The Bluegrass and Beyond

Readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine recently voted the 21C Museum Hotel in Louisville as the nation’s best hotel.

It was in the news last week and discussed on NBC’s Today Show this week.

“It sounds like the idea behind this is brilliant,” said Today Show host Matt Lauer, who seemed barely able to hide his surprise that Kentucky could be on the cutting edge of anything.

The 90-room luxury hotel that houses a public, all-hours contemporary art museum really is brilliant, and the Today Show and Conde Nast Traveler are just the most recent examples of the positive buzz it has created for Louisville.

The 21C was the brainchild of Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, who worked with Lexington-based Gray Construction to create the museum/hotel by renovating and connecting four century-old buildings.

The complex is not far from developer Bill Weyland’s Glassworks art and office complex and Louisville Slugger factory and museum. They are all on Louisville’s West Main Street, in renovated old buildings that less imaginative developers would have demolished.

These attractions have sparked a vibrant entertainment district popular with locals and visitors alike. Last year, the American Planning Association named West Main Street as one of the nation’s 10 best streets.

Gray Construction’s chairman, Lexington Vice Mayor Jim Gray, worked closely with Brown and Wilson to create 21C - and it wasn’t easy. Some of the buildings needed new foundations and steel reinforcement. “There was one day when we almost lost one of them,” he said.

But Brown and Wilson never considered tearing down the old buildings, Gray said. And it wasn’t just because the $180-a-square-foot cost of renovation was cheaper than new construction.

“They knew that the character of the old buildings was what would inspire and create the energy for the project,” Gray said. “Within the frame of the old buildings they were going to create something new and contemporary and inspiring.”

Last year, during Lexington’s debate over the now-stalled CentrePointe project, Gray often mentioned 21C as an alternative approach to the generic skyscraper developer Dudley Webb planned. Webb could create something special by saving some of the 14 old buildings he wanted to tear down and weaving them into a quality piece of contemporary architecture.

Webb wasn’t interested. The old buildings weren’t worth saving, he said, even though renovation would have been cheaper than new construction.

So, here we are more than a year later. The block has been cleared of 180 years of Lexington history. CentrePointe is stalled and probably dead. Louisville has 21C and a lot of national buzz. Lexington has a pasture in the middle of town and a missed opportunity.

But it’s not Lexington’s only opportunity.

A few blocks away, developer Barry McNees is scraping together money to create the Lexington Distillery District. His vision is to renovate two abandoned bourbon distilleries and other industrial buildings in one of the city’s long-neglected neighborhoods. They would become the nucleus for a mixed-use neighborhood reflecting Lexington’s heritage and authentic culture.

The Distillery District is struggling amid the credit crunch. Still, the 150-year-old Old Tarr Distillery warehouse has become Buster’s, a popular nightclub. Galleries and artists’ studios are sprouting nearby.

“You clean that place up and it’s a destination,” Gray said of the Distillery District. “There’s nothing like it in Lexington, and that’s what appeals to people.”

So here’s the question for May Jim Newberry’s administration and Lexington’s business leadership: Where should this city place its bet? Will a prosperous future look more like what’s happening on Louisville’s West Main Street, or what’s been happening for 30 years on Lexington’s West Main Street?

Tuesday is the National Day on Writing. Do you have a sentence or two to contribute?

If so, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning wants to hear from you. To celebrate this day, the center is putting together what it calls the “longest short story ever written.”

The center is seeking contributions from average folks and from established local authors, including Ed McClanahan and Bobbie Ann Mason. First lady Jane Beshear plans to finish the story during an event at 5:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Center in Gratz Park.

The idea is to put together a snapshot of Lexington and what’s going on in people’s lives this day, said Neil Chethik, the Carnegie Center’s writer-in-residence.

People can add their contributions by stopping by the Carnegie Center from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or at the following places and times: Starbucks in Chevy Chase, 7-9 a.m.; Starbucks downtown, Third Street Stuff or the Eagle Creek Library, 9-11 a.m.; Joseph Beth Booksellers or Barnes & Noble, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; The Morris Book Shop, Waldenbooks or Northside Library, 1-3 p.m.; or the Village Branch and Central libraries or Common Grounds Coffee, 3-5 p.m.

Ed McClanahan

McClanahan has started the story with these two sentences: “I found her sitting on a bench in Woodland Park. She looked up when my shadow fell on the letter she was writing.”

McClanahan, whose books include The Natural Man, said he doesn’t know what will come from this community story.

“It will generate some interest among people (in writing), I’m sure,” said McClanahan.

He said writing is a useful exercise for anyone. “It is an opportunity to examine one’s life and experiences and thinking processes. It’s a way of looking at yourself and what’s going on in the world.”

This community story will be written on butcher paper, the pieces of which will be taped together into a big scroll. Excerpts will be published online, including on www.galleryofwriting.org, the Web site of the National Council of Teachers of English, which sponsors the National Day on Writing.

It sounds like a fun project. I’m just glad I don’t have to edit it.

“I’m glad I don’t have to, either,” McClanahan said.

The old building doesn’t look like much, standing across East Third Street from a demolition site and the King Cobras motorcycle club. A small sign in a window behind a steel-bar security door says: LOT Parrish Rash.

Since early this year, it has been the Land of Tomorrow, an occasional gallery, and the workshop of Parrish Rash & van Dissel, a small company with big ambitions.

PR&vD hopes to encourage artists and industrial designers around the world to innovate by creating new and more profitable ways for them to produce and market their work.

At the company’s workshop last week, there were three projects under way: A high-design chaise being made of Styrofoam and urethane for a Vienna art museum; a stage set for The xx, a British rock band; and another UK professor’s project that involves creating a LED lighting system for a large model of a planned community in China that will be exhibited in Germany.

Upcoming work includes a piece for a show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and two pieces for a show at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Later this month, LOT will bring collectors from across the country together with an international group of designers represented by the NOUS Gallery of London, England. The event will include a mixed-media show called Boys and Their Toys, which will be on display from Oct. 30 to Nov. 8. The opening reception Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. is open to the public.

Why would these collectors and designers travel thousands of miles for an event in Lexington?

“High-end collectors are looking for new places to discover work,” said LOT founder Drura Parrish. The event will include a dinner, an afternoon at Keeneland and plenty of bourbon. “You sell the destination, not the art.”

It also didn’t hurt that one of the British gallery’s principals, designer Melissa Woolford, is originally from Evansville, Ind., across the Ohio River from Parrish’s hometown of Henderson.

Good connections and a “why not?” attitude have enabled Parrish and his business partner, Rives Rash, to build an international reputation over the past six years by working with contemporary artists and architects to produce their designs. Their work has appeared at such venues as New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Vienna’s MAK Center and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Parrish and Rash are faculty members at the University of Kentucky’s College of Design. They’re also workshop wizards who never outgrew playing with sticks and glue.

“The reputation got out there that if you wanted to do something crazy, there’s these guys from Virginia and Kentucky who will help you do something crazy,” said Parrish, who, like Rash, earned a graduate degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

During the past 15 years, technology has revolutionized architecture and design. Parrish, 33, and Rash, 30, have created a niche by exploring the possibilities of new design geometries and materials.

The company’s newest partner, Bart van Dissel, 55, a former Harvard Business School professor and McKinsey & Co. consultant, sees an opportunity for PR&vD to change the economics of design by connecting designers, manufacturers and customers.

That means working with designers to build prototypes and figure out manufacturing processes and costs. PR&vD would do some manufacturing itself and outsource some work to other Kentucky manufacturers.

In addition to fine art, PR&vD is interested in making furniture and household items — really, any object that might be improved by innovative design.

“There needs to be a democratization of design,” Parrish said. “People used to not give a damn about design because they couldn’t afford it.” That is changing as high-design items show up on the shelves of such retailers as IKEA and Target.

Designers haven’t been well-served by traditional retail models, where mass production and big sales volume are necessary and retailers get as much as 60 percent of the price. It gives designers little incentive to innovate or take risks.

For that reason, PR&vD also is interested in exploring new retail models, from online sales to distribution through museum stores.

“The key point is to shift the way the designers do business,” Parrish said. “Our paradigm is simple: Put designers first, and they become the brand.”

PR&vD has begun making several products for sale on www.etsy.com, an arts and crafts site. They include flatware, lamps, chairs and decorative items made from a mix of urethane and tree limbs salvaged from last winter’s ice storm.

There are limits to what can be made in PR&vD’s rented workshop, which also must accommodate the building owner’s bass boat. It is moved around the room as space is needed.

“It adds soul to the workshop,” Parrish said of the bass boat.

“And it reminds us that we don’t go fishing enough,” van Dissel added.

Parrish thinks Kentucky is an ideal place for the kind of creative, specialized manufacturing that PR&vD has in mind. The state has a wealth of aluminum and plastics fabricators who located here for the auto industry but could use more work.

“Kentucky, more than any place I know, is tied to making and doing,” he said. “If we don’t do it as a profession, we often do it as a hobby. It’s just what we do.”

After all, look what PR&vD has done so far with limited equipment in an old building on East Third Street. In the land of tomorrow, what’s important are ideas — and people with the knowledge and connections to make them work.

Remind me never to schedule an overseas vacation again during the annual Idea Festival in Louisville. There are just too many interesting things going on there to miss.

Idea Festival founder Kris Kimel sent me this photo today, which was taken during the festival late last month. It shows a sidewalk painting by Julian Beever, a Belgian-based chalk artist. He did this work on a Louisville sidewalk during the festival. Amazing.

When Brian and Sara Turner finished their first concert poster in 2003, they wanted to sign it with the name of their studio.

Trouble was, the Lexington couple didn’t have a studio, although it was a dream beginning to form.

What they had was a small workspace in their damp basement, which was infested with crickets.

In a moment of whimsy, a word people sometimes use to describe their distinctive, colorful and eye-catching art, Cricket Press was born.

Now, you can see Cricket Press’ posters and other artwork all over Lexington — and across the country — promoting concerts, small music gigs, festivals, businesses and even weddings.

“Once our work got out there, other bands and venues started contacting us, and it took off from there,” Sara said. “Lexington has been very good to us.”

Cricket Press will be featured in a segment of Kentucky Educational Television’s Kentucky Life show Oct. 17-24. And The Morris Book Shop on Southland Drive will host an event 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Nov. 13 where the Turners will sign a book of their art.

Cricket Press is what can happen when two people combine their personal and artistic passions and figure out a way to make both a life and a living.

Sara, 32, a Lexington native, and Brian, 34, of Frankfort, met when they were fine-arts photography students at the University of Kentucky. After graduation and their marriage in 2000, they got good corporate jobs as graphic artists. “We were creating stuff, but we weren’t satisfied,” Brian said.

In addition to art, they loved music, especially indie rock, punk and jazz. They also loved riding bicycles, which are frequently a theme in Brian’s art. As music fans, the Turners came to admire gig poster art and figured out how to make prints using silk screens.

“They taught screen printing at UK, but we never took it,” she said.

The Turners usually begin a piece with a pen-and-ink sketch, which is then digitally scanned and refined. Each piece is hand printed, with a minimum order of 50 pieces. Job prices begin at about $300.

The Turners say they rarely collaborate on pieces. Each has his and her own style and interests, although they say their styles have become more similar.

“I’ve heard people say they can tell a Brian poster from a Sara poster,” he said.

Cricket Press is still a home-based business. In addition to the basement work space, the enterprise has taken over much of their home, with his and her computers in one bedroom, a printing press in another. Print-drying lines are strung across the upstairs hall, and a downstairs room is used for mailing, storage and cleaning screens.

So much work was coming in by 2005 that Brian quit his job to devote himself full time to Cricket Press. Sara works part-time as a graphic artist but doesn’t think it will be long before the business can fully support them both.

In addition to the orders for custom work, the bulk of their business, the Turners sell art prints and note cards through their Web site, www.cricket-press.com, and www.etsy.com, a site for art and craft sales.

Because their personal and artistic relationship is such an important part of Cricket Press, the Turners don’t want their business to get too big for the two of them.

Eventually, though, they would like to have their home back and move Cricket Press into a separate studio.

They want a studio with more room to print larger pieces, and a storefront that would be more convenient for local customers. But no crickets, thank you.

Non basta una vita - Italian for “one life is not enough” - was the late John Regis Tuska’s motto to describe his artistic ambitions.

Now, his son is discovering that two lives may not be enough, either.

For the past dozen years, Seth Tuska has worked to preserve and publicize the legacy of his father, a prolific artist and University of Kentucky art professor who died in 1998 at age 67.

Seth Tuska, 51, turned the family home at the corner of Old Park and Central avenues into a museum of his father’s art. He engaged a filmmaker and curator to put together a documentary film about his father and catalog and traveling show of his work.

He sought commercial outlets for reproductions of Tuska pictures and sculptures, which depict the human form in motion. And he started a bronze foundry on Walton Avenue to support regional sculptors.

But last November, after a bronze-pouring at the foundry, Tuska said he went home with a ringing in his ears. Then, on Christmas morning, he awoke at 4 a.m. with an intense pain in his chest. Foolishly, he didn’t see a doctor for three weeks. When he did, he was taken straight in for quadruple heart bypass surgery.

But the worst was still to come.

Tuska said when he resumed normal physical activity in March, the ringing in his ears, which had never really gone away, got much worse. He now suffers from a severe case of tinnitus - a constant sound like cicadas in his head that makes it hard to sleep, read or concentrate.

Tuska said he now needs to deal with his medical crisis and entrust his father’s legacy to others. “I have to move on and figure out what’s ahead for the rest of my life,” he said.

The first public steps in that direction will come Friday. Mayor Jim Newberry is to issue a proclamation honoring John Tuska and his work, and he will accept the loan of a bronze figure, Energy Source, for display at city hall.

That evening, during Gallery Hop, the Kentucky Theatre Gallery will display 18 Tuska pieces. The theater will have two showings, at 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., of  Non Basta Una Vita, a 2008 documentary about John Tuska by Arthur Rouse and Kiley Lane.

Thanks to the event’s sponsors, attendees also will be given a film poster, popcorn and a drink. Tuska said he has worked with local arts educators to distribute many of the 600 tickets to students.

Where things go from there, Tuska said, depends on community interest - both artistic, and financial.

Tuska sold the foundary to artist Amanda Matthews Fields and enlisted a group of community leaders to advise him on how to proceed with setting up a non-profit Tuska Museum and Learning Center foundation to take over the family home and his collection of his father’s art.

Tuska lives upstairs in the home, but is in the process of moving out. He wants to keep the collection of his father’s work in Lexington.

His vision is to continue the home’s first floor museum. But, more importantly, he wants to use the upstairs apartment to house visiting artists and the 2,500-square-foot lower level for educational space.

Downtown developer Phil Holoubek, a member of the advisory group, said several strategies have been discussed. “Seth will have to decide what he feels most comfortable doing,” he said.

Holoubek said the Tuska collection includes outstanding art that could not only enrich the community culturally, but promote economic development.

LexArts President Jim Clark, who for six years directed the New York Public Art Fund, agreed. “If John Tuska had done this work in New York City he would have been a very prominent sculptor,” he said.

Clark sees a lot of potential for the Tuska Museum and Learning Center, if it gets the right leadership that can attract the necessary money.

“Having a house museum is perfect for Lexington,” Clark said. “It is intimate in scale. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood. Anybody flying into Lexington for the (horse) sales, that would be a perfectly lovely discovery. Part of that is just working with what they’ve got and marketing it.”

With more regular museum hours, more advertising and an experienced curator, Clark thinks the Tuska museum could become an important cultural destination. And he thinks Seth Tuska has the right idea about using his father’s legacy to encourage arts education.

In addition to the high quality of John Tuska’s work, Clark said, what made him special was his dedication to teaching. Great artists who also are great arts educators, like Tuska and Centre College’s Stephen Rolfe Powell, are rare.

A learning center that promoted arts education - and honored arts educators with a “Tuska prize” and residency - could put Lexington on the arts map. “That would be a very big deal in this country,” Clark said.

What’s needed now is for people to step up and help Seth Tuska make it happen.

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FRANKFORT — Margaret Robinson Robertson lived in the Old Governor’s Mansion in the early 1840s, when son-in-law Robert Letcher was the governor. Legend has it that her ghost appears whenever evil befalls the house.

The way the place looks now, don’t expect to see her any time soon.

The 211-year-old mansion has just undergone a privately financed $1.5 million face lift so it can take on a new role as the state’s guest house and official entertainment space for the governor.

The magnificent renovation was a statewide, all-volunteer effort involving more than 300 people, including designers, decorators, contractors and donors who each adopted small parts of the mansion.

The renovation will be unveiled later this month with a series of big-ticket events, proceeds from which will benefit the Kentucky Executive Mansions Foundation and Kentucky Equine Humane Center. The home will then be open for $10 public tours Sept. 19 to Oct. 3.

“We wanted the house to be a welcoming spot for people who come to Kentucky,” said David Buchta, state curator and director of the Division of Historic Properties. His office oversaw the renovation with the mansions foundation and Kentucky Historic Properties Advisory Commission.

“It’s a great shrine to Kentucky’s history,” said Steve Collins, chairman of the commission and son of former Gov. Martha Layne Collins.

The home was first occupied in 1798, two years before the White House. For many years, it was the nation’s oldest executive residence.

The mansion housed 33 Kentucky governors until 1914, when the current governor’s mansion was built beside the “new” Capitol. From 1956 to 2002, the old mansion housed 10 lieutenant governors.

Eight U.S. presidents have visited the mansion, from James Monroe to Bill Clinton, as well as such notables as Henry Clay, Aaron Burr and William Jennings Bryan.

“There’s no other house in Kentucky that has been used like this one — that has the stories and history and reputation,” said Collins, a Shelbyville lawyer and funeral director.

The General Assembly put up money to build the governor’s mansion in 1795 after the state’s first governor, Isaac Shelby, convinced lawmakers that a rented log cabin just wouldn’t do. It was completed in 1798.

Although the mansion’s federal-style exterior was rather plain, it was called the Palace when Shelby’s successor, James Garrard, became its first occupant. It was the first home in Frankfort with carpet. A crowd gathered when the city’s first piano was delivered to its parlor.

Two men who helped build the house later lived there: Thomas Metcalfe, a stonemason who helped lay the foundation, was governor from 1828 to 1832; and Letcher, who helped lay the Flemish-bond brick, was governor from 1840 to 1844.

The house hasn’t been occupied since 2002, when then-Lt. Gov. Steve Henry moved out to make way for a renovation. Last year, the idea emerged to turn the home into a state guest house, like Blair House in Washington.

(Francis Preston Blair, by the way, was a Frankfort journalist who moved to the nation’s capital in 1830. Seven years later, he took up residence in the Pennsylvania Avenue house that now bears his name.)

First lady Jane Beshear, former first lady Phyllis George and Meg Jewett, owner of the L.V. Harkness & Co. gift shop in Lexington, led the renovation effort. They and others recruited volunteers and donors from all over.

Longwood Antique Woods of Lexington donated flooring for the downstairs powder room. The wood came from the Lexington barn of 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral.

Louisville artist Sandy Kimura donated nine weeks of her time to paint a mural around the main hall in the style of early 19th-century Zuber wallpaper. It incorporates Kentucky scenes, such as Daniel Boone looking across the Cumberland Gap and the gentlemen on the state seal shaking hands, for which Buchta and Collins posed in period wigs.

“I’m going to get it out and wear it to some of the events,” Collins joked.

The house now contains a treasure trove of Kentucky furniture and art. There’s a rare 1815 cherry Sheraton sideboard in the dining room, thought to be the work of a Maysville cabinetmaker. Other items include chairs from Henry Clay’s law office, and modern Appalachian furniture and crafts that furnish a third-floor bedroom.

Other furniture and art has been donated or is on loan from the state, the Kentucky Historical Society, the Speed Museum, the Filson Club, the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, the Rebecca and Jay Rayburn Collection and several individuals.

Recognizable to many Kentuckians will be four original paintings by Paul Sawyier, whose Kentucky landscapes from a century ago remain popular as prints.

“Every room has something significant,” Buchta said. “Without the generosity of a lot of people, this project wouldn’t have been nearly as successful.”

As a former resident of the mansion, Collins said he is especially appreciative of all of the people who have made it a showplace.

Collins was a student at Georgetown College when his mother was elected lieutenant governor in 1979. He lived in a third-floor bedroom and remembers the mansion as a busy place that was used for many public functions.

Collins said he encountered many people in the mansion, but not the ghost of Margaret Robinson Robertson.

“We never saw her,” he said. “But we felt very safe when we lived here.”

• If you go

  Kentucky Mansion Celebration

  ■ First Ladies’ Luncheon, noon, Sept. 15, $110.

  ■ Brunch in the Garden with Jon Carloftis, 11 a.m. Sept. 16, $110.

  ■ Governor’s Barbecue & Unbridled Spirits, 7 p.m. Sept. 17, $210.

  ■ Preview Gala, 7 p.m. Sept. 18, $300.

  ■ Public tours, Sept. 19-Oct. 3. $10.

  For tickets and more information, go to www.kymansioncelebration.org or call (502) 226-6440.

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Today I have updates on two previous columns, plus a tip on how you can help a new neighbor while scoring a cheap set of wheels.

You may remember the story of Gordon Burnette of Lexington, a tool-and-die maker and amateur art sleuth.

After a neighbor died and her house was sold, Burnette noticed several old, beat-up paintings on the curb. One showing a mare and foal caught his eye. Written on the back was the mare’s name, the artist’s name and June 1882.

Gordon Burnette and Genevieve Baird Lacer with the Thomas J. Scott painting Burnette found on the curb. Photo by Tom Eblen

Impressed by the painting’s quality, Burnette had it restored. Then he began a quest to learn more about the mysterious Thomas J. Scott, one of the top equine artists of the 19th century. He also created a Web site (www.thomasjscott.com) in hopes of identifying other Scott paintings, many of which have been lost over time.

Since the column appeared in May, the Headley-Whitney Museum has agreed to host an exhibit next year of paintings by Scott and his more-famous teacher, Edward Troye. And Burnette has heard from several people with Scott paintings who had no idea what they had.

A Louisville woman bought one at an auction, where it was propping open the door.

The strangest call came from a Lexington woman with a painting almost identical to Burnette’s, only smaller.

“She was so thrilled because she had had this painting all these years and didn’t know who the horses were, who the artist was or where it came from,” Burnette said. He thinks it was the study for his painting, or a copy made for a subsequent owner of the horse.

Where had the painting been hanging all these years? About three blocks away.

Money for Tanzania

Like Burnette, Flaget Nally had no intention of embarking on a quest. But that’s what happened as she was ending a three-year stint as a Catholic lay missionary in Tanzania.

Flaget Nally

A group of nuns asked Nally to raise money for them to build an English-language boarding school for as many as 800 girls of all faiths in a part of Tanzania where girls rarely have a chance to be educated. The Bardstown native had no idea how to do that — or even if she could.

Nally formed Giant Steps for African Girls (www.educateafricangirls.org), which held a fund-raising walk in Lexington last April and other events around Kentucky. So far, it has raised more than $104,000. About $50,000 of that has come from the Lexington area.

A cheap set of wheels?

While writing about Bike Lexington in May, I mentioned Shifting Gears, a partnership between Pedal Power bicycle shop and Kentucky Refugee Ministries, a multi-denomination Christian group that works with the U.S. State Department to resettle legal refugees.

Shifting Gears takes good-quality bikes, which are either donated or taken in trade by Pedal Power, and fixes them up to give to refugees, many of whom have no other transportation. Shop employees and volunteers fix bikes; others are sold to raise money for parts.

The goal is 52 bikes a year. “We’ve been able to beat that every year,” said Brad Flowers, a partner in Bullhorn Marketing who started Shifting Gears in 2003 while working at Pedal Power.

Last year, more than 80 bikes were given away. In addition to adult bikes for refugees, children’s bikes are given to The Nest, a non-profit social service agency off North Limestone.

Pedal Power owner Billy Yates said community response has been so strong that he has far more donated bikes than Shifting Gears can fix. They’ve filled his shop’s attic, and some have to go.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Saturday, Yates will be selling about 200 of the bikes for between $25 and $75 in the parking lot of his shop at Maxwell and Upper streets. There also will be bike parts for as little as a dollar each. All proceeds go to Shifting Gears and Kentucky Refugee Ministries.

“This sale will raise money to allow us to continue fixing up some bikes and give us some space to get more organized and efficient,” Yates said.

FRANKFORT —Frank Lloyd Wright was hired in 1910 to design a Frankfort home for a Presbyterian minister he met during a trip to Europe. But it would be nearly four decades before the architect would visit his creation.

Wright was speaking in Louisville and Lexington, and he asked to be taken by the house. When the man who then lived there answered the door, the story goes, Wright walked in as if he owned the place.

During the visit, the man asked Wright, then 80, what he had in mind when he designed the display case around the top of the living room fireplace. It is the only one like it in any of the hundreds of homes Wright designed.

After a few moments, Wright replied that he couldn’t remember what he was thinking at the time, “But I’m sure it was very advanced.”

Ed Stodola, who has owned the Rev. Jesse Zeigler house at 509 Shelby Street for nine years, smiles when he tells the story. Wright was almost as famous for his outsize ego as for his innovative architecture, so Stodola thinks the story of that 1948 visit just might be true.

One thing is for sure: Of the more than 1,000 structures Wright designed during his 70-year career as perhaps America’s greatest architect, only one was built in Kentucky.

Wright is getting a lot of attention this year, the 50th anniversary his death in 1959 at age 91. It also is the 50th anniversary of Wright’s last great building, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The art museum on Fifth Avenue marked the occasion with a retrospective of Wright’s work.

Wright is best known for his “prairie” style buildings that blend into the natural landscape. His most famous creations might be the Guggenheim and Fallingwater, a house built over a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania.

Wright’s ideas about architecture had a profound influence on 20th-century home design, from the bungalows of the 1920s to the ranch-style homes of the 1950s. He pioneered and popularized open floor plans, built-in cabinets and carports. He experimented with pre-fabrication and even designed furniture and fixtures for his houses.

Stodola and his wife, Sue, are Wisconsin natives who were taught in school about native son Frank Lloyd Wright the way Kentucky children are taught about Abraham Lincoln.

Stodola, a psychologist, was living in Lexington in 2001 but doing most of his work in Frankfort. He vowed he would move to Frankfort if the Zeigler house ever came up for sale. Driving by one day, he noticed a “for sale” sign in the yard. He soon bought the house, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The four-bedroom Zeigler house, which like most Wright houses is of modest size and distinguished by strong horizontal lines, was built by a Frankfort contractor. The leaded-glass windows and Roman brick on the fireplace came from Wright’s studio in Chicago, Stodola said.

Zeigler, who had a wife and three children, economized in a few places: the upstairs floors are heart pine, rather than oak, and plain glass was used in rear, upstairs windows.

All but one room open to an outside terrace or deck. That and the windows help accomplish Wright’s goal of “organic” architecture that visually brings the outside environment inside.

There are many small design touches, such as the pink dogwood blooms painted on the shades of wall-mounted light fixtures in the master bedroom, echoing the pink dogwood tree that has always been in the front yard.

Although Wright’s designs are an architect’s dream, they can be a structural engineer’s nightmare. Fallingwater has been jokingly called “Fallingdown” because it has required costly repairs over the years.

Luckily for the Stodolas and the four previous owners, the Zeigler house hasn’t had many such problems. One reason could be that its roof is more steeply pitched than those of many Wright houses. It also has a basement, a rarity in a Wright house.

“This home is very livable,” Sue Stodola said. “I never feel crowded in the rooms, because they feel bigger than they really are.”

Light shines through the wavy, leaded-glass windows and reflects off the oak woodwork differently depending on the weather and season. Ed Stodola loves sitting on the back, upstairs terrace with a glass of wine during a summer rain; the drops make an interesting sound on the roof overhang.

“There’s this ongoing discovery with the house,” he said.

The Zeigler house also has another claim to fame: Woodrow Wilson slept here.

Soon after the house was built, and three years before Wilson became president, he was Zeigler’s guest while attending a National Governors Association meeting in Louisville. Wilson was then president of Princeton University and had just been elected governor of New Jersey. The two men had known each other at Princeton.

The Zeigler house has had a state historical marker out front for many years. The Stodolas added a small “private home” sign after more than a few curious sightseers knocked on their door or looked in their windows, thinking the house was a museum.

One woman came to the door and explained that she was a schoolteacher visiting Wright houses as part of a cross-country trip. As it turned out, she was from Denmark, Wis., Stodola’s tiny hometown. After a few minutes of conversation, they discovered that his mother had been her fourth-grade teacher and she now taught in her old classroom.

The Stodolas have come to accept that the occasional stranger at the door is the price you pay for living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house. His designs are so iconic, his influence on architecture so great, that it feels natural for some people to want to walk right in as if they owned the place.

HINDMAN — This is the season for family reunions in Appalachia, when people come home to celebrate kinship, community and the mountain culture that shaped their lives.

There’s a big reunion in Knott County this week. Many of the 100 people there have been attending for years, if not decades. Few are related by blood, but they’re family just the same, bound together by Appalachia’s storytelling tradition and the magic of words.

Ask participants at the 32nd Appalachian Writers Workshop what it’s like, and they use the word “family” a lot. They come for inspiration and advice on the craft from some of the best writers these mountains have produced.

The workshop was started by two Knott County writers, novelist and folklorist James Still, and poet Albert Stewart. Others associated with the annual gathering have included poet Jim Wayne Miller and novelists Wilma Dykeman and Harriette Arnow, author of the 1954 classic The Dollmaker.

“It’s a central part of my year that I never want to miss,” said novelist Silas House, who was a participant from 1996 to 2001 and has been on staff ever since.

Participants apply and submit writing samples in May. There are always more applicants than spaces; the 102-year-old Hindman Settlement School’s cabins can hold only so many people.

Each morning, participants gather in small groups according to interest: poetry, novels, short stories, nonfiction, memoir and children’s literature.

When I visited the workshop Tuesday, poet and writer George Ella Lyon was in one room talking about the challenges of publishing books for children. In another room, novelist Karen McElmurray discussed using memoir to explore universal themes. In another, novelists Ann Pancake and Laura Benedict explained storytelling techniques.

Afternoons are for group readings and individual coaching from the staff of published writers. Everyone eats together, then washes dishes. There’s writing time throughout the day, and bull sessions late into the night.

“It’s an intense week,” said journalist Jason Howard, who is here for a fifth year. “There’s a great sense of family, and a lot of spiritual detective work going on.”

Mike Mullins helped start the workshop in 1978, soon after he became director of the historic settlement school that now provides literacy and cultural enrichment programs. He marvels at the workshop’s success.

“I think there’s always a crying need for all of us to express ourselves, to tell our story, or a story we’ve made up,” said Mullins.

A few of this year’s participants are college students, but most are much older — academics and blue-collar workers, business people, housewives and retirees. Some are beginners; others have published several books.

Mountain life has always been a popular subject in Appalachian literature. But many now write about the mountains themselves and what has been happening to them over the past half-century. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been leveled by mountaintop-removal coal mining or scarred by strip-miners.

“What we do to the land, we do to the people,” said Don Askins of Clintwood, Va., whose poetry focuses on the coal industry’s environmental destruction.

House and Howard, who both come from coal-mining families, recently wrote the book Something’s Rising about opposition to mountaintop-removal within the region. Howard also edited a collection of essays, poems and songs called We All Live Downstream.

Many writers here are women who have raised families or had careers. “They come with this full lifetime of experience and a passion to write about it,” McElmurray said.

Benedict first came to the workshop 20 years ago. “I had only been writing for a year or so and I was looking for a cheap vacation,” she said. What she found was a calling – and a husband, Pinckney Benedict, who was on the workshop staff. “We didn’t start dating until after the conference, but I gather we scandalized a few people,” she said with a smile.

The Benedicts were back this week as staff members. He is a novelist and short story writer who teaches at the University of Southern Illinois and at writing workshops across the country. She recently published her second novel.

“There’s a sense of community, a spirit of cooperation here,” she said. “They read a lot, and they all take their work very seriously.”

But unlike some other workshops, Benedict and McElmurray said, the writers here don’t take themselves too seriously. There’s no “staff table” at meals, no caste system based on publishing success.

But Benedict has discovered one advantage to being on staff: “I don’t have to do dishes.”

Click on each photo to enlarge.

Poet Sunny Montgomery reads to Glyn Dawson and staff member Tonya Perdue at Homestead Nursing Center. Photos by Tom Eblen

Art expresses the human spirit. It also can nourish it, especially in places where the human spirit can feel challenged.

That was one of the ideas behind local poet Sunny Montgomery’s visit to seven Lexington nursing homes Wednesday.

Montgomery visited dining halls and went from room to room, asking if she might spending a few minutes reading poetry.

The project was organized by the ELandF Gallery and the Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency of the Bluegrass.

“Just having artists or anybody from the outside coming in consistently creates a culture that’s good for the residents and staff and more open to the community,” said Bruce Burris of ELandF.

The ombudsman agency plans a public meeting July 29 to seek ideas for other arts programs that might be done in local nursing homes. Those could include visiting artists, or participatory arts programs for residents. The meeting will be at 2 p.m. at the agency’s office in the senior citizen center at the corner of Nicholasville Road and Alumni Drive.

Montgomery visits with Emma Hutchison, right, and daughter Emily McCarty after reading poetry Wednesday at Homestead Nursing Center.

A tough economic period isn’t the time to hunker down and wait for the storm to pass. It’s a time to seek new ideas and create a more prosperous future.

In fact, history has shown that some of the best innovation occurs in uncertain times like these.

“I think it’s an opportunity to think strategically,” said Kris Kimel, president of the Kentucky Science & Technology Corp. “It kind of gives you cover while everybody else is scurrying around to think about new opportunities and how to take advantage of them. Anytime there’s disruptive change, there are new opportunities.”

Kimel is also the founder of the annual Idea Festival in Louisville, which on Friday is announcing the lineup of speakers and performers for this year’s event, Sept. 23-26.

As usual, the Idea Festival will feature an eclectic assortment of some of the brightest minds on the planet. You can hear what they’ve been thinking, and the massive collision of ideas might give you a few of your own.

The biggest celebrity appearing this year may be chef Anthony Bourdain, the author of Kitchen Confidential and host of The Travel Channel’s No Reservations. On the other end of the food spectrum, Will Allen, founder of the non-profit organization Growing Power, will talk about developing community food systems worldwide.

Musicians performing at the festival include the Ahn Trio, a chamber music group from South Korea; concert pianist and psychiatrist Richard Kogan and 10-year-old cellist and pianist Marc Yu, who will talk about what it’s like to be a child prodigy.

Scientists speaking include Bert Hölldobler of Germany, co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for a book based on his research about the behavior of ants; noted astronomer Bob Berman; Chris Turney of Australia, who studies the history of climate change; University of Kentucky neurobiologist Diana Snow; and University of Louisville biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin, who studies the evolution of goodness.

As always, there is a large group of speakers from the world of film, including actress Veronica Bero; actress and director Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, daughter of Martin Scorsese; screenwriter Michael Dougan; and documentary filmmakers Arthur Rouse of Lexington and Kembrew McLeod of Iowa.

The Belgium-born sidewalk chalk artist Julian Beever will be creating a special piece during the festival, and Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde will discuss his work, which explores the dynamic relationship between architecture, people and electronic culture.

The second $100,000 Curry Stone Design Prize will be awarded. Last year’s winner, architect Luyanda Mpahlwa, will speak about his work designing affordable housing in South Africa. Also speaking about architecture will be Kulapat Yantrasast, whose Los Angeles firm is designing the expansion of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville.

Speakers from the media include best-selling humorist A.J. Jacobs; Jurriaan Kamp, editor of Ode, a print and online publication about people’s passions; National Public Radio technology journalist Moira Gunn; and Dana Canedy, a Kentucky-born editor for The New York Times, who will discuss the memoir she wrote for her young son about his father who died fighting in Iraq.

Nat Irvin of the U of L College of Business will speak about his demographic research into African-Americans in business; UK psychology professor Phil Kraemer will discuss the psychology of innovation; and social scientist Michael Johnston, who won U of L’s prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, will talk about his research into political corruption.

Cambodian human rights activist Somaly Mam will discuss her efforts to fight human sex trafficking, and Hira Ratan Manek, an engineer from India, will talk about his research into the ancient practice of sungazing.

The festival has moved from the Kentucky International Convention Center to the Kentucky Center for Performing Arts and the surrounding area of West Main Street, including the 21C Museum Hotel and the Galt House.

The festival will include a dinner under the stars on the streets of downtown Louisville, activities for kids and IF 2.0, a program that includes a pre-festival workshop and special events.

For the Idea Festival schedule, ticket prices, reservations and more information, go to: www.ideafestival.com.

I had been meaning for some time to check out the Southland Jamboree, a free bluegrass music show each Tuesday evening during the summer on the lawn beside Collins Bowling Centers-Southland.

I arrived after this week’s show had started, and more than 200 people were there. A great band was on stage, each man dressed in perfect Bill Monroe style: dark suit, tie and white cowboy hat.

It was a classic Kentucky scene until the music stopped and the band leader started speaking — with an Australian accent.

It turns out the band, Bluegrass Parkway, hails from Perth, Australia. Southland Jamboree was a warm-up gig for this weekend’s 35th annual Festival of the Bluegrass at the Kentucky Horse Park campground.

Band leader Paul Duff said afterward that he wasn’t a musician until he was 18 and walked into a northern Australian pub where a bluegrass band was playing. “I walked out and said, ‘I’ve got to play it,’” he said.

Duff learned to play the mandolin, then learned how to make one. He first came to Kentucky to work and study in the early 1980s, then returned to live in Lexington for a time in the early 1990s. He went back to Australia with a Lexington-born wife, Maria Ketron, and a mission to spread bluegrass music.

“It’s real music …. It has got that universality,” he said, explaining that bluegrass is increasingly popular around the world, especially in Australia and Europe. “I love the sociology of bluegrass music. The sound is great, and the lyrics are about hard times and people sticking together.”

The Festival of the Bluegrass this weekend will include fans from across the globe. Find the performance schedule and other information at www.festivalofthebluegrass.com. And if you doubt bluegrass music’s international appeal, check out the Web site’s online guest map.

Also worth seeing, doing

Visitors also will be coming to Kentucky this weekend for Cycle the Gorge rally and family fun ride Saturday and Sunday at Stanton. It’s a prelude to a summer of racing events at the Red River Gorge that will attract cyclists from around the country.

It’s not too late to register for the rally and family run ride. Go to www.tour-rrg.com.

For a less strenuous tour of Kentucky’s natural beauty, consider booking one of the Suburban Women’s Club’s behind-the-fences tours of local horse farms. This year’s tour dates are June 19, July 17, Aug. 21 and Oct. 16.

The five-hour bus tour visits Chesapeake and Woods Edge farms, with lunch at Chrisman Mill Winery. The tour costs $50, with profits going to the club’s charitable works, which include college scholarships and Operation Read.

The Suburban Women’s Club, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, has been doing these tours for 36 years. For more information, call (859) 624-2338.

If you like contemporary art, Breathitt County artist and former corporate lawyer Theo Edmonds, whom I wrote about in April, is back in Lexington. He has rented space at 351 West Short Street for a free gallery show 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day through June 19.

The show features some terrific work he created during six months in New York. Edmonds has set up a studio in the back of the gallery space, where he is working and eager to talk.

If you like less-contemporary art, you have three more days to see Excavating Egypt, the fascinating show of antiquities at The Art Museum at University of Kentucky in the Singletary Center. The exhibit closes Sunday at 5 p.m. For more information, go to the museum’s Web site, www.uky.edu/ArtMuseum.

For ideas and more information about things to see and do in Central Kentucky this summer, go to the Lexington Arts Council’s Web site, www.lexarts.com, or the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau’s Web site, www.visitlex.com.

At age 25, Ben Sollee has gained a national following with his heartfelt songs, his soulful voice and his unconventional cello technique.

Sollee can do amazing, unexpected things with a cello. He’s doing one this week, and it also involves a bicycle.

“I was looking for something a little bit different in touring,” he said. “I had gotten in this habit of flying to one side of the country and flying back for one gig, then hopping in the car and driving six hours for another gig. The pace was inhuman. I wasn’t really feeling the places I was at anymore.”

Sollee is feeling those places this week.

Oh, is he feeling them.

Last Wednesday, Sollee and two friends began riding bicycles from his Lexington home to the annual Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festval at Manchester, Tenn., where he will perform this weekend.

They rode from Lexington to Frankfort in a steady rain, and Sollee gave a concert when they arrived. The next morning, they officially began the 330-mile Pedaling Against Poverty Tour.

Each day since then, the trio has ridden about 50 miles a day, stopping to play concerts in Danville, Berea, Somerset and Cookeville, Tenn. Another show is planned near McMinnville, Tenn., on Wednesday. Then they ride to Bonnaroo.

In addition to making a statement about environmentally friendly music touring, Sollee said the trip is intended to promote the anti-poverty charity Oxfam America and Xtracycle, the California company that made the bikes he and Marty Benson are riding.

The stretch bicycles have 24 gears, disc brakes and a cargo platform in back. Sollee has his cello case strapped to one side. His gear is strapped to the other side for balance.

Benson is videotaping each day’s progress and posting it on Xtracycle’s Web site.  Benson’s sister, Katie, is with them on a regular road bike.

“Considering I hadn’t really ridden much before this tour, it’s going great,” Sollee said Monday. As he talked on his cell phone, Sollee pedaled Ky. 90 through Wayne County. His voice was occasionally drowned out by the swoosh of a passing truck.

“We had a really hard day going from Berea to Somerset … hauling about 60 pounds of gear up all those big hills,” Sollee said. “Heading into Somerset I didn’t think I was going to make it. We pulled in eight minutes before show time.”

There have been a few minor breakdowns and a couple of wrecks without injuries. Sollee ran off the road near Harrodsburg while trying to ring a bell on the back of Benson’s Xtracycle. It’s a game: Whoever rings the other’s bell the most pays for dinner at the end of the trip.

“Marty rang my bell today and wrecked his bike,” Sollee said. “It was sweet revenge.”

Sollee said he has learned several things on the ride, such as how roads are graded, how diet influences stamina and the importance of pacing yourself. And he has learned it is hard to draw a crowd at small-town concert venues.

Usually, Sollee is good at drawing crowds. National Public Radio named him one of the top 10 “unknown artists of the year” in 2007. He became a lot better known last year with two CDs, If You’re Gonna Lead My Country and Learning to Bend.

He performed on ABC-TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! in March and was among those who played at Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday concert last month in New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Sollee was the featured performer at February’s “I Love Mountains” rally in Frankfort. His next project is a CD with Daniel Martin Moore to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining.

It is an impressive resume for a native Lexingtonian who not that long ago was studying at Yates Elementary, Winburn Middle, Lafayette High and the University of Louisville school of music.

When I called again Tuesday afternoon, Sollee had 45 miles under his belt for the day and was eight miles from Cookeville.

“We’re within spitting distance,” he said. “We made really good time today.”
With Bonnaroo only two days and about 75 miles away, Sollee seemed to have gotten a second wind.

It’s hard to know if Sollees’ Bonnaroo performances will be as high-energy as usual. Life on the road is hard on a musician, especially when he has to pedal his cello up all of those big hills.

Check out Marty Benson’s daily videos from the trip:

On the second night of each year’s Commerce Lexington trip, central Kentucky banks sponsor a big dinner.

This year’s event was held Tuesday night at the new  Overture Center for the Arts, an impressive $205 million downtown facility that was a gift to the city from Madison businessman W. Jerome Frautsch.

The center includes performance space, a contemporary art museum and this fabulous room where the Lexington visitors dined.

Click each photo to enlarge.

After one of his Courtney Avenue neighbors died and her house was sold, Gordon Burnette noticed several old paintings left by the curb with some other junk.

One in particular caught his eye: a picture of a mare and foal. Written on the back was the mare’s name, the artist’s name and June 1882.

The painting was in bad shape, though, so Burnette left it on the curb.

Later, his son saw the paintings and brought them home. “He said, ‘You like horses. You can have this one,’” Burnette recalled.

A little Internet research told Burnette that the mare, Miss Russell, was a great trotting broodmare whose 1898 death was reported in The New York Times.

The artist, too, was special. Thomas J. Scott was one of the most prolific equine portrait artists of the late 19th century. Beyond that, though, little is known about him. And aside from a few prized paintings, the fate of most of his work is a mystery.

Scott and his paintings have become an obsession for Burnette, a tool-and-die maker who over the past six years has become an amateur equine art sleuth.

Since January, he has been working with author Genevieve Baird Lacer to research Scott and track down his largely forgotten work.

While Scott painted more than 150 horse portraits, Burnette has been able to find only about 30 of them. Perhaps the most important one is a large portrait of the great Thoroughbred stud Lexington, which hangs in the clubhouse at Keeneland.

Another, of Lexington’s dam, Alice Carneal, is in the Georgetown and Scott County Museum. Others hang locally at Waveland Museum and Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate. And there are some in the Jockey Club of New York and the National Museum of Racing at Saratoga, N.Y.

Most of Scott’s other known paintings are privately owned. Burnette and Lacer suspect there are dozens more out there — many of them in Central Kentucky — decorating the walls of families who have no idea what they have.

Burnette has had his painting of Miss Russell professionally restored, and he recently bought another Scott on eBay — an 1874 portrait of the stallion Acrobat. Burnette isn’t so much interested in collecting as in documenting Scott and his work — and in bringing Scott the fame he thinks he deserves.

Eventually, Lacer and Burnette hope to gather enough information and images to publish a book about Scott. They also dream of putting together an exhibit of his work during the 2010 Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Lacer became interested in Scott because he was one of only two known students of the great equine portrait artist Edward Troye, whom she profiled in a 2006 book.

“Engravings of Scott’s paintings appeared in all of the leading horse publications,” Lacer said. “That’s how we know he was so important at the time. But later, he was forgotten. We don’t know why.”

Scott was born in Pennsylvania in 1830 and graduated from the Philadelphia School of Pharmacy in 1846. Apparently, his artistic talent and passion for horses led him to Lexington in the 1850s, where he studied with Troye and painted some of the greatest Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds of the age.

Because photography was then in its infancy, Lacer said, “We wouldn’t know what these great foundation horses looked like if these men hadn’t painted them.”

When the Civil War began, Scott joined the 21st Regiment Kentucky Volunteers (Union) and served under the artist Samuel W. Price as the unit’s hospital steward. After the war, Scott lived and painted in the Northeast for several years before returning to Kentucky.

Newspapers and horse publications of the day have frequent mentions of Scott and what he was painting at the time, but little other information about him.

Scott probably didn’t earn much as a painter, so he might also have worked as a pharmacist. He was a journalist for one of the leading horse publications, Turf, Field and Farm. He wrote under the pseudonym “Prog,” which means to wander and beg for food. He died in 1888 at St. Joseph Hospital and is buried in Lexington Cemetery.

If you think you might have a painting by Thomas J. Scott, you can contact Burnette and Lacer at g.burnette@insightbb.com. They have created a Web site, www.thomasjscott.com.

“These paintings have been revered by families so much that many of them remain in private collections to this day,” Lacer said. “If you have a horse portrait that looks old and you don’t know the origin of it, we might be able to help you identify it.”

Click on each image to enlarge it.

Theo Edmonds spent the first 15 years of his adult life chasing traditional success.

From his native Breathitt County, he moved to Lexington and earned an art and theater degree from Transylvania University.

Then he went to New Orleans, where he earned a master’s degree in health care administration and a law degree from Tulane University. He was admitted to the Louisiana Bar and had good jobs in corporate America.

Then, one day, it hit him: “I realized I was doing something that wasn’t making me happy on any level. I knew I needed to be creative. So I called in one morning and quit.”

He returned to Lexington, where he spent much of the past two years in a rented industrial building on Manchester Street writing poetry, painting and creating large mixed-media pieces of art.

Edmonds, 39, is now finding a new kind of success with his art, thanks to talent, hard work and a generous patron. For the past five months, he has been living and working in New York City, where he opens a two-week show Thursday in rented space in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo district.

After the show, Edmonds will move to France and create work for a solo show in September in Deauville, Lexington’s sister city, during its annual American Film Festival. After that, another show of his work is planned in Dublin, Ireland.

Edmonds was having modest success as an artist in Lexington, where he said the contemporary art scene has begun to blossom. “Lexington has immense potential,” he said. “It’s an amazing place; you never know what’s going to happen.”

But living and working in Harlem has been a whole ‘nother world.

“The influence and energy in New York has been incredible,” he said. “My work has fundamentally changed and evolved since I’ve been here. It has become much more varied. I have more confidence in my work. I feel very blessed; I don’t know how else to say it.”

Many of Edmonds’ pieces are a combination of paint and castoff items that tell stories, often Appalachian stories.

“The idea of things having a second life is authentic to me, and very Appalachian,” said Edmonds, whose father, Teddy Edmonds, represents Breathitt, Lee and Estill counties in the General Assembly.

Since moving to New York, Edmonds also has spent a lot of time in art museums. He has studied the work of fellow abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and he has developed a new appreciation for the old masters.

“If you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you might be able to go,” he said.

Edmonds’ show is built around three themes: Appalachian storytelling pieces he created in Lexington; a series called Gabba Gabba Hey, inspired by New York street culture; and a series called Circus Maximus, which uses circus characters to tell universal human stories.

Edmonds’ work in New York and France is being made possible by patron Martine Head, who comes from a French horse-breeding family and now lives in Lexington.

Head said she met Edmonds last May at a show of his work in Lexington and was impressed. “I think that Theo has got depth,” she said. “He’s a true artist … a profound soul.”

Lexington has always embraced traditional art. Since moving to Lexington, Head has noticed a growing appreciation for contemporary art. Still, many fine local artists receive little recognition.

Head remembered the first time she visited Tuska Studio, which exhibits the work of the late Lexington sculptor John Tuska in his former home near downtown. “I walked into that house and thought, Wow! There is this gem in Lexington and nobody knows it’s here,” she said.

Head thought that living and working in New York and Europe would allow Edmonds to develop his artistic talent and receive more exposure.

While Edmonds has spent most of his time in New York painting, he also has been writing poetry. On April 5, three Kentucky poets flew up and joined him in a performance at the Bowery Poetry Club.

The opening reception for Edmonds’ show in SoHo will have a decidedly Kentucky flavor: Acoustic music, country ham hors d’oeuvres, bourbon and Ale 8 One.

Edmonds said he is proud of his Appalachian roots, and is surprised by how many other proud Kentuckians he has met in New York.

“It’s a city of people like me who have a burning desire to say something through their art,” he said. “But hopes and fears and joys are the same in New York as they are in Breathitt County.”

Why did Central Kentucky become the center of thoroughbred breeding? One reason was Lexington — not the city, the horse.

Lexington was a big bay stallion, the best racer of his time and perhaps the best sire of all time. He was born here and spent most of his life here. But he has spent most of his death in storage at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and, well, Kentucky wants him back.

Lengthy negotiations are about complete to put Lexington’s reconstructed skeleton on display at the International Museum of the Horse at the Kentucky Horse Park.

“It looks pretty good right now,” said museum curator Bill Cooke, who is expecting a call any day from Smithsonian conservators who must release Lexington’s skeleton, officially known as Catalogue No. 16020.

The effort began more than two years ago when the horse museum became a Smithsonian associate, which allows it to borrow artifacts. “The first thing I said was we want to bring Lexington back to Lexington,” Cooke said.

“I’ve always wanted to have (an exhibit) that traces the history of the thoroughbred in Kentucky,” he said. “How did we get to be the thoroughbred capital instead of Nashville or New Orleans or New York? To a large extent, Lexington determined that we did.”

Borrowing horse bones — even famous horse bones — wouldn’t seem that complicated. But bureaucracy is bureaucracy.

At the time, Lexington was on rare public display as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History. Then, that museum closed for lengthy renovations, and nobody seemed to know if Lexington would be needed when it reopened. Just a couple of months ago, officials decided he wouldn’t.

“They have been very supportive all the way along,” Cooke said of Smithsonian officials. “They believe in the project.”

The timing is good because on Tuesday — the horse Lexington’s 159th birthday — the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau will kick off a marketing campaign built around a famous painting of Lexington — with the great horse recolored Wildcat blue.

The horse-of-a-different-color idea is an eye-catching gimmick. But using the horse Lexington to promote the city Lexington is a natural, said Ellen Gregory, a public relations executive who helped develop the campaign.

Gregory said the more she researched the great horse the more obsessed she became with him, because he had connections to so many famous people and events.

Lexington was born in 1850 at the farm of Dr. Elisha Warfield, a prominent physician, horseman and entrepreneur who treated Mary Todd Lincoln’s mother, was a friend of Henry Clay and became known as “the father of the Kentucky turf.”

Lexington, originally named Darley, won six of his seven starts, becoming the third-leading money-winner up to that time. He was retired to stud in 1855 because he was going blind and stood for 20 years at Nantura and Woodburn farms near Midway.

As a stud, Lexington was taken out of Kentucky only twice — to St. Louis for an exhibition in 1859 and to Illinois for safe-keeping in 1865, when Confederates were raiding Kentucky horse farms.

Lexington was the nation’s leading sire for a record 16 years, and many of his offspring became top sires. The blind horse fathered 600 foals, more than 200 of whom became winners. His descendants included Aristides, the first winner of the Kentucky Derby.

Another famous Lexington offspring was Cincinnati, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s favorite horse. Grant rode Cincinnati to accept Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox and let President Abraham Lincoln ride him several times.

Lexington was such a celebrity that people came to Woodburn Farm from all over the world just to see him. One was Gen. George Armstrong Custer, who later wrote that visiting the horse was like being “in the sacred presence of royalty.”

When Lexington died, the New York Times published a lengthy obituary. “He was probably more famous in his day than even Man O’ War and Secretariat were in their days,” Cooke said.

Smithsonian representatives came to Woodburn Farm on July 1, 1875, not knowing Lexington had died earlier in the day. A few months later, they arranged for his remains to be exhumed and shipped to Washington, where they have been ever since.

Once he gets the word, Cooke said he will raise the private money needed to move Lexington’s skeleton and build a special glass case for it. The Smithsonian generally makes such loans on a five-year renewing basis.

“Hopefully this is going to be a long-term deal,” Cooke said of Lexington’s homecoming. “As long as we’ve worked on it, it’s already a long-term deal.”

From the time it opened in 1948 until it closed in 1963, the Lyric Theatre was a cultural icon for Lexington’s African American community, hosting the likes of Duke Ellington and Ray Charles.

For the past 46 years, the Lyric has been an empty, crumbling building. For nearly 20 years, its renaissance has been a dream deferred for the East End neighborhood and many African Americans throughout Lexington.

Now, as city officials move forward with a long-promised renovation that will cost about $9 million, the Lyric Theatre is something else: A building in search of a sustainable operating plan, and a great opportunity cleverly disguised as a problem.

The Lyric renovation has a long and tortured history, but it boils down to this: City officials committed to restoring the Lyric as an African American arts and culture center as part of an agreement with the state. The Urban County Council unanimously approved a design that calls for a 588-seat theater, a 2,000-square-foot African American culture museum and a 3,800-foot multipurpose room.

The city has made a commitment, and that commitment must be met. Further delay will result in hefty fines by the state.

Many good people have put a lot of time and effort into planning the Lyric’s revival. But when the Urban County Council voted this week to authorize construction bonds, it became clear that the planning hasn’t been good enough. The Lyric’s business plan, which illogically did not include a feasibility study, would result in financial subsidies much larger than those the city provides for other arts venues.

You have to give Mayor Jim Newberry and this council credit: They’ve shown a willingness to tackle tough issues. Ed Lane, Vice Mayor Jim Gray and other council members have asked good, hard questions about the Lyric, and that has resulted in Gray being asked to form a work group to develop a better business plan.

Part of the problem is that not enough artists, arts professionals and entrepreneurs have been involved in the years of discussions about the Lyric. That has led to a lot of talk about the building, but not enough talk about how it could be used.

Gray said Friday that he expects to form a diverse work group. Among those Gray said he may ask to serve: Writers Frank X. Walker and Crystal Wilkinson, UK Opera director Everett McCorvey, developer Mira Ball and architect Drura Parish.

“It’s really important that whatever is done at the Lyric succeeds,” Gray said. One key to success will be forming partnerships around town with universities, arts groups and other organizations.

One work group member will be Jim Clark, president of LexArts, the local umbrella organization for the arts. Surprisingly, previous city administrations haven’t included LexArts in discussions about the Lyric.

Ideally, artistic and entrepreneurial vision would have driven the Lyric’s renovation plan, rather than the other way around. But it’s not too late to make the facility a valuable, sustainable asset for both the neighborhood and the city, Clark said.

Clark sees great opportunities for the Lyric to form partnerships with local artists, arts organizations and the University of Kentucky. Those could include integrating the Lyric into UK’s music, museum studies and art history graduate programs.

The Lyric’s special mission will require a strong director and board, Clark said, but money could be saved and efficiency improved if some management and technical employees were shared with other small city arts facilities.

This process also should prompt a larger discussion about city-owned arts facilities, how they are managed and how they are used. “If we’re going to put the Lyric under the microscope, we might as well put the whole thing under the microscope and see what’s best for the community,” Clark said.

One example: The Opera House, managed by the Lexington Center Corp., and the Downtown Arts Center, managed by LexArts, were set up more as rental facilities than “presenters” to actively recruit performers, as Centre College’s Norton Center for the Arts does. That’s why Lexington gets Broadway touring companies while big acts such as Lyle Lovett, the New York Philharmonic, Joshua Bell and the Pointer Sisters go to Danville.

What makes a cultural facility successful isn’t the facility, but what happens inside it.

Thanks to the hard work of many people, the Lyric Theatre is on its way to becoming a fine building. The challenge now is for Lexington’s most creative minds to step forward and develop an artistic vision and business plan to make that building come alive, succeed and endure.

BYBEE — You can buy more elegant dishes, more perfectly shaped dishes and certainly more expensive dishes. But only here can you buy stoneware that has been made by the same family in the same log shed and in about the same way since 1809.

Bybee Pottery is the last of perhaps 50 small potteries that sprang up during Kentucky’s pioneer days near the rich clay deposits of southern Madison County. Yet, as the Cornelison family celebrates its business’s bicentennial, family members fight persistent rumors that it is closing — and they wonder how much longer it can survive.

“All my life, there has been the annual going-out-of-business rumor,” said Buzz Cornelison, 60, who with his brother and sister represent the sixth or seventh generation to run the business, depending on who’s counting. “All my life, we have laughed about it. But in the last few years it has become more acute.”

Bybee Pottery faced its first big threat during the Civil War, when Confederate Gen. John Hunt Morgan’s raiders burned many potteries in the area because of their owners’ Union sympathies. Cornelison family legend has it that Bybee was spared because it employed an immigrant potter known for his outspoken support of the South.

In the early 1900s, as demand for utilitarian crocks and churns diminished, most of the remaining potteries went under. But the Cornelisons adapted, shifting their production to tableware glazed with bright, custom-made colors that are now a company trademark.

Most Cornelisons over the years weren’t potters; they hired potters. That was until Buzz’s father, Walter Lee Cornelison, took over the business and spent decades at the wheel, producing hundreds of thousands of pieces now prized for their quality.

“My great-grandfather made a kick wheel for my father when he was a little boy, and he said he had his own corner … his own clay,” Buzz Cornelison said. “Every once in a while, somebody would walk by and say, ‘Try it this way’ and show him something. That’s the way he learned to throw.”

Business got a boost when Phyllis George, a sportscaster and former Miss America from Texas who married John Y. Brown Jr., became Kentucky’s first lady in 1979. She made the international promotion of Kentucky crafts her personal mission. She even persuaded Bloomingdale’s department store in New York to set up a boutique to sell them.

Bybee was a big beneficiary of her efforts. For the next two decades, people would line up outside Bybee’s rustic workshop off Ky. 52 at 8 a.m. each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, waiting for a new batch to be pulled from the big kiln.

Business has slowed with the economy, and Kentucky crafts aren’t as popular as they once were. Perhaps Bybee Pottery’s biggest blow came in November 2007, when Walter Cornelison suffered a stroke. Although he recovered, Cornelison, who turned 80 this month, can no longer make pottery that meets his exacting standards.

Now the wheel is manned by Buzz Cornelison’s brother, Jim, who also works as Madison County’s coroner; and by Harvey Conner, who started working here 44 years ago when he graduated from high school. The Cornelisons’ sister, Paula Gabbard, and two longtime employees, Brenda Cole and Rick Hall, help with other chores.

“We have had generations of families work here, and not just ourselves,” Buzz Cornelison said. “Most of the people we have hired over the years are neighbors.”

A Cornelison cousin, Ron Stambaugh, owns Little Bit of Bybee, which sells the pottery and some of his own pieces at a shop in the Louisville suburb of Middletown.

Without Walter Cornelison’s prolific work, the shop has cut back from three kiln-loads a week to two. On a recent Wednesday, the Cornelison brothers and Conner finished the hourlong process of unloading the kiln as the sun rose and the bells of Bybee United Methodist Church chimed 8 o’clock. The shop door was unlocked, but nobody was waiting outside.

Still, business isn’t bad. A handful of customers wanders in each day from all over the country to see the pottery being made and to stock up on colorful pitchers, pie plates, mugs and bowls.

“I have a cousin who put me on to Bybee Pottery; she has a whole kitchen full of it,” said Paula Dodd of Crane Hill, Ala., who stopped by while driving through Kentucky with her husband, Ed. The Dodds bought two big boxes full of pieces for their 36-year-old twin daughters. “The whole family has a lot of this stuff,” he said.

Visitors walk through the shop, past the kiln and groaning shelves of cups and bowls waiting to be fired, until they get back to the log workshop, where Conner is at the wheel. Everything is covered with a thick layer of yellow clay dust, including the floor, which has gained a few inches over the past two centuries. Tall people must frequently duck to avoid hitting the log beams that hold up the ceiling.

Conner, a skilled potter, seems to enjoy explaining the process as much as doing it. “I’d like to have a dime for every piece I’ve made since I’ve been here,” he tells a visiting couple from Louisville. “I’d retire.”

An electric motor turns the potter’s wheel, and the kiln is fired by natural gas. Clay is dug from a nearby farm with a bulldozer and backhoe. After removal of the 100 tons of clay that the pottery will use in a year, the hole is filled in and marked for the next year’s dig.

Otherwise, Bybee Pottery’s methods have changed little.

Fresh clay is run through a pug mill, which is like a big sausage grinder, to remove any pebbles or impurities. It is then formed into “logs” and stacked in burlap in a stone cellar. The only thing ever added to the clay is a little water.

After each piece is formed on the potter’s wheel, it is dried, painted with colorful glaze and fired for 16 hours in the kiln, which reaches 2,200 degrees. After cooling for 24 hours, pieces are unloaded from the kiln onto the shop’s shelves. Prices here are lower than at other Kentucky shops that sell Bybee Pottery.

Buzz Cornelison doesn’t know what the future holds for his family’s business. “There is no next generation for us to take over, unless things change,” he said.

But then, Cornelison wouldn’t necessarily have seen himself here a few years ago. An accomplished musician, he was a keyboard player with the local rock band Exile, which scored a No. 1 hit in 1978 with Kiss You All Over.

After 18 years on the road with Exile, he returned to the pottery shop where he had worked as a boy, and in his spare time, he earned a master’s degree in English literature from nearby Eastern Kentucky University. He remains active in local theater.

“There is a next gener ation,” Cornelison said. “One’s a lawyer in Chicago, and she’s not about to come back. And the other two are girls who are in high school now. They haven’t focused on what they’re going to do, but there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of interest from them (in running the pottery). And I don’t blame them.”

But don’t say bye-bye to Bybee Pottery just yet. The Cornelisons beat the normal odds of family business survival several generations ago. Their little shop seems to have luck — or at least inertia — on its side.

“As it stands right now, at this point in time, we have no plans to close,” Buzz Cornelison said. “I hope that doesn’t change.”