Imagine A Lexington Art Scene That Is Irrelevant & Bold

By Theo Edmonds

Imagine a ‘big city’ artist with authority. Imagine an artist that speaks and acts like part of the established art world elite, that is, with clarity and confidence and consistency.

Now, imagine an artist or group of artists that are irrelevant? Who wants to be part of a group that is out of touch with things?  Who wants to be part of a group that is on the outside looking in?

Isn’t it true that we want our experience as an artist or our experience with art in general to connect with the rest of our lives? And that we want the rest of our lives to somehow fit in with what we talk about when we go to a gallery to communally experience an individual endeavor such as viewing a work of art?

We go to “artsy” events from a week of work and paying the bills and taking care of family and being with friends and working through issues and pondering world events. And when we leave the art… we re-enter that same world – a world where we are just trying to find our way, have a good time, make some sense of things, and make things around us a little better.

Throughout history, we have often looked to art to provide practical insight that carries us in the hard days and helps us find the way at those difficult crossroads.  And we want the art to help us discover and develop the kind of relevancy that makes our individual lives meaningful in a communal sense with those around us.

Some folks say things like “I know art when I see it!”  Art history teachers lament that most students don’t really care who Rothko or Rauschenberg were. So, much of the time, when an art history classes are taught, there is as much corporate and political history in those lessons as there is discussion of the intent of the art.

It’s like other arguments that regularly come up in schools. The cry is for classes that have practical benefit, courses that will help us make some money, experiences in school that prepare us for real life.

So, it’s not unusual for students to protest classes that they perceive to be irrelevant. What does it matter what Pollock and Picasso said? Do we really need to know the difference between abstract expressionism and impressionism?

Most of us just want something relevant from our participation in the arts that gives us an individual sense of belonging to a greater whole.

A phenomenon of the modern age that has been front and center in many places like Louisville’s 21C Hotel and other ‘high art” venues is art that falls in the category of ‘new media’.  While it is art that I personally enjoy a great deal, I find there is something missing – the human mark.  For instance, my favorite thing to do when I go to a museum is to view up close and personal the paintings by the modern masters.  I love seeing their thumbprints.  I love seeing the accidental drips.  I love seeing the mark left behind by the human hands that made the art.  I love feeling connected to the artist.  For me, much of the new media art is devoid of the human to human experience.  Instead, in the execution of a lot of the ‘high tech’ art, I find myself disconnected from the creative process of the artist which is one of the most exciting things to me when viewing art. 

I suppose I am just old school that way.  After all, new media art is directly relevant to the high tech world we live in today.  That’s the kind of relevancy that many people want from the art and I think that’s important. We just don’t seem to have the time to care where Jackson Pollock put his thumbprint in a 20ft wide painting that looks like a giant bird’s nest of color, movement and line. We want art to connect with our hard-wired, fast-paced, digital lives.  We want an immediate, relevant experience.  That is a great thing for art to be able to provide.  And, like I wrote earlier, I personally enjoy a lot of the new media art – at least the new media art that doesn’t just use technology because it is available to be used.

Sometimes the art and the artist tries too hard to fit in and, in the process, the art and the artist lose their distinctive voice and particular identity.

I still think that art ought to connect with folks daily lives and that the art community ought to help with that in every way possible, but occasions arise when, as artists, our faithfulness to the creative process will cause us to swim upstream, run against the wind, cut across the grain. And, very often, we may well find ourselves in the minority.

That’s really the test of a true artist. In those moments when we are in the minority, will our impulse to fit in and be relevant override our faithfulness to the creative process and particular artistic voice that we have been given by God.

One of the many, many things I love about Lexington is that we have over the years been willing to stand apart from the crowd and speak with our own voice rather than trying to copy or to ‘be like’ other cities.  That’s really what I mean by being irrelevant. 

When other cities were building ‘pristine’ reputations as business meccas – we were downtown at Café LMNOP, Johnny Angel’s or at one of Anita Madden’s legendary Derby parties.  We claim as our history the likes of Belle Breezing, Sweet Evening Breeze and a three legged dog named Smiley Pete.  That’s our heritage.  Our city’s international reputation for many years was built upon creative personalities and personality. A bird’s nest of movement, color and line with wonderful artistic thumbprints throughout.  And, if we take the time to look for them and embrace them – new thumbprints on the canvas of Lexington are being made everyday.  Personal and artistic thumbprints that may just seem irrelevant at first if we continue looking only for that which is new and can be imported from other places.  It also occurs to me that those “other places” may just be looking at our “irrelevant heritage in the making” as something that is highly relevant to them today.

You see, change happens when people stand apart from the crowd, dare to be different, find courage to be irrelevant long enough to challenge things as they are. Sometimes we are called to be irrelevant.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that it may seem like the relevant thing to do to store up treasures on earth. Everybody is doing it, or at least trying to, but Jesus invited you and me to store up treasures that cannot be touched by economic downturns and spiking fuel prices and housing crises. In other words, even with all the news about earthly treasures, Jesus asks us to be irrelevant enough to store up treasures of a different kind – treasures of relationships, love, peace, fairness, community.

The same is true with Jesus’ analogy of the wide and narrow paths. He says that many follow the wide path – which I take as a swipe at the majority who think truth resides only in numbers – but he also notes that path, as relevant as it must seem, often leads to destruction.  So, he urges his followers to take the road less traveled, the narrow path upon which not as many people journey. In doing so we will risk being called irrelevant, but it’s the path that leads to living the authentic life for which each of us were given specific gifts and voices and put in certain places to lend our truth to as long as needed.

Change comes not from agreeing with everything that is going, but from questioning what everybody else thinks is relevant. Change comes through people who can live without the popularity and the accolades and approval long enough to challenge things as they are and to give voice to how things can be.

There was an artist raised in a little town in eastern Kentucky.  His dream was to spend his life in artistic endeavors.  However, he faithfully followed the cultural script we are given as Americans.  He ended up in law school and business school.  He spent many years in corporate board rooms as a strategist and lived a very chic lifestyle in New Orleans and Honolulu.  He ended up feeling as if he were dead inside.  He gave it all up one day, moved into a warehouse on Manchester Street and began to paint and write, sing and soar, hope loud and pray.

Instead of doing the relevant thing and going quietly further up the corporate ladder -  instead of buying into the idea that all relevant things happen in corporate board rooms and the halls of government -  he became a contributing part of Lexington to help it dream new dreams and bring about change for others.

Instead of being relevant and going along with the crowd, he works with others to challenge the script and rewrite the story so that more can live freely and fairly with each other.   Instead of being relevant and going along with the big business crowd, he works with the creative resources that Lexington has on hand today that are steeped in its wonderfully quirky and unique creative ‘underground’ heritage. 

It’s the most irrelevant thing. And, it is one of the most faithful.  And, you don’t have to look too far from Main Street, to imagine what it must look like.