Louisville, KY showed up on one of my favorite art blogs today. I always check out the Wooster Collective website for keeping up with street art projects from around the world. Today some familiar faces were on there. P.A.I.N.T. is a public arts project by the local Center For Neighborhoods. For this project, some local artists worked with kids in the Park Hill neighborhood to make an "urban tapestry."

Here's the video:

Tonight in Lexington Travis Shaffer will have the closing reception for his exhibit "Every Church in Fayette County."   Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet him at the gallery and talk to him about the show.  The exhibit marks the final project of his masters degree at UofK.

By searching the phone book and google maps, Travis found every church building in Fayette County (surrounding Lexington) and then went and made a photograph of the exterior.  Over 200 prints are displayed in grids.  A painted map with pins marks the locations of each church building and each individual print shows the GPS coordinates of where the church is located.

As part of the closing reception tonight at Land of Tomorrow Gallery a performance element will be added to the exhibit when Travis will hand out 'giving envelopes' much like you might find in a church.  For whatever amount a visitor would like to pay, they can exchange the 'offering' for a print, and take a piece from the exhibit home with them.  Travis explained to me that he hopes this clever financial exchange will provide insight into the reasons that art institutions are constantly in need of money while many churches thrive.  By offering a pay-what-you-want option for art buying he's able to open the purchase of art to a much larger audience and hopes that his own artmaking might become sustainable in this way.  He also hopes to open up the Every Church project to other cities where he can imagine making it a collaboration with other photographers, not making all the pictures himself.

The outside of the gallery.  Travis added the steeple.

The above image is a photo my wife, Mickie Winters, made for a photo exhibit by Louisville photographers that was shown in Perm, Russia last year. The prints are now back from Russia and will be shown tonight during the first friday gallery hop downtown at Magnolia Photo Booth Company's storefront. The shop is located at 714 E Market, right in the middle of the action.

If you haven't been to the first friday gallery hop before, it's quite fun. It's a good social atmosphere for just walking around and checking out some art and getting some dinner. Check out firstfridaytrolleyhop.com to see what's included.

After seeing a daguerrotype (one of the very first photo processes), the painter Paul Delaroche declared "Painting is dead."  Of course that was more than 150 years ago, and yet people are still making paintings and painting is still a highly valued art form.  Bruce Linn, who curated this show, is a painter himself and works for UofL.  If you go in the Cressman Center downtown, you're likely to meet him.

There are a lot of good artists in this show, including Denise Burge who will be showing at the 930 in a couple months for the exhibit "Conspiring with Nature".  Letitita Quesenberry is also in this show and she's one of my favorite local artists for sure.  I've never met her though, so I'll try to meet her at the reception thursday.

So, most of you are not probably familiar with Osso, but I bet you've heard of Sufjan Stevens, even if you're not quite sure how to say his name.

This Monday at 21C, Sufjan will be introducing a film he made titled The BQE, about a roadway and hula hoops or something like that.  Osso, a string quartet will be playing an arrangement of Sufjan's 2001 release 'Enjoy Your Rabbit.'  Full event details here.

Thanks to backseat sandbar for cluing us in to this event.

If your t-shirt has something to say, wear it to 21C on Thursday, September 24 between 9 and 5 and be photographed for an artist's project.

Louisville-based photographer Leslie Lyons is doing an art project where she makes portraits of people with words on their t-shirts.  At least one photo taken on this date will become part of an exhibit to be shown at the Art Directors Club in New York and then later at 21C here in Louisville.

Here are the details for the Talking Back photo session event at 21C.

On June 27, 2009 The Shotgun Fest returns to Germantown.  It will be located at St. Therese and go on from Noon - 9:00.  It's a small neighborhood festival with music, food, and just hang out time with neighbors.  This year they are also offering free booth space for artists and crafters.  You might have to do some searching to figure out how to get involved because I don't have the correct contact information unless you have a myspace.  Here's the shotgun fest myspace page.

The music schedule looks pretty good too:

Steve Halla, local master of art and theology, recently found himself in the unenviable position of being put on public radio to talk about art and spirituality with fabric artist Penny Sisto and former Speed museum director Peter Morrin on NPR's State of Affairs.  I say unenviable only because I know I wouldn't want that pressure of being on live radio talking about something so tricky to talk about.

All of the participants had good insights, given their particular backgrounds, interests, and spiritual practices.  One challenge of such a conversation in that context is to say anything substantial without being pigeon-holed as a narrow-minded fundamentalist.  The other challenge is to say anything substantial without dwindling into a meaningless gooey spiritual-ness, but it's worth a listen.

You can listen to the program on the State of Affairs website.

This Tuesday at the 930, Luke Asher and Bradley Hathaway are playing their tunes.  I'm looking forward to it because I like both of these artists as musicians and friends.  Plus, my wife Mickie and I have made the album art for both of their new records they are promoting.

This show is the official release for Luke Asher's Don't Leave So Early.  I photographed Luke in the delapidated upper floors of the downtown Bike Couriers Bike Shop.  The cover ended up being a simple photograph of old wallpaper.  The simple photo fits his simple music I think.  We did some portraits as well and those were used on the back cover as well as a way out of focus full-body shot on the inside (above).  Why is it so out of focus?  I don't know.  I just liked it that way.

I respect Bradley Hathaway a lot and he's just really nice to be around.  For his latest album, A Mouth Full of Dust, he sent us a pre-release copy and told us to figure out what the album art should be.  We said we didn't know exactly, but that it sounded like a long drive out west.  So that's what we did; We drove all around the southwest making photographs of dusty spots along the way.  A petting zoo sheep was the shot that stuck for the cover but there are dozens of other photos from the trip in the packaging as well.  Mickie made the above portrait photo of Bradley in Cherokee Park during his last visit to town last fall.

So I hope you'll come hear the concert Tuesday, and also buy an album.  The music is very good and I think the album packaging is alright too.

Bradley Hathaway / Luke Asher / Aaron Lee Martin

Tuesday, May 26 @ 7:00 p.m. / 6:30 doors / $7 / all ages

The 930 / 930 Mary St. Louisville, KY 40204

This week's LEO cover article reviews the current 930 exhibit 'Holy Lands.' It's actually a really well-written, fair response to the issues that the exhibit brings up about evidences of religion in popular culture and the results of commercialism upon Christian culture.

The opening for the exhibit is tomorrow Friday May 8th, 7-10p.m. and it's up through June 7th. Full details here.

You can read the LEO article here.