The Bluegrass and Beyond

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.”

Mark Whitley in his workshop near Smiths Grove. Photo by Tom Eblen

SMITHS GROVE — When Mark Whitley was growing up in rural Barren County, his father’s workshop was his playground.

“I would just come home from school and make something out of wood,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I was training for anything. It’s just what I did.”

It is still what he does. But now, Whitley, 36, is one of the region’s up-and-coming furniture artists. His hand-crafted pieces are winning awards at exhibitions such as the American Craft Council’s Atlanta Show and Kentucky Crafted: The Market.

He has been able to grow as an artist and earn a comfortable living for himself; his wife, Melissa, the director of a non-profit agency in nearby Bowling Green; and their 3-year-old son, Briar.

Kentucky has always had many fine artists and craftspeople. Whitley is part of a new generation that not only is pursuing artistic passion but learning how to turn it into a viable business.

Whitley credits much of his commercial success to the Kentucky Arts Council, a state agency that sponsors the annual Kentucky Crafted: The Market and many education and grant programs. He won a $7,500 Al Smith Fellowship and was a participant in the Platinum 10 program, which gives 10 Kentuckians a year of intense training in the business side of the arts.

“A few simple things I learned in that year really guided my business,” he said. “And it gave me the confidence to make a real living at it.”

The Kentucky Crafted program was created 30 years ago to help the state’s artists and craftspeople sell pieces they produced. But Whitley is an example of a new group of artists who are developing markets for one-of-a-kind pieces.

“He really likes to connect with the people he works with,” said Lori Meadows, executive director of the arts council. “It has been great to watch him get better and better and grow his business.”

Whitley didn’t set out to be a professional artist. After graduating from high school, his main goal was to get out of Kentucky.

Raised in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), he received a scholarship to church-affiliated Chapman University in Orange, Calif., where he earned a degree in religious and peace studies. Whitley said he was accepted into seminary at Vanderbilt University, “but it just didn’t feel right.”

He studied in New Zealand, traveled the United States and worked briefly as a prototype builder for store fixture designer Corman & Associates in Lexington. Then he returned to Barren County.

“The best thing I did was move away for a few years,” he said. “I went all over the country looking for someplace pretty to be and couldn’t find any place better” than Kentucky.

Whitley bought nine acres near where he grew up and built an A-frame house with a big workshop in the basement. He started making and selling furniture, experimenting with designs and technique. But he didn’t know much about the commercial niche of art furniture until he went to Kentucky Crafted: The Market for the first time in 2005. “I said, ‘Wow, these people are just like me,’” he said.

Whitley guesses he has made about 125 pieces, 50 or 60 of them since he began focusing on art furniture. Many have ended up in Lexington homes, thanks to several years of exhibiting at the Woodland Art Fair.

Since he has become better known regionally and nationally, Whitley has been able to nearly double his prices. “Which means I’m actually just making a small profit,” he said. “We live simply, so it’s a pretty good living.”

Whitley’s furniture starts at about $1,800. His average piece sells for $3,000 to $5,000.

More than anything, Whitley said, higher prices allow him to work the way he wants to — slowly and carefully. “That’s what it’s all about: allowing yourself to take time to do excellent work,” he said. “Now, if I create 10 pieces of furniture a year, I’ve been really busy.”

Benches, tables and cabinets comprise much of Whitley’s work. “Chairs are my arch nemesis,” he said. “They’re difficult to build, difficult to make comfortable. But I keep trying.”

Whitley now goes to major shows looking more for commissions than sales of what he takes there. “I just need a few pieces to show my craftsmanship and aesthetic,” he said.

Whitley sold a $10,000 table at Kentucky Crafted: The Market last month in Lexington and got three commissions. Despite the economy, he said, “The couples with ten grand to spend are still out there.”

He also has pieces in corporate collections in Louisville, San Francisco and London, England; the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce headquarters in Frankfort and an art museum in Bowling Green.

When I visited his workshop recently, Whitley was working on his biggest commission yet — a walnut conference table for the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Nashville. Made to seat 20 people, the table top is being built in quarters. Whitley had to go to Michigan to find enough walnut from a single tree so the grain and color would match.

When Whitley gets a commission, he talks with the client about what kind of piece he or she wants and how it will be used. He visits the room where it will be placed and observes other objects that will surround it.

“I see a piece of furniture in my head almost immediately when I talk to a client,” he said. He makes sketches, then a formal proposal, which is almost always accepted unchanged.

Whitley doesn’t work from detailed plans. “All of the details are worked out on the workbench,” he said, which includes taking cues from the wood’s grain, texture and moisture content. “I abide by the laws of the wood; all the things wood can do to make you look like a fool.”

Whitley’s favorite wood to work with is walnut, followed by cherry, ash and several varieties of maple. Hinges are the only hardware he buys; all knobs and pulls are custom-made for each piece.

He uses no commercial stains or paints, only age-old coloring techniques such as ebonizing. That process turns wood a permanent black through the use of iron, vinegar, tannic acid and other chemicals. Most pieces have oil-based finishes.

Whitley has had trouble finding good furniture lumber in Kentucky, so he buys much of his wood from boutique dealers in Pennsylvania. Planks are stacked against the walls of his workshop. “I’ll get weird boards and hang on to them for years before I decide what to do with them,” he said.

Whitley is constantly experimenting with ways to laminate, color and bend wood to achieve his artistic vision.

“I find myself identifying far more with sculptors these days than furniture makers,” he said.

TakeItArtside!, Kentucky’s public art smartphone app that I wrote about last March, has made some big improvements in time for Friday’s LexArts Gallery Hop.

The free app for iPhone and Android platforms now includes a filter that allows it to include information about a wider variety of cultural assets: public art, historic homes, museums, galleries, studios and archeological sites across Kentucky.

TakeItArtside! also can now publish special events for any of the sites listed in its database. App users can be notified the day of an event. By clicking on the home page announcement, they are directed to other sites for detailed information.

The app was developed by the Kentucky Museum Without Walls Project, a statewide collaboration initiated by the University of Kentucky’s Gaines Center for the Humanities.

LexArts is the newest partner, joining several other arts organizations, colleges and universities. A new special events page on the app lists galleries and other locations participating in Friday’s Gallery Hop.

The free app is available through online phone app stores. For more information about getting the app, or advertising an arts event on it, go to: KentuckyMuseumWithoutWalls.com.

A loved one is in surgery, and all you can do is worry and wait. Unless, that is, you are at the University of Kentucky’s Albert B. Chandler Hospital.

In that case, you can soothe yourself by admiring original works by some of Kentucky’s best painters, sculptors, photographers and other visual artists.

In the surgery waiting room alone, there are equine paintings by Andre Pater and Peter Williams; blown-glass vessels by Stephen Rolfe Powell of Danville; a wood carving by Wolfe County native Edgar Tolson; interactive three-dimensional works by Steve Armstrong of Versailles; fiber art by UK professor Arturo Sandoval; a sculpture by John Tuska; Lexington painter Robert Tharsing’s fascinating landscape, A Natural History of Kentucky; and much more.

The huge room has just a sample of the more than 300 pieces of art that fill the 1.2 million-square-foot hospital addition, which opened in May. The medical center has become, in effect, one of Kentucky’s notable art museums.

“We wanted to make the public spaces empathetic and relaxing,” said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs. “And we wanted to make it uniquely Kentucky. It’s not all from Kentucky, but most of it is.”

UK has raised about $5 million in private donations to purchase art. The idea is about much more than making the new $532 million building pretty. Art can have a transformative effect on the human spirit. It makes people feel better, from reducing stress to inspiring hope.

“There’s a fair amount of research that shows art will improve moods and make people heal faster,” Karpf said. “So it makes financial sense for us to do this. People feel better and get out of the hospital faster.”

It is common in many cities for major new buildings to invest 1 percent of the construction budget on art. With this huge project, the results are impressive.

As soon as visitors enter the covered walkway over South Limestone from the parking garage, they see glass cases displaying folk art sculptures. Outdoors beneath the walkway is a landscape and water feature with curving fences made from traditional Kentucky dry stone.

Also outside is Second Breath, a bronze figure by Maurice Blik, a Holocaust and cancer survivor. “It ended up being controversial because it’s a nude,” said Jacqueline Hamilton, who coordinates the hospital’s art program.

At the end of the walkway is the education center, where patients and the public can research medical information. It is decorated with cityscapes by Louisville folk artist Anthony Mulligan, other paintings and a case of folk-art sculpture.

Ginkgo, a stainless-steel and fabric sculpture by Warren Seelig, is a focal point in the long lobby that connects the hospital’s wings. Elevator bays feature mosaics of paintings by Versailles glass artist Guy Kemper.

On the lobby’s second floor is the 90-foot-long Celebrate Kentucky wall. Tim Broekema, a Western Kentucky University photojournalism professor, created the wall using photographs and videos of Kentucky scenes taken by dozens of photographers. The wall is constantly changing with images that reflect the current season.

Karpf said the wall has been extremely popular, perhaps because it offers glimpses of home. About 40 percent of the hospital’s patients come from small-town and rural Kentucky.

There are landscape photographs in patient rooms, and paintings and sculpture in halls and reception areas throughout the hospital. Near the emergency room is a video installation called Mine-Control that changes shape as the viewer interacts with it. The pediatric emergency room has art that appeals to children.

The hospital tried to buy at least three pieces from each Kentucky artist it selected. “We’ve done a lot to stabilize the Kentucky art community during the recession,” Karpf said.

Two long corridors have become galleries for temporary exhibits. One now has drawings by Alabama’s Thornton Dial, and the other displays cut-and-paste photographic panoramas of Lexington and New York City by Albert Moser.

The UK hospital is a busy place, but only one piece of art has been damaged — a canvas was accidently ripped but is being repaired. “If you present it as art, people tend to respect it,” Hamilton said.

The Lucille Caudill Little Performing Arts in HealthCare Program and an endowment by Dr. Ronald Saykaly will sponsor performances by UK music students and faculty, as well as other performing artists. Performances can be in the hospital lobby or a new high-tech auditorium. When the violinist Midori was in town in September to perform with the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, she also played for hospital patients.

“What has been rewarding is that as we tried to humanize the building for patients, we also humanized it for staff,” Karpf said. Physicians have been big donors to the art program, and nurses have helped choose pieces for areas where they work.

When a pipe burst several months ago, filling an emergency room hall with water, doctors and nurses first made sure there were no patients in danger. “Then they started grabbing art off the walls and putting it on gurneys to take it to safety,” Karpf said. “They saw it as their art.”

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Artist Shih Chieh Huang created this sculpture using plastic bags and blown air at the Idea Festival in Louisville. Huang's work is being featured at the Land of Tomorrow's gallery in Louisville until Oct. 23. Photo by Tom Eblen

LOUISVILLE — The Idea Festival‘s third day Friday included mini-lectures by five artists supported by Creative Capital whose art uses modern culture, technology, everyday experiences and touches of humor to help us see things in different ways.

Shih Chieh Huang creates fascinating art installations by adapting modern technology to quirky, humorous and sometimes amazing new uses. It’s hard to describe his work; you just have to see it. To do that, click here. Or, better yet, see an exhibit of his work at the Land of Tomorrow gallery’s Louisville space, Sept. 23 – Oct. 23. For more information, click here.

Mark Shepard showed an “instructional video” that uses humor to comment on modern life, technology and urban architecture. His tool is the “Serendipitor” — an imaginary device for finding something by looking for something else. The device provides such useful instructions as: “Walk toward the heart of the city. If it doesn’t have a heart, give it one.”  See more of his work by clicking here.

Julie Wyman is a photographer whose art has evolved into recording “light events” without a traditional camera. That has included recording full moons to light in Antarctica. See more of her work by clicking here.

Pamela Z bends and synthesizes her voice and other sounds with images to create dazzling audio-visual experiences. She also has expanded into audio-visual art installations. See more of her work by clicking here.

Richard Pell is the creator of the Center for Post-Natural History, which has a location in Pittsburgh and does installations around the country. With big doses of humor, he explores how human culture and science has altered nature. He especially likes to focus on creatures who through selective breeding and genetic modification have become part of what he calls the “post-natural world.” Read more about his work by clicking here.

Creative Capital is a New York-based nonprofit that tries to be “a catalyst for the development of adventurous and imaginative ideas by supporting artists who pursue innovation in form and/or content in the performing and visual arts, film and video, and in emerging fields.” For more information, see its website.

Dr. Cindy Derer, a Lexington dentist for three decades, doesn’t consider herself an artist. For her, art is a hobby and a way to relax.

“I think most dentists have a little bit of artist in them,” she said. “Sculpting is what I do for a living, but they all have to end up looking like a tooth. I wanted to do something that didn’t look like a tooth, or fit in a mold.”

Over the years, Derer took evening art classes through the Fayette County Public Schools and what is now Bluegrass Community and Technical College — “I closed down both of those programs,” she said — and from the Lexington Art League and the Living Arts and Science Center.

She studied with sculptor Thomas Baker, whose day job is Web site development, but he often didn’t have a good place to have classes. So they got an idea: Why not start an art school for people like them?

Derer and Baker rented a small suite beside her dental office at Alumni Drive and New Circle Road and, in April, opened the Lexington Art Academy.

The first group of 25 students finished classes last week. During the term, local artists taught classes in figure sculpture, universal drawing, portrait drawing, introduction to oil painting and beginning rug-hooking.

“It has been a lot of fun,” said Michael Burrell, who taught the portrait-drawing class and whose own recent artwork includes the music-themed outdoor mural on the side of Al’s Bar at the corner of East Sixth and North Limestone streets. “The students are doing better than I thought.”

The next session of evening classes begins June 20 and throughout July and August. They include universal drawing, portrait sculpture, experimenting with watercolors and pastels, beginning rug-hooking, color composition, drawing foundation for painting, tapestry, and introduction to batik, an Asian art form of fabric dying.

The two-hour classes meet for between four and eight weeks and cost $80 to $280, plus some materials fees. for more information, click here.

The first group of academy students had a wide range of day jobs, including dentist, doctor, decorator, housewife and photographer. The classes are intended for adults, but some older teenagers are accepted.

“A lot of people tell me, ‘You know, I’m just not artistic,’ and I say, ‘How do you know?’ ” Derer said. “I suggest people who are interested in art try several things until they find something that’s fun and not frustrating.”

Eventually, Baker said, the academy could grow into a regular art school. Derer’s goals are more modest. Profitability? “In my wildest dreams,” she said. “I will be delighted if I break even at some point in my lifetime.”

For Derer, it’s all about fun. “I like it that it’s just something entirely different from work and doesn’t count for anything but recreation,” she said. “I find the process very relaxing. Two hours go by in the blink of an eye.”

Central Kentucky has more public art than most people realize, from edgy new murals and sculpture to historical architecture that has become so much a part of the landscape that we take it for granted.

Finding and learning more about this art has never been easier, thanks to a new, free tool that is as close as the palm of your hand.

The Kentucky Museum Without Walls project will soon release an Android version of its TakeItArtside! application, which was launched in November for Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iTouch.

The app is the brainchild of faculty and students at the University of Kentucky’s Art Department and Gaines Center for the Humanities and was developed by Lexington’s APAX Software. You may download it free from Apple’s App Store or the project’s Web site, Kentuckymuseumwithoutwalls.com.

The application uses GPS mapping technology to direct users to art in public places in Fayette and surrounding counties. There is a photograph of and information about each piece. Users may search for public art in the region and make a gallery of favorites.

But that is just the beginning, said Christine Huskisson, the project’s co-founder and a part-time UK art professor. “It has the ability to engage people in public art who haven’t been engaged before,” she said.

Users may send feedback and information to project developers, such as whether a piece of art has been vandalized. Soon, they will be able to add additional artwork to the database, along with photographs and background information.

“We’re using the community to help us build the content,” Huskisson said, adding that submitted information will be edited and verified by project volunteers.

Interdisciplinary lesson plans for middle school and high school students are available on the app and the Web site, and discussions are under way about using them in local school systems. The app also has a calendar of events.

The app will soon launch an interactive game — ArtFit — that will help users count calories they burn while walking to visit artwork. Streaming video interviews with local artists will be added soon.

Eventually, Huskisson said, the project hopes to grow into its name and expand statewide, perhaps with help from UK’s network of county extension agents.

Georgetown College, where art department chair Juilee Decker has been active in public art projects, has joined as a partner in the Kentucky Museum Without Walls. Discussions are under way to bring in Transylvania University, too.

“It kind of has this life of its own,” Huskisson said. The collaborative nature of the project has allowed it to come a long way in less than a year. It recently won a regional award from the Association for Continuing Higher Education.

The project began when Marnie Holoubek asked Huskisson and her museum-studies students to help develop a public-art master plan for the Legacy Trail. As that project progressed, ambitions grew.

Huskisson discovered that Lisa Broome-Price, associate director of the Gaines Center, wanted to create a public-art database for the region. After receiving a $10,000 Commonwealth Collaborative grant from UK to develop their vision, they attended a professional conference in Baltimore and were inspired by mobile apps in New York and Portland, Ore., and an online public-art database in Philadelphia.

They and their students visualized the user experience — including games and lesson plans — and APAX Software figured out how to turn it into reality. Subsequent funding has come from the Gaines Center and private donations.

UK and Georgetown College students have collected information about artwork for the database — taking photos, writing descriptions and plotting GPS locations. The process has led to some interesting discussions about what is public art.

Huskisson said TakeItArtside! is including any painting, sculpture, mural or other work that is outside or in a building accessible to the general public. But project leaders are taking a broad view. Many historical homes were added to the database because they are architectural works of art, Broome-Price said.

By increasing awareness of public art, the project hopes to develop more appreciation for the art Kentucky has — and an appetite to create more.

“It’s about cultural assets in public places,” Huskisson said. “And we have a lot more of them than many people realize.”

FRANKFORT — When the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce decided to renovate and enlarge its headquarters to create more public space, chamber president David Adkisson said, “I kept saying I wanted something really Kentucky.”

He considered asking architects to design the 7,000-square-foot addition to look like a fancy Bluegrass horse barn, or even a bourbon distillery warehouse.

“They convinced me that wasn’t the way to go,” Adkisson said, as he gave me a tour of the beautiful, but conventional, new space.

What is happening instead is a better reflection of Kentucky’s uniqueness: the Chamber is filling its new building with a diverse collection of original art and furniture by the state’s contemporary artists and craftsmen.

Since the new space opened in April, it has been a big hit, with members of the business advocacy group and with other Kentucky organizations that have used the new meeting rooms, Adkisson said.

He said the project has more than achieved his goal of making the Chamber’s headquarters, near the intersection of Interstate 64 and U.S. 60, a prominent “front door” to Frankfort.

“We’re in the business of showing off the best of Kentucky, so this was a natural,” Adkisson said. “We made a conscious effort to create a gallery-like atmosphere that would showcase the artwork. Now, when groups come here, the art immediately becomes the focus of attention.”

The project also has been a significant boost for Kentucky artists — and not just because the Chamber has so far spent about $50,000 buying and commissioning pieces. Louisville distiller Brown Foreman gave $40,000 toward the art project, and most of the rest so far has come from building-project money, Adkisson said.

Lori Meadows, executive director of the Kentucky Arts Council, worked closely with the Chamber to identify artists and pieces for the building.

“It’s incredibly important for the Chamber to recognize that to complete a building, you need art,” Meadows said. “A lot of time went into the selection of pieces to make sure they were appropriate for each spot.”

The additional space was built onto the front of the Chamber’s existing 10,000-square-foot building. The two sections are connected by a new, light-filled lobby. The upper parts of the tall lobby walls are covered with panoramic Kentucky scenes by Jeff Rogers, a Lexington photographer best known for his two Kentucky Wide books.

The Chamber’s new board room is dominated by a round conference table designed by Brooks Meador of Interspace Limited in Lexington and produced by furniture maker Shawn Strevels of Faulkner Fain in Nicholasville.

The board room’s largest wall displays four large seasonal landscape paintings of Kentucky wilderness by John Lackey of Lexington. Light from a corner window illuminates a leaded-glass sculpture by Dan Neil Barnes of Lexington.

The building’s largest meeting space — the AT&T Teleconference Room — has a 10-painting suite by Lexington artist Dan McGrath, depicting scenes of commerce across the state.

The new addition also features paintings by Chris Segre-Lewis of Wilmore and Darrell Ishmael of Lexington, and mixed-media pieces by Kathleen O’Brien of Harrodsburg. There are decorative platters made by porcelain artist Wayne Bates of Murray, and a coffee table in the reception area made by Mark Whitley of Smith’s Grove.

“Our goal is to buy one new piece each year,” Adkisson said. After a few more pieces are purchased, he said, the Chamber plans to publish a brochure for visitors, telling about each artwork and the artist who created it.

“I think it’s exciting that they are realizing the value of art and supporting it,” said Ishmael, who in addition to being a successful artist is an executive with East Kentucky Power Cooperative in Winchester. “I think it’s really refreshing, and I wish other businesses would do it.”

Meadows said the Chamber’s collection has inspired several executives to contact her for help in acquiring original Kentucky art for their companies’ buildings. “That’s exactly what we want to see happen,” she said.

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VERSAILLES — To see examples of Guy Kemper‘s stained-glass art, go to the Catholic Memorial Chapel at New York’s Ground Zero; a light-rail station in Seattle; or airports in Chicago, Baltimore or Orlando, Fla.

To see where his art is fabricated, go to two factories in Germany, where craftsmen work by hand, using centuries-old methods of coloring, blowing and shaping glass.

But to see where Kemper’s art begins — with quick, bold brush strokes of tempera paint on paper — drive to the end of a narrow country road, down a gravel path onto 52 acres where Clear Creek runs through the Woodford County backwoods.

When I drove there earlier this month, light reflecting off the previous night’s snow poured through the windows of Kemper’s studio, which a previous owner had built to be a machine shop. Kemper, 52, was working on designs for a wall of glass panels that will dominate the lobby of a new hospital in Birmingham, Ala.

“My art is not about what I want; it’s about what the building wants,” Kemper said, explaining that his goal is to use color and light to create not so much a piece of art as an environment.

“You really have to think about where the space is and how light will come into it,” he said. “What’s going to be the right mood for the psychology of the user? Every window wants to move. You have to get the right direction and the right colors.”

Kemper’s huge, abstract windows have brought him international acclaim. Now, he is finishing his first commission in Lexington since 2001. It is something he has never done before: mosaics.

In late April, Kemper will install the 9-foot-square mosaics in lobbies at the new University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital. The pieces, being fabricated by the German company Franz Mayer of Munich, use pieces of glass and polished stone in patterns that suggest blades of grass.

It is the latest evolution of Kemper’s artistic career, which began almost by accident.

The Louisville native had always dabbled in drawing and painting, but he didn’t think he could earn a living as an artist. Kemper moved to Lexington in 1979 and earned a degree in soil and plant science. He figured he might become an extension agent or work for a seed company. Instead, he started repairing stained-glass windows a friend was buying and selling.

Kemper set up a glass shop in downtown Lexington in 1983, and he got his first artistic commission a few years later from Ohavay Zion Synagogue in Lexington. A few others followed, including the one in 1999 that changed his career: a huge window for Florida’s Greater Orlando International Airport.

That job led Kemper to begin working with two German companies — Lamberts Glassworks, in eastern Germany near the Czech border, and Derix Glassstudios near Frankfurt. They are among the last practitioners of ancient techniques that Kemper says create glass of unrivaled color and durability.

The Germans introduced Kemper to a European tradition of separating art and craft. Artists design, but craftsmen produce. “That was a revelation for me,” he said. “Before, I would only design what I could make. This freed my imagination.”

The result has been a close partnership. Kemper leaves his farm periodically to spend several weeks in Germany, helping the craftsmen execute his artistic vision. “I go to the best glass-blowers in the world, and they make me look really good,” he said.

Kemper says he begins his process by studying the place where his window will be installed. He analyzes light patterns, thinks about how people will use the space and sometimes builds detailed architectural models.

He then uses brushes and paint to create images and color combinations that will translate well into the unique properties of hand-blown glass. Many of Kemper’s huge windows, which cost tens of thousands of dollars to make, are inspired by feelings of flight, motion and energy.

Once the designs are finished, Kemper goes to Germany, where craftsmen mouth-blow large glass bottles with two or three layers of color. They cut off the bottles’ tops and bottoms, and through careful reheating and flattening, they create sheets of unique glass.

Powerful acids are used to dissolve some of the glass surface to create his designs, along with occasional use of vitreous enamels that are then kiln-fired. Sometimes sandblasting is used, or prisms are worked into the design to create colorful patterns of light in a room.

Kemper hopes to continue pushing the limits of his creativity for many years, but he worries about whether the craftsmen will be around to produce it. Most artists use faster, cheaper ways to make stained-glass windows, but Kemper doesn’t think they look as good or will last as long.

“Nobody else does what I do,” he said. “Some people don’t like it. But if you like it, there’s nowhere else to get it.”

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The University of Kentucky is racing to complete its new Albert B. Chandler Hospital. A curved atrium lobby connects the new hospital with two existing buildings. A water feature with Kentucky stone fences and native trees and plants is being built, above, where Rose Street used to be.

The hospital is scheduled to open with a ribbon-cutting May 15. The first patients will move in on May 22.

“We have not missed a single deadline and we will not miss this one,” said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs, who gave media tours of the construction project Wednesday.

The $532 million project is on time and 1 percent under budget, Karpf said. The project is being paid for by money generated from hospital operations, bonding and private philanthropy. “There is not a single nickel of federal money” in the project, he said. “There’s not a single nickel of state money.”

The 650-bed hospital is being designed with the idea that it will be used for 100 years. Additional sections will be built over the next 30 to 50 years, eventually replacing the older Chandler Medical Center.

“This is a world-class facility, but it will be uniquely Kentucky in the art and landscaping,” Karpf said. The hospital will display a wide variety of original work by Kentucky artists, and a 305-seat auditorium with a studio-quality sound system will feature performance art that can be televised in patients’ rooms.

“This is a serious collection of Kentucky art,” Karpf said, as well as some pieces by artists from elsewhere. The idea is that art will help patients and their families feel more comfortable.

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Dr. Michael Karpf, right, shows the atrium construction to Ed Lane, left, and Mark Green of The Lane Report magazine. Photos by Tom Eblen

Art in Bloom, the annual fund-raiser for The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, is trying something new with its silent auction. Rather than buying work by local artists, patrons will bid on chances to experience their art with them.

Winning bidders at Art in Bloom should like this approach — almost as much as the artists do.

For example, Helene Steene is offering a winning bidder and as many as five of his or her friends the chance to spend an afternoon in her Loudoun House studio, learning her painting techniques and using them to create their own art.

Another winning bidder will get to bring as many as 20 people on a private tour of Stephen Rolfe Powell‘s new hot-glass studio in Danville. They also will see a demonstration of Powell’s work, which has brought him international acclaim.

Painting lessons with Mary Ann McKee are up for auction, as is a drawing class with Anne Wehrley Bjork. A winning bidder and as many as four friends will get to spend an afternoon with John Lackey at his Homegrown Press studio in the renovated old Spalding’s Bakery building. Lackey will show how he makes woodblock prints, and he’ll give them each one to take home.

Weaver Philis Alvic and mixed media glass artist Dan Neil Barnes are offering a private tour of their studios for as many as four people. The tour comes with a $150 gift certificate for dinner at Nick Ryan’s. Many of the other experiences also include food or refreshments from restaurants, including Stella’s Kentucky Deli, Flag Fork Farm and the Mousetrap.

Other auction items include a private tour for as many as four people at the Folk Art Center in Morehead and a visit with famous folk artist Minnie Adkins at her home in Elliott County.

Susan Goldstein and Jim Wenneker will invite winning bidders to see art collections in their homes. Ed and Kay Thomas are offering a tour of their beautifully restored 1792 home in Bourbon County; lunch is included. Additional auction offerings are still coming in.

“We thought this would be a fresh approach,” said Marsha Bloxsom, chair of Art in Bloom’s auction committee.

Patrons who attend fund-raisers such as Art in Bloom love art, but they don’t always need more of it for their homes.

“How much better it could be to have a shared experience with friends,” she said. “There are people who are interested in the process as much as the art itself.”

Besides, Bloxsom said, this approach is fairer to local artists, who often struggle to support themselves financially while doing the work they love.

“When they donate something, it’s a piece they could have sold,” she said. “It’s money out of their pocket. And when it sometimes goes for little at an auction, it is almost insulting.”

Some local non-profit groups split auction proceeds with artists, but others simply ask for donations. Artists can’t even get much of a tax benefit, because they can deduct only the cost of materials, not their time. Bottom line: Artists can be reluctant to donate their best work.

“I think it’s good exposure for the artists to do it this way,” said Steene, who in addition to being a professional artist is a volunteer docent at the museum and a member of Art in Bloom’s auction committee.

“Visiting a studio can be an eye-opener,” said Steene, who uses pure pigments, marble dust and other substances to create abstract paintings with multiple layers of complex colors and textures. “I’m going to reveal some of my techniques and let people try them to create their own art.”

Steene, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, who has lived here since 1987, said she is amazed at the flowering of Lexington’s art community in just the past five or six years. This fund-raising approach allows artists to showcase not only their work but their passion in ways that could lead more people to buy original art — or try creating it themselves.

“I think people would enjoy art more if we took some of the mystery out of it,” she said. “This way, they can come into our world and see what it’s like.”

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Sts. Peter and Paul Regional Catholic School, a fixture in downtown Lexington for 98 years, is inviting the community to see its $12 million renovation and expansion.

The school will be a stop Friday night during Gallery Hop, with an exhibit of student art chosen from the region’s Catholic schools. Then, on Feb. 24, Sts. Peter and Paul will launch a monthly concert, “Series with the Saints,” in the school’s elegantly restored 250-seat theater.

The first concert in this series is special: a recital of songs written by the late Kentucky folk music legend John Jacob Niles in collaboration with Thomas Merton, the famous author and Trappist monk who lived at the Abbey of Gethsemani near Bardstown until his death in 1968.

The recital, “Written in the Stars,” will feature mezzo-soprano Sherri Phelps and pianist Rachel Taylor, with special guest Jacqueline Roberts, who was Niles’ performance partner from 1967 until his death in 1980.

Using Merton’s poetry, Niles wrote 22 songs specifically for Roberts’ voice, seven of which are included in this recital. The show will feature photographs, audio and video recordings about Niles and Merton, with commentary from Roberts.

“In many ways, this is an evening to honor Jackie,” Phelps said. “She’s the primary source for the material, and she has been passing on the performance practices, teaching them to me.”

Both Phelps and Taylor have doctorates in music. Taylor teaches piano at Eastern Kentucky University. Phelps is an opera singer who has performed throughout this country and Europe. But this material, which blends Niles’ folk music with Merton’s poetry, has special appeal for them.

“When I was studying at Juilliard in New York, this was the only Kentuckian’s music I ever heard at the school,” said Phelps, a Morgantown native. “I felt a special need to champion this music.

“And Thomas Merton is so intimately connected with Kentucky’s Catholic heritage,” she said. “This is the only song cycle he ever collaborated on with a composer.”

This spring, the recital will begin a national tour with a performance at Mission San José in California.

Phelps said Sts. Peter and Paul’s restored W. Paul and Lucille Caudill Little Theatre will be the perfect place for the show’s premiere. It is a large but intimate space with great acoustics and lighting, and a new grand piano. It is a hidden gem on the second floor of the school that serves students from throughout Central Kentucky.

The original school was built in 1913, on West Short Street between historic St. Paul Catholic Church and the Lexington Opera House. In a major commitment to downtown, the school has been more than doubled in size, with a new classroom addition and gymnasium, said Jeanne Miller, a school parent who helped to organize the project.

So far, the school project has attracted 550 donors, including the Lucille Caudill Little Foundation, which helped to restore the theater. Alltech donated science labs, and the Knights of Columbus helped pay for the gymnasium.

The 1913 building was carefully restored to make it modern, while retaining its original architectural beauty. Sts. Peter and Paul reopened in August with 490 students in grades one through eight at the renovated Short Street campus and younger children at a school beside St. Peter Catholic Church on Barr Street.

As with the new gymnasium, now used by many Lexington youth teams, Sts. Peter and Paul wants the renovated theater to be well used. Children from nearby Harrison Elementary School and residents of Ashland Terrace retirement home have been brought in to see school performances. The school also is partnering with Lexington Children’s Theatre, its neighbor across Short Street, on a summer theater camp.

“This was such a community space in the early 1900s,” Miller said. “The goal is to recreate that today, to make it not just an asset for the school but for the entire community.”

Art historian Estill Curtis Pennington likes to solve mysteries, share discoveries and celebrate Kentucky culture. He does a bit of all of that in his new book, Lessons in Likeness: Portrait Painters in Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley, 1802-1920.

The book (The University Press of Kentucky, $50) is likely to become an important reference work on Kentucky’s cultural history, thanks to his three decades of shoe-leather research. Lessons in Likeness has been nominated for the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Charles C. Eldredge Prize, which honors scholarship with new insights into America’s artistic heritage.

But don’t let that scare you off. Despite its academic ambition and seemingly arcane topic, this is an enjoyable read for anyone interested in Kentucky history or curious about the often- colorful characters who made the only images we have of our 18th- and early 19th-century ancestors.

The large-format book is richly illustrated and well-written, with many humorous and revealing anecdotes. Many portraits in the book come from the collection of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville.

Photography has made portraiture something of an artistic stepchild. But the media can be very different.

“A portrait is not a photograph; it is a likeness, which was the old-fashioned word,” Pennington said. “A portrait is a product of the imagination. It is what the artist saw in his mind’s eye and laid out. It is an interactive process that involved a sitter with expectations and an artist with abilities.”

The first section of Lessons in Likeness is a chronological essay that puts Kentucky portraiture in the context of social and artistic trends. The second section profiles the best and most influential artists who worked in Kentucky. They included famous names such as Matthew Jouett and John James Audubon (who drew people as well as birds) and many artists who have been almost forgotten.

“I love finding artists who are virtually unknown in our own time and bringing them back to some kind of attention,” Pennington said. “It’s cultural archaeology.”

Of course, not all old portraits are great works of art. Before photography, a portrait was the only way to preserve a loved one’s likeness, so there was a market for pictures by less-talented artists. “These painters were the mall photographers of their time,” Pennington said, adding that it was often a point of pride to be “self-taught.”

But Kentucky produced many fine portraitists. Some of the best were born in and near Lexington in the decades around the turn of the 19th century. They include Jouett, who studied under Gilbert Stuart, early America’s most famous portrait painter; and Oliver Frazer and William Edward West, two of the first Kentucky-born artists to study in Europe.

Before the Civil War, Kentucky was the crossroads of the American frontier — an exciting and almost mythical place. Famous Kentuckians such as Henry Clay and Daniel Boone were popular portrait subjects.

John Filson’s colorful “autobiography” of Boone shaped many Europeans’ views of America, and Kentuckians were celebrated elsewhere as raconteurs. Stuart, the Philadelphia painter most famous for his George Washington portrait on the dollar bill, had the same nickname for his student Jouett as West’s friends in Europe had for him: “Kentucky.”

Pennington discusses what Kentucky portraitists learned from one another and how society influenced their work. Even before the Civil War, some painters skillfully addressed the complexities of race relations in works that have been debated ever since. “The key phrase is what informs the object, and how does the object inform us,” he said.

Lessons in Likeness also reflects Pennington’s interest in itinerant artists, who left work scattered around the South. “Piecing it all together was like a giant jigsaw puzzle for me, figuring out where they had been and the impact they may have had,” he said.

Pennington began his work in 1980 after studying at the University of Kentucky and George Washington University and in Europe, and working for the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

As an “itinerant curator,” he traveled the South gathering material as the Archives’ field representative. He later worked as director or a curator of art museums in Laurel, Miss.; New Orleans; and Augusta, Ga.

Pennington gathered much of the material for this book during those years. Perhaps his most significant find was West’s personal papers, which were in the possession of a descendant Pennington tracked down through genealogical research. The papers included West’s hand-written account of painting the last portrait of the English romantic poet Lord Byron in 1822.

Pennington moved to Europe and worked in Amsterdam for nearly a decade. Then, in 2005, he returned to his native Bourbon County, where he lives in a farm cottage he restored.

“Suddenly, I’m 60 years old and want to get this stuff in print,” said Pennington, who published the book, Kentucky: The Master Painters, in 2008.

“My goal is to heighten our awareness of Kentucky’s great cultural heritage,” he said. “I think it’s so important to understand that our antebellum history was so much more dynamic and important than people may understand today.”

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When artist John Lackey moved his studio to the former Spalding’s Bakery building at the busy corner of North Limestone and East Sixth streets a couple of months ago, he quickly got a taste of life in a transitional neighborhood.

“People had been coming here to get doughnuts for 70 years,” he said, “so they were used to just walking right in.”

Lackey’s paintings are detailed and colorful interpretations of wild Kentucky landscapes, with trees and plants that seem to dance in the breeze. Think Vincent van Gogh does Paul Sawyier, with touches of M.C. Escher and Max Ernst.

An old man wandered into the studio one day and silently studied Lackey’s paintings. “Those trees are awfully curly,” he finally said. “Trees aren’t really that curly, you know.”

A few days later, a little girl walked in, looked around and, just as matter-of-factly, announced: “I like roses. If you paint roses, I might buy some.”

Like some of his new neighbors, Lackey isn’t exactly sure what he is trying to accomplish with Homegrown Press Studio & Gallery. It officially opens Friday for Gallery Hop with a show of painting and woodblock prints. Lackey’s paintings also will be featured during Gallery Hop at Alfalfa Restaurant, 141 East Main Street.

“My personal goal with this place is to come to maturity as an artist,” said Lackey, who began painting six years ago after doing woodblock engravings for two decades. A former TV station art director, he is a prolific graphic artist. Lackey also writes poetry, short fiction and songs, and he has experimented with filmmaking.

“Somehow, I want to bring them all together here,” said Lackey, 48. “That’s the good part of middle age. I feel like an artist now.”

Lackey’s father was a teacher at Sayre School and his mother is a nurse. His wife, Jenny, manages a medical office. They live in a south Lexington suburb and have two sons: Quinn, 18, a freshman at Furman University in South Carolina, and Dylan, 14, a student at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. Lackey loves hiking in the woods, which inspires much of his art.

During the past couple of years, Lackey’s art has started getting a lot of attention. He recently completed a four-seasons series of landscape paintings for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce’s board room in Frankfort. He also has paintings on display in the Kentucky Artisan Center in Berea.

Lackey has created posters for the band Wilco. He did woodblock engravings for a poetry book by Erik Reece and the book Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky, which was written by four Kentucky poets laureate and published by the Kentucky Arts Council for the Lincoln bicentennial in 2009.

He just finished a woodblock engraving for the cover of the late James Still’s unfinished novel Chinaberry, which was edited by Silas House and will be published in spring by The University Press of Kentucky.

Lackey said it feels like his artistic career is at a crossroads, just like his new studio’s location and the diverse neighborhood around it.

Al’s Bar across the street has become a hangout for young urban pioneers who are moving into the area, fixing up old buildings and trying to blend in with, rather than displace, longtime low-income residents. The streets can be dicey after dark, but conditions are improving steadily.

Chad Needham bought the Spalding’s building last year. It had been vacant since 2004, when bakery owner James Spalding decided to retire after being pistol-whipped during a robbery. In 2006 his f amily reopened the bakery on Winchester Road in a new building that looks like the old one.

Needham is only the third owner of the circa-1880 building, which was a grocery, saloon and coal yard before the Spalding family bought it in 1934. Before that, the Spaldings had been selling their famous doughnuts for five years out of their house on nearby Rand Avenue. After a major renovation is complete, the old building will have a beautiful upstairs rental apartment in addition to Lackey’s studio.

“I just fell in love with this place,” Lackey said of the big, high-ceilinged room, whose bare brick walls are bathed in light from the storefront windows. In addition to working and showing his work here, he hopes the studio will become a place for other artists to gather and collaborate.

“I feel like this is an appropriate place for me to be right now,” Lackey said. “I also hope that what I’m doing helps the neighborhood. We’re on the crest of a wave here, and I want to help pull it along.”

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As I drove away from the Headley-Whitney Museum on Old Frankfort Pike last week, I had to swerve around a minivan with Michigan plates stopped in the road. Its occupants apparently were fascinated by the young horses and their mothers standing along the fence.

Lexington residents see horses all the time, but they are a novelty for most Americans. A century ago, horses and their images were everywhere.

That’s one idea behind the Headley-Whitney’s new exhibit, The Horse in Decorative and Fine Art, which opened earlier this month and continues until December.

While planning for the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games this fall, museum executives decided they wanted to show visitors the diversity of equine art, especially pieces held in Kentucky collections.

The result is an eclectic exhibit of works that show the special relationship between man and horse. The exhibit ranges from modern paintings, sculpture and fine jewelry to a horse carved in stone more than 5,000 years ago.

Pieces were borrowed from 16 Kentucky museums and collections, 27 private collectors and seven out-of-state institutions, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Museum of American History, The Jockey Club in New York, and the Harness Racing Museum in Goshen, N.Y.

“There’s something here for almost everyone, from the serious collector of equine art to people who are just interested in horses and horse culture,” said Sarah Henrich, the museum’s executive director.

The exhibit’s most notable element is the largest group of paintings ever assembled by 19th-century artist Thomas J. Scott. Many were painted in Kentucky, and they show several prominent racehorses of that age. The best example is Scott’s 1857 portrait of the great sire Lexington. The portrait is on loan from the Smithsonian.

The itinerant Scott was a well-known and prolific equine artist and journalist in his day, but he was almost forgotten after his death in 1888. His legacy is being rediscovered thanks to two Kentuckians, Gordon Burnette of Lexington and Genevieve Baird Lacer of Shelbyville.

Burnette began researching Scott several years ago after finding one of his paintings on the curb in a recently deceased neighbor’s trash. He teamed up with Lacer, the biographer of Scott’s well-known teacher, Edward Troye, to find out more about Scott and track down his surviving work. They recently published a catalog of Scott’s known work. The catalog is for sale at the museum and some local bookstores.

Burnette recently found the only known photograph of Scott.

“I know there are hundreds of his paintings out there that we don’t know about, and a lot of them are probably still around Lexington,” Burnette said. “I hope this exhibit raises awareness of Scott and more come forward.”

What makes this Headley-Whitney exhibit fascinating is the range and variety of the pieces. Arranged among paintings, sculpture, jewelry and elegant silver racing trophies are a lot of surprises.

There is a horse-themed quilt made in Warren County in 1882 that is in pristine condition, and a child’s homemade hobby horse from Maysville “that was obviously well loved,” curator Amy Gundrum Greene said.

There is a Currier and Ives lithograph of a horse scene, its original pencil-sketch study, and a quiz that visitors can take to find 10 differences between the first draft and the finished work. Other printed images of horses range from a 1505 engraving by the famous German artist Albrecht Dürer to a John Wayne movie poster from the 1950s.

One display case contains carefully colored drawings of Western Indian horses by 19th-century Native American children who were taken from their families to be “civilized” in a Pennsylvania boarding school. “It was their way of working out what was going on in their lives,” Greene said.

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Thomas J. Scott was an intinerant artist and journalist who painted perhaps 200 or more race horse portraits before he died of pneumonia in Lexington’s old St. Joseph Hospital in 1888.

Scott was a private man, and little is known about his 56 years of life. Except for a few prized paintings, he was largely forgotten until seven years ago, when Gordon Burnette of Lexington noticed a beat-up old painting on the curb with a deceased neighbor’s trash.

As I wrote a year ago, the find led Burnette on a quest to find out more about Scott and his work. Quest? Obsession may be a better word. Whatever it was, it has had quite an impact.

Last Monday, on Memorial Day, an honor guard from the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War helped Burnette dedicate a new, corrected headstone for Scott’s grave at The Lexington Cemetery, where he is buried with fellow members of the 21^st Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment.

And thanks to work by Burnette and Shelbyville author Genevieve Baird Lacer -biographer of Scott’s famous teacher, Edward Troye – at least 10 of Scott’s paintings will be included in an exhibit at Lexington’s Headley-Whitney Museum, which opens Aug. 15 and continues through December.

The exhibit, The Horse in Decorative and Fine Art, contains a variety of pieces borrowed from more than 15 individuals and 15 museums, including the Smithsonian in Washington, the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville, Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill and Ashland, the Henry Clay estate.

“We’re specially please that we’re getting the original (Scott) painting of Lexington from the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum,” said Amy Greene, the Headley-Whitney’s curator.  Another Scott portrait of the great 19^th century stallion Lexington is perhaps his most visible work today: it hangs prominently in Keeneland’s clubhouse.

Burnette, a dispatch supervisor for the University of Kentucky’s Physical Plant, said he had no intention of becoming an amateur historian and art sleuth. But after stumbling on a great mystery, he just had to solve it.

When an elderly neighbor on Courtney Avenue died in 2003, her home’s new owner threw out a bunch of junk, including what turned out to be Scott’s 1882 painting of the great trotting broodmare Miss Russell.

It took Burnette nearly three years to get around to learning more about the painting and having it restored. Since then, he hasn’t stopped. He and Lacer created a website – www.thomasjscott.com – to help track down more of Scott’s paintings and try to find out more about him.

In addition to painting horses, Scott was an equine journalist for the magazine Turf, Field and Farm. He wrote under the pseudonym “Prog,” which means to wander and beg for food. Originally from Tullytown, Pa., he lived in New York as well as Kentucky, and many of his family members later settled on Long Island, N.Y.

Burnette bought another Scott painting – an 1874 portrait of the stallion Acrobat – on eBay. He later discovered that it had been auctioned a few years earlier on Long Island, perhaps by a Scott descendant.

His strangest discovery so far, though, was a copy of his Miss Russell painting. It had been hanging for years in a home three blocks from where Burnette lives. (Artists often made copies of horse portraits for the animal’s subsequent owners.)

Lacer and Burnette are pulling together images of the Scott paintings they have tracked down, as well as what they have discovered about his life, in a 60-page book that will be published in time for the Headley-Whitney exhibit.

Burnette said he continues investigating Scott because he is puzzled by why he was largely forgotten after his prolific professional life. “I keep thinking, how did they leave him out?” he said. “He was lost in history.”

Without Scott’s paintings, we would have no visual record of many great race horses of the mid-1800s. Ironically, there are no known images of Scott himself, although Burnette has found photographs of his wife, children and mother-in-law.

During the Civil War, Scott served as a hospital steward in the 21^st Kentucky Volunteer Infantry, which was made up mostly of Lexington men. “If there are any Civil War photos of him, they might be somewhere in Lexington,” Burnette said.

And the way the mystery of Thomas J. Scott has unfolded, they may be literally just around the corner.

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Fayette County Attorney Larry Roberts supports local art the old-fashioned way: he buys it.

Specifically, Roberts supports photographers by buying and displaying their work throughout the county attorney’s office, which recently expanded to include five floors of the First Federal Building at Vine and South Upper streets.

The office’s collection of about 200 framed prints will be on display from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday during Gallery Hop. At least eight of the 29 photographers will be there to discuss their work with the public.

The collection began in 2006, when Roberts got a $100,000 incentive from his landlord as part of a long-term lease. Because he got a great deal on some used office furniture, he had extra money for decorating.

Photographer Don Ament, right, shows Fayette County Attorney Larry Roberts a landscape photograph he has just delivered to his office. Photo by Tom Eblen

“I like photography,” Roberts said. “And I thought it would be neat to support local artists.”

As the collection has grown, Roberts has used some revenue that the office generates — but no tax money — to buy and frame photographs.

This might be the best and most diverse large collection of Lexington photography on public display. Roberts has tried to include work from all of the area’s well-known photographers, among them James Archambeault, Dean Hill, John Snell, Doug Prather, Don Ament and the Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff photo journalists.

On Monday, as Roberts was preparing for Gallery Hop, he noticed a stunning photo on Kentucky.com that Herald-Leader chief photographer Charles Bertram had taken that morning of the sun rising behind a tree on a farm off Walnut Hill Road. Before the sun set, Roberts had ordered a print to frame.

Several amateur photographers, including Fayette County Judge- Executive Sandra Varellas, have donated pictures so they could be included in the collection. “Once I put this up, a lot of people wanted to give us photos,” Roberts said.

The photos don’t have to show Kentucky — they just have to have been made by a Kentucky photographer. Selection criteria is simple, Roberts said: “It’s whatever I like.”

He uses different kinds of photos to help set the mood in various parts of the office: for example, there are warm and humorous photos in the area where family and children’s issues are dealt with, and photos of law-enforcement activities in the criminal law section. The majority of pictures show beautiful scenery, community activities and horses.

“I want this to look more like a law office than a government office,” said Roberts, adding that he gets many compliments from citizens who come to the office on business.

Roberts allows his staff to use some of the photos to decorate their own offices. “I think it’s a great recruiting tool for me with young lawyers,” he said.

Local photographers appreciate Roberts’ support. “I think it’s a really big deal,” said Ament, who like other artists has seen sales and income decline during the recession.

Ament hopes others will follow Roberts’ example and buy local art for their offices and facilities. “A lot of people say they want to give local artists exposure,” he said. “Exposure is nice, but money is better.”

Yvette Hurt, an environmental lawyer and anti-smoking advocate, doesn’t have a background in public art or public transportation. But Art in Motion, the all-volunteer organization she and science teacher Scott Diamond started four years ago, has had a big effect on both.

Art in Motion has built two public-art bus shelters in Lexington, has two more approved for construction and is planning more. The organization will have a fund-raiser Saturday night.

“Sometimes I wonder how I got involved in this,” said Hurt, who was co-chair of Bluegrass Action, which pushed for Lexington’s 2004 public smoking ban. “I like art and public art, but I really see it as an environmental project. Building public transportation in Lexington is a huge environmental issue.”

The design for Art in Motion’s fourth bus shelter was chosen Monday from among 18 proposals by an eight-member jury of representatives from LexTran, the University of Kentucky, LexArts and the Aylesford Neighborhood Association. By fall, it should be in place on Euclid Avenue at Linden Walk, beside the UK Alumni House.

The garden-themed shelter was designed by Prajna Design & Construction, a Lexington firm whose principals and staff are all UK College of Architecture graduates.

The design is inspired by the simple sheds found on some Bluegrass horse farms. Made primarily of recycled steel and salvaged barn oak, the shelter will include a “green” roof of blooming sedum plants, a wall of ivy and low-voltage LED lighting.

“It’s not just public art; it’s a shelter. That’s what attracted us to it,” said Garry Murphy of Prajna. “I like the idea of architecture as art, and expressing a city’s individual qualities.”

Claudia Michler, who was on the jury as a neighborhood representative, said Prajna’s design stood out. “I think it will be nice to drive down that street and see a functional art piece,” she said. “Now it’s really a dull corner; it’s just concrete and asphalt and automobiles.”

The third Art in Motion shelter, Bluegrass, on Newtown Pike across from the Fayette County Health Department, also is expected to be completed in the fall, about the same time Garden Shelter is built. The Bluegrass shelter’s roof is supported by blue steel pipes resembling blades of grass, and the back has frames for two-dimensional art that can be changed periodically.

Art in Motion’s two completed shelters have drawn much public praise: The first, Bottlestop on Versailles Road, was finished in January 2009 and was built with translucent walls made from green Ale 8 One bottles. The East End Artstop, at Third Street and Elm Tree Lane diagonally across from the Lyric Theater, includes murals and a colorful sculpture called Lyrical Movement.

Each of the two newest shelters will cost about half the $36,000 that was needed for Artstop. UK contributed $12,000 toward Garden Shelter. Last August, Art in Motion and LexTran received a $150,000 federal grant through the state to help with future shelter projects. Other funding has come from a variety of sources, including LexTran and private donations of money and services.

Because Art in Motion, a part of the Bluegrass Community Foundation, is an all-volunteer effort, all money raised goes to shelter construction, Hurt said.

“Public art is the art that crosses all boundaries,” Hurt said. “In this case, it helps attract ‘choice’ riders to public transportation — people who could drive if they chose to. The more choice riders you attract, the more efficient public transportation becomes, and that’s good for the environment.”

If you go

Art in Motion Shakedown

What: Dance party and silent art auction to benefit Art in Motion.

When: 7 p.m.-2:30 a.m. April 17.

Where: Buster’s Billiards & Backroom, 899 Manchester St.

Admission: $8 donation at the door.

More info: www.art-in-motion.us

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