Their installation, Campfire Tales: A Collaborative Storytelling Experience, opens tomorrow during 4th Friday on a THURSDAY, 6-9pm. If you remember the rainbow of bottle caps that was the last Project Space installation, you’re going to be blown away by the camp-inspired wonderland these gals have created in what used to be LAL’s coat room.

Check this out to see them in action.

Campfire Tales is an interactive, theatrical art piece that encourages viewers to share tales by writing, drawing, acting out, or recording their personal stories within a playful and unique setting inspired by the campfire circle. To say it’s an immersive experience is an understatement. We’re pretty sure it’ll make you want to pack up for Memorial Day weekend to roast marshmallows and sit on tree stumps in a quiet corner of the words, communing with nature and the ones you love.

Kelley and Bailey used social networking sites like Pinterest to build a visual concept before bringing the installation to life, and they plan to include excerpts of narratives from the installation online in a blog compilation.

Why is LAL doing this exhibition? Because iPads have replaced sketch books and digital SLR cameras are being used for feature films. Because technology has climbed into bed with art and their offspring is stunning, thought-provoking, funny, and easier than ever to create. Because art is for everyone and technology helps turn ideas into reality.

Like this.

Technological advances have changed the way art is made, and artists have used technology as a springboard to evolve their creative process, finding new new and ingenious applications for the digital world. In doing so, however, they, and the rest of us who rely on machines to manage our existence, have let go of control. The faith we’ve put in our devices have freed our brains up to focus on other things and at the same time made us addicted to the activity of the entire world, which conveniently fits in our pocket on our smart phones. That’s certainly worth a closer look.

Scripts & Systems dissects the plots, plans, and algorithms used in the creative process and forces us to take a look at the scripts and systems we use in our own lives.

Join us tomorrow for 4th Friday ON A THURSDAY, 6-9pm, at LAL @ Loudoun House. We’ve got live music by Custom Made Bluegrass, delicious food from DaRae & Friends, interactive installations in the Project Space and PODS unit, audio pong, and so much more. Go ahead and set a reminder in your phone now, then invite your friends on Facebook!

Apparently, we were wrong.

This little gnome is so excited by our donors that he has been coming out of his hole just to sing their praises. We loooovvveeee all of our donors, sponsors, members, and patrons, and it looks like this Donor Gnome is also a huge fan.

If you want to try to tempt this magical little fella out into the open, make a donation to LAL. Do it for the gnome… he probably needs the Vitamin D.

UPDATE: The parade of art will take place on the Legacy Trail. Same time, different location. Unless it rains. Then it will be a performance at Loudoun House.

LAL is in the final stages of its most recent Master Class, an education program that connects talented high school students with professional artists. This session, led by performance artist and assistant professor Rae Goodwin, challenged students to transform recycled materials into art with a social message.

Using the environment as a jumping point, Ana Castellanos, a first-time grasshopper, contemplated the sturdy facade of a rock. At Henry Clay High School, Ana said she regularly sees bullying and people trying to maintain a strong exterior. But like even the hardest rock, people can crack under pressure.

For her Master Class project, Ana, who loves to draw, sculpted a hard exterior out of chicken wire and paper machéd library books. It was her first time doing sculpture, and this Saturday, when the class parades their art down Limestone Street (see UPDATE above) in a public performance at 2pm, will be the first time Ana tries her hand at performance art.

“Building this outfit was awesome,” she said. “It was a lot of work, but it’s worth it when you see it grow from something in your mind into an actual thing you can touch.”

Ana Castellanos, a sophomore at Henry Clay High School, works on her rock-inspired piece for Master Class's upcoming performance.

Ana’s artwork comes at a time when bullying, amplified in these days of social networking, has hit the mainstream. Movies like Bully, a documentary that shows the personal struggles of five teens, and Hunger Games, which has child-on-child violence at the center of its plot, have shed some Hollywood-hued light on the subject, but Ana’s piece sums up the struggles of being an adolescent from the perspective of one.

In other words, no, you have not missed it. Yet.

The 1,000 Dolls Project, a brainchild of artists Kurt Gohde, Kremena Todorova, and Ed Franklin, utilized the power of community engagement to create an epic collection of dolls.

3 here, 1008 elsewhere.

Under the influence of Transy’s Community Engagement through the Arts class, folks from Living Arts & Science Center, Sayre School, Latitude Art Center, Mulberry & Lime, Third Street Coffee, Kids’ Cafe, and Common Good got to work turning socks, wood, paper and other materials into bits of artful whimsy that 1,111 lucky people will get to add to their contemporary art collections.

Ed Franklin’s dolls have been on the Covet List for a while now. The artist started hiding dolls around town to get people out and exploring parts of the city they may otherwise overlook. For three years, he’s coordinated an all out doll season called A Doll a Day, tempting people with pictures of the dolls on Facebook and then offering up subversive clues to lead people to them. LAL helped kick off 2010′s A Doll a Day, and we are so stoked to wander Limestone and meet all the latest additions involved in this project. We’re also excited because, well, finders keepers.

On April 4, all the dolls convened for an exhibition at the Kentucky Theater, but any day now they’ll be taking it to the streets in LAL’s neighborhood. The dolls will be all along Limestone, from Euclid Avenue north to New Circle Road. Let us know if you get one for your collection!

The doll posse has left the exhibition at the Kentucky Theater and will hit the streets any day now!

Here’s more on the 1,000 Dolls project from Smiley Pete and from the Herald-Leader.

Chosen to give the 25th annual Nancy Hanks Lecture, a cornerstone of Arts Advocacy Day, Baldwin joins celebrities Yoko Ono, Tiffani Amber Thiessen, John Legend, Ben Folds, and others to use pop culture clout to get the arts the political attention they deserve.

You should be one of those others.

Today is the day to tell members of Congress that art is important, that art is essential, that art is for everyone. Click here to send a letter to your congressperson (takes less than 2 minutes) or here to see the finer points of what Arts Advocacy Day is all about.

Follow the day as it unfolds on Twitter with #AAD12, head to LAL tonight to soak up some more inspiration during our talk with Right Here Over There artists, and come to pARTy on Friday for some free art-loving swag.

Here’s an excerpt from Rich’s fantastic article:

For more than a year, members of the Lexington Art Leaguehave been excited about the prospect of a establishing a downtown venue in addition to its home base in Loudoun House, on the east end of Lexington.

That excitement spiked last week, when Art League ­leaders found out who their new ­neighbors are likely to be.

The Art League recently made public its plans to take over the third floor in the McAdams and ­Morford Building on the west corner of Main and Upper streets, ­cater­corner from the old First National ­Building. On Tuesday, the league and everyone else learned that the First ­National Building will be converted into a 21c ­Museum Hotel. That effectively will create a contemporary art intersection in downtown Lexington, which currently does not have a major non-­commercial visual arts venue.

Art League executive ­director Stephanie Harris says the decision to move into downtown was part of a five-year strategic plan whose final objective was “to establish a ­contemporary venue in the heart of ­downtown Lexington.

A year and a half ago, Harris says, the Art League got to work on that objective and settled on the McAdams and Morford building.

“The fact that 21c is now going to be joining the downtown community really does change the dialogue completely,” Harris says. “It will be a huge catalyst for change of the cultural ­climate in our community, and I think it is exactly the thing our community has needed to take it to the next level.”

We’ll be able to answer any questions about the new space and our Capital Campaign to fund the expansion at pARTy, which happens next Friday from 5-10 at the Cheapside Park Pavilion, so if you’ve got them, bring them.

And, because we really just cannot contain the excitement, here’s a preliminary sneak peek of the new space.

Architectural Rendering of LAL's downtown contemporary art space. By Jere Sullivan.

]]> http://artbeatlexington.com/2012/04/13/well-howdy-neighbors-8-2/feed/ 0 lexingtonartleague Architectural Rendering by Jere Sullivan http://artbeatlexington.com/2012/04/11/partyin-partyin-yeah/ http://artbeatlexington.com/2012/04/11/partyin-partyin-yeah/#comments Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:12:05 +0000 lexingtonartleague http://artbeatlexington.com/2012/04/11/partyin-partyin-yeah/ ]]> Here’s the deal. LAL’s Capital Campaign has been underway for about a year now, and can we just say, fundraising is HARD.

To celebrate how far we’ve come and to get the arts community (that means YOU) jazzed for the second phase of the campaign, we’re throwing a pARTy that is for everyone.

And since nothing is as inspiring as art, pARTy is going to be chock full of it!

We’ve got street art installations, interactive photo booths, artist trading card swaps, video bombing. Wanna know what video bombing is? Plan to come to pARTy.

We’ve also got a performance by the beloved March Madness Marching Band, sweet beats by DJ Dr. Gram, and a flash mob by Dance Blue. Wanna see a flash mob go down before your very eyes? Gotta come to pARTy.

Parlay Social will be providing a cash bar on site, and some lucky pARTygoers will win drawings for giveaways to Buster’s and Bellini’s.

pARTy is happening right in the heart of downtown (just a stone’s throw away from what the Capital Campaign is all about — our downtown contemporary art space) at the Fifth Third Bank Pavilion on April 20 from 5-10pm, which is during the April Gallery Hop.

We’ll see you there!

"The Apples Were Heavy in Her Bag" by Marcy Chevali

New York- based artist Marcy Chevali has a piece in Right Here Over There that is a story written on 2 balls of yarn. You can see and feel it at the Loudoun House gallery- and you can hear the story here.

Chevali states on her website:

“I build my work as re-presentations of emotional situations in my life. The materials I use and the way they interact become metaphors, diagrams. I choose ordinary materials for certain qualities that accurately portray the situations with which I am concerned. Often, additional attributes of the materials become unexpectedly significant. ” – Marcy Chevali

"Bootstraps" by Pulled Resources (Dan DeZarn and Thomas Sturgill)
salvaged lumber from Hurricane Katrina damaged house, glue, nails

Another work from Right Here Over There. This piece, created with materials important to a particular time and place, was made by a team known as Pulled Resources (Dan DeZarn and Thomas Sturgill).

Here’s what they say about Bootstraps in their artist statement:

“In January of 2007, these materials were collected from a home in Ocean Springs, Mississippi… created from… materials that were too short to salvage, a small patch of mismatch hardwood flooring and small or damaged structural lumber. These materials had little construction value but were contextually significant, emblematic of the time and culture inherent in their previous existence.”  - Pulled Resources