like it didn’t belong to you.

You should know
that it ended up stuck
to the postman’s boot
and he took it home
and gave it to his wife.
She decided to give
him another chance, Mona.

And this is part of the reason
that I’m writing to remind you
to be gentle with yourself.

I’m sorry that your boyfriend
has stopped holding your hand
in the grocery store and that
your father doesn’t remember his name
or why you don’t make casseroles
like your mother.

Please remember
that my offer still stands.

The tulips and I
are in agreement
that you are destined
for far greater things.

Love, always
Sam

Concordia was installed Saturday at the Downtown Arts Center. Photos by Tom Eblen

Want to see Lexington’s newest piece of public art? Drive down Main Street to the Downtown Arts Center — and look up.

Sitting on the roof of the old Lexington Laundry Co., an early 20th-century art deco building, is a stack of 15 giant steel cylinders. They lean against a taller wall next door, a neo-classical 19th-century building that forms the center of the arts complex.

The 14,000-pound sculpture, called Concordia, is the work of DeWitt Godfrey, an internationally recognized artist and art professor at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.

Godfrey and crane operators from Lexington’s Wilhite Ltd. spent 14 hours installing the sculpture Saturday, despite temperatures above 100 degrees. “They got very hot to the touch,” Godfrey said of the cylinders.

Godfrey left Lexington this week to cool off, but he will return to give a talk about the sculpture at 5:30 p.m. July 31 in the arts center, 141 East Main Street.

Concordia is typical of Godfrey’s work: creating cylinders by bolting together thick strips of Cor-Ten steel, an alloy that doesn’t corrode once it takes on a rusty patina. He stacks cylinders of various sizes, causing them to bend into unique shapes. Small cylinders are stronger and more rigid than big ones. Once in place and settled, the cylinders are bolted together.

“It’s fairly maintenance-free, which is a plus in the public art world,” Godfrey said, adding that the installation should last for decades.

“The process is not dissimilar from building a woodpile or a stacked-stone fence,” he said Sunday afternoon as he showed me the sculpture from behind as we stood on the arts center roof. “Your first priority is to make sure it is stable, doesn’t fall down and functions the way you want.

“The art is not entirely separate from the engineering,” he said. “It’s all about how the cylinders relate to the mass, their adjacencies and the supports.”

Before conceiving the piece, Godfrey spent time walking along Main Street, where he was impressed by the variety of architecture spanning more than 150 years. After the arts center’s architect and structural engineer made sure the building could support the weight, two steel beams were installed for the 18-foot by 28-foot sculpture to rest on.

In creating Concordia, Godfrey was thinking about buttresses, architectural structures that have been used since the Middle Ages to support walls by being built up against them. “Culture and community, they support each other; you don’t have one without the other,” he said. “If there’s symbolism in this, that’s what it is.”

The $72,000 project was a partnership between LexArts, the non-profit arts organization, and the 2010 class of Commerce Lexington’s Leadership Lexington program. Funding came from a $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts grant, private donations, LexArts funding and in-kind contributions.

It is the second major public art installation that LexArts has sponsored recently. Surface Reflections, a 2011 piece by sound artist Bill Fontana, allows listeners at a spot off Main Street to hear water rushing through Town Branch Creek, which is buried below.

As with any piece of public art, LexArts President Jim Clark knows that some people will love Concordia and others will hate it.

“Contemporary art is the hardest to appreciate,” he said. “But if taking pictures is any clue of people’s liking of this, they have been doing a lot of that.”

Van Meter Pettit, an architect and Leadership Lexington class member, loves the sculpture.

“It fits nicely in a historic streetscape,” he said. “It doesn’t overshadow the buildings. It’s whimsical but not disrespectful.”

The process also was special: a call was put out to artists worldwide, and more than 100 submitted ideas. Rather than being given a specific location and criteria, they were asked to create their own vision for Lexington.

Arts professionals culled the submissions to 14, and public input was gathered at the 2010 Creative Cities Summit and other venues to narrow the finalists to five, from which a Leadership Lexington class committee chose Godfrey’s proposal.

Clark said he wants to create a “museum without walls” of world-class public art around Lexington, by Kentucky and international artists. Godfrey said this approach, which gives artists the freedom to be creative, is the way to achieve that goal.

“From the very beginning, it was, ‘Where do you see your work?’” Godfrey said. “It sets up a wonderful range of what other things are possible.”

The Miller House is a masterpiece of modern architecture that people either love or hate. When it was vacant and empty, some prospective buyers didn’t know what to make of it.

The house off Chilesburg Road provided the perfect challenge for Tom Caywood’s new company, Showcase Realty Services, which brings a different economic model to the business of staging vacant luxury homes for sale.

Working for the bank that has been trying to sell the Miller House for 16 months, Caywood and Melody Farris Jackson, an artist and designer, furnished and decorated the house. Then Caywood found three people to live there and keep it in tip-top shape to show prospective buyers.

Perry Dunn, an executive with First Federal Bank, said the house’s transformation has been impressive. “Tom has really taken the bull by the horns to the point that we’re considering raising the price,” he said.

Susan Sloane of Prudential A.S. de Movellan Realty has the 5,771-square-foot house listed now for $999,000. That is down from an initial $1.5 million, Dunn said.

The Miller House, completed in 1992 for Robert and Penny Miller, was designed by José Oubrerie, a French architect and protégé of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, one of the pioneers of modern architecture. After Robert Miller’s death, the house and 20.6 surrounding acres were sold for redevelopment in 2006.

Left empty, the Miller House was vandalized. An architect who admired the house created a non-profit foundation to buy it and two acres, and repaired the vandals’ damage. He hoped to make the house the centerpiece for a development of other modernist homes, but the project failed amid the home-building slump.

First Federal took back the house in January 2011 and has been trying to sell it, Dunn said. That has been tough, in part because of uncertainly about the surrounding property, which once provided tree-covered vistas beyond the house’s glass walls.

Caywood recruited Jackson to help him furnish and decorate the house. She was already very familiar with it: As a part-time teacher in the University of Kentucky’s College of Design in 2008, she had her architecture students measure the Miller House to create precise drawings.

Built mostly of concrete, glass, steel and wood, the house felt emotionally cold without furniture and art, Jackson said. The brilliance of the house’s design is in how it uses space and volume. But, when empty, it was hard for many people to visualize how it could be a comfortable place to live.

Jackson furnished the house with art, including some of her own, and a borrowed Horsemania horse that now stands in the dining room. Jackson and Caywood have filled the house with mid-century modern furniture borrowed from their own homes and those of friends.

“What I tried to do was make it so a prospective buyer could come in and say, ‘Wow, I see how this house is put together,’” she said. “And having people inhabit the house allows us to fill cabinets and give it a homey feel.”

Caywood, a former online advertising executive with the Herald-Leader and other newspaper companies, said he got the idea for Showcase Realty Services when he moved back to his hometown after living in San Jose, Calif., and Dallas.

Lexington had a number of unique luxury homes that had been on the market for a while. Owners were stuck with high carrying costs, such as utilities and lawn upkeep. They also sometimes had higher insurance premiums because vacant properties are more subject to accidental damage or vandalism.

Lexington also had a number of people with good incomes who wanted high-quality, short-term housing and flexibility for various reasons — a relocation, divorce or temporary job assignment.

The company works like this: Caywood furnishes and decorates the home at no cost to the owner or Realtor, except for any mutually agreed renovations. (The company works only with homes listed with Realtors.) He then finds “resident managers” to live in the home for below-market rent. They also pay utilities and routine maintenance in return for keeping the home neat and clean.

The result, Caywood said, is a win for everyone: The owner gets lower carrying costs and a more presentable and secure house to sell; the Realtor might get a quicker sale; the renter gets a high-quality house at a discount price; and Caywood makes money from the rental payments.

Since starting the company in November, Caywood said, he has worked with one house that sold. Now, in addition to the Miller House, he said he has a luxury condo and a horse farm on the market.

Thomas Merton, the author and Trappist monk, right, visited with John Jacob Niles, singer Jacqueline Roberts, right, and accompanist Janelle Dishman at Boot Hill Farm near Lexington in 1968 shortly before Merton's unexpected death. Niles set many of Merton's poems to music he wrote with Roberts voice in mind. Photo by Helm Roberts

He was a famous folk singer and ballad composer, hoping to make another mark in music before old age caught up with him. She was a singer and a restless young mother, yearning to use her musical talent and training for something more than directing a church children’s choir.

John Jacob Niles and Jacqueline Roberts met in 1967 and were close collaborators for the rest of his life. Their dozen years together defined the last chapter of his career and charted the course for hers.

“My career became the music of John Jacob Niles,” said Roberts, 78, who lives in Gratz Park and is an active vocal coach.

Niles was a major influence on the folk-music revival of the 1950s and 1960s. Now his music is experiencing a revival of its own, with the 120th anniversary of his birth on April 28, 1892.

Jacqueline Roberts with her E dulcimer, a copy of one used by longtime music partner, balladeer John Jacob Niles. Photo by Tom Eblen

A record label in New Mexico just released recordings made in 1952 of Niles performing his songs in the high-pitched, theatrical voice that was his trademark. In Lexington, several well-known performers will appear in a tribute concert, A Celebration of John Jacob Niles, May 2 at the Kentucky Theatre.

Niles’ best-known songs — I Wonder As I Wander, Go ‘Way From My Window and Black Is The Color of My True Love’s Hair — have become folk standards. But classical singers focus on the art songs he wrote in the years before his death in 1980 at age 87.

Many of those art songs — including 22 based on the poetry of Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton — were the product of Niles’ collaboration with Roberts and piano accompanists Janelle Pope Dishman and Nancie Field.

“These are some of the strongest songs of his life,” said Ron Pen, a University of Kentucky music professor and Niles biographer. “And they were written specifically with Jackie Roberts’ voice in mind.”

Roberts, a native of Russell in Greenup County, earned music degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and Miami University in Ohio. After she and her husband, architect Helm Roberts, moved to Lexington from California in 1966, she got a job directing the children’s choir at Second Presbyterian Church. Professionally, she was bored stiff.

Roberts had met Niles at Christ Church Episcopal after she performed his song The Little Familyat an Easter service. Soon afterward, Roberts decided to give a recital at Second Presbyterian. On an impulse, she called Niles to ask what he would suggest she sing.

Niles invited her and Dishman out to his Boot Hill Farm off Athens-Boonesboro Road and made some suggestions. Then he asked them to try out one of his Merton songs to see how it sounded. “Apparently, he liked what he heard,” Roberts said.

On the day of Roberts’ recital, Niles and his wife, Rena, walked in and sat in the front row.

Roberts and Dishman started driving out to Boot Hill each Tuesday and Thursday. They would arrive at 10 a.m., work with Niles for two hours on his latest composition, then have a glass of wine and a sumptuous lunch prepared by the Nileses’ cook, Mary Tippie Mullins.

“For me, it was a gift from heaven,” Roberts said. “I had a 3-year-old, and I was just glad to have someplace to go twice a week.”

The young women helped Niles explore new facets of songwriting. Those sessions led to performances at parties the Nileses gave at Boot Hill for their eclectic group of friends. Then, Niles asked “the girls,” as he called them, to accompany him and his wife on concert tours all over the country, which Roberts did for a decade. In 1970, Field succeeded Dishman as the accompanist.

Jacqueline Roberts, left, Nancie Field and John Jacob Niles perform in concert at Transylvania University in 1975. Photo by Helm Roberts

Niles was a controversial character. The way he borrowed and blended folk ballads into his own compositions irritated some academics. Many people were put off by his big personality, quirky voice and dramatic performance style, which included playing large dulcimers that he would embrace on stage like a lover.

“He came off as an arrogant person, and I was told that my career would never go anywhere if I worked with him,” Roberts said. “Well, that was all I needed. I respected him. I didn’t care what the community thought of him.”

Roberts said the John Jacob Niles she knew was nothing like his public persona. He was patient and kind; an excellent musician and a well-organized composer. The greatest reward of their collaboration, she said, was being able to help shape songs literally as they were being written.

“It was like seeing something being born,” she said. “I saw him in all his moods. I saw him cry when he was touched by the music. I saw him proud when a composition was finished.”

One of their most special times came in 1968, when Thomas Merton left the Abbey of Gethsemani in Nelson County and traveled to Boot Hill Farm to listen to them perform musical interpretations of his poetry. Although Merton’s 1948 autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was an international best-seller, Roberts had never heard of him.

The Catholic monk arrived wearing jeans, work shoes and a sweater. “I thought he would be in a long robe and a hat,” Roberts said.

Merton, she said, didn’t seem to know what to make of Niles. “I think he found him to be a funny old man,” she said. But he liked what Niles had done with his poetry. As Roberts sang, she saw tears in Merton’s eyes.

Merton made a second trip to Boot Hill that year. Roberts said she thinks there would have been many more visits had Merton not died in an accident soon afterward while attending an interfaith conference in Thailand.

Over the years, Roberts became close friends with “Johnnie” and Rena, a Russian émigré who supported her husband’s career as faithfully as Helm Roberts supported his wife’s. Despite a busy practice in architecture and city planning, and the pressures of helping raise two sons, Helm Roberts photographed and recorded many of her performances with Niles.

Helm Roberts, who died on his 80th birthday on Aug. 26, is best known for designing the Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Frankfort — a giant sundial that points to the name of each fallen soldier on the anniversary of his death.

Pen, the biographer, said Jackie Roberts made a huge contribution to the last chapter of Niles’ career. Their collaboration “sparked his imagination,” he said. “It gave him the will to keep writing at a time when most people retire.”

Since Niles’ death, Roberts has been a successful musician and a valuable resource for singers and scholars. “She has an interpretive knowledge of these songs that is really special,” Pen said. “She is a very informed singer and a master teacher.”

Roberts is often sought out by singers who want to know more about Niles’ music and how to perform it.

“Occasionally, throughout history, a few composers have been able to collaborate with a performer in a special way, to have the luxury of trying out material and writing for a specific voice,” Pen said. “This was one of those relationships.”

A Celebration of John Jacob Niles

Who: Hope Koehler, The Reel World String Band, soloists from the American Spiritual Ensemble, Tedrin Blair Lindsay and James Douglas.

When: 7:30 p.m., May 2.

Where: Kentucky Theatre.

Details: Tickets $20, $5 with student ID.

Call: (859) 685-1030 or Multigramproductions.com

Want to hear John Jacob Niles?

L.H. Dupli-cation, a New Mexico record label owned by Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost of the band A Hawk and a Hacksaw, has just issuedThe Boone-Tolliver Recordings, 13 tracks of Niles performing his music at his Boot Hill Farm on Athens-Boonesboro Road. Niles first issued the records on his own Boot Hill label in 1952, and they have been out of print since. More information: Ahawkandahacksaw.net

Singer Jacqueline Roberts, left, accompanist Nancie Field (and before her, Janelle Dishman) made twice-weekly visits to John Jacob Niles' Boot Hill Farm near Lexington for two-hour work sessions. "The girls," as Niles called them, helped him as he composed. Photo by Helm Roberts.