1000 Dolls

What forms does creativity take within community life? How can creativity amplify neighborhood interactions? Learn from one local group that models how a simple art project can make a big impact.

Photos By Felice, Kurt, & Kremena

Consider the possibilities in the flotsam of daily life.  Can creatures emerge from the from the socks, stuffing, paper, yarn, wood, thread, and earth we find drifting across our path?  Through an ambitious community art project, Transylvania University students have worked to find the answer to this question.  By hosting a series of doll-making workshops, they have labored to bring creativity into tangible form for North Limestone neighborhood residents.  Their goal was to create 1000 dolls along the way.  Now, the students of the Community Engagement Through the Arts class are preparing to put them on display before they release them back into the community.  You are invited to join them for a community doll exhibition and celebration beginning at 7pm at The Kentucky Theater on Main on Wednesday, April 4th.

If a combination of raw materials, found objects, willing hands, and artistry can bring forth a doll, imagine creativity’s powerful potential.  1000 dolls stand as a striking testament to the full capacity imagination has to give rise to new creations.  Over the last two months, while stitching together droopy-eared bunnies, sanding delicate wooden figurines, and working alongside this cohort of students and artists engaging the community, I have watched relationships and collective identity come forth from what could be called a simple art project.  I overheard many doll-makers in good conversations, and witnessed cooperation, patience, and persistence among young people working to bring dolls to life.  This project has convinced me that inspired ideas, imaginative responses, and innovation are at the heart of a healthy community.  Thank you, Community Engagement Through the Arts folks, for sharing the gift of your creativity!

Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden: Remembering

How can creativity be utilized to bring community members together? In what way does creativity contribute to our collective identity and shared memory? Find out how a community art garden puts creativity to good use.

The racing past of Kentucky and the history of this place are deeply intertwined.  At one time, you could hear the sound of hoof beats echoing through my neighborhood.  A racetrack stood along what is now called Race Street and the winningest jockey in the world, with the highest victory rate of all time and three Kentucky Derby wins, lived but a few blocks from where I reside.  Isaac B. Murphy and The Kentucky Association racetrack are names that recall a time when African American athletes were revered in the sport of horse racing.  Now, some 150 years after Murphy’s birth, this neighborhood is trying to establish markers of remembrance in the landscape and recall a past once obscured.

Remembrance has many facets.  We can engage our past through the gateway of investigation, with celebration, or by utilizing the imagination.  Often, projects are developed based on a certain aspect of this triad.  A historic preservationist may focus on investigation to bring a biography to life or a community may have a celebration and hold a festival in honor of their heritage but, every so often, an idea unfolds that creatively blends the many elements of remembrance.  For my neighborhood, such a project exists.  The Isaac Murphy Memorial Art Garden is envisioned as a place where creativity can integrate investigation, celebration, and imagination into the physical landscape.

With this dynamic garden as a starting point, The East End is remembering Isaac Murphy in new ways.  It began last  summer with a creative investigation and several innovative celebrations.  To start things off right, neighbors were invited to join a community-style archaeological dig at the future site of the garden.  While digging and discussing, they discovered horseshoes, artifacts, and a large section of a foundation.  Through this investigation, researchers confirmed Murphy’s home sat on the same spot.  This event allowed community members to access both shared memories and physical objects that brought Isaac Murphy to life.

Photos By Geoff Maddock

Later in the summer, the Isaac Murphy Bike Club brought kids and bikes together for a good, old-fashioned bike safety course. During three workshops, participants learned about the rules of biking from safety officers, practiced riding in loops around a basketball court, and tasted the need for speed Murphy might have experienced on horseback.  They earned bikes with their hard work, and, along the way, encountered the story of Isaac Murphy in new ways.  No longer an obscure figure, he is the man who once lived down the street on the foundation now uncovered and, like they, he knew how to ride.

Throughout February, community members gathered once again to participate in creative remembrance.  This time, we gathered around art proposals at The Land of Tomorrow gallery and feasted our eyes on forms of remembrance born of the imagination.  Five artists created proposals for a signature art piece to commemorate Isaac B. Murphy within the memorial garden.  I was reminded of the garden’s design statement as I examined the work: “The park is designed to be SEEN, the park is designed to be USED and the park is designed to INFORM. Most importantly, the park is designed to be a place of ENJOYMENT.”  I am grateful that a purpose of this park is to bring enjoyment to our neighborhood and I am excited that art is such an integral part of how that will happen.  As we experience art, we are invited into remembrance as we enjoy.

Each of these expressions of remembrance, from the archaeological dig to the art pieces being selected for the garden, involve a lot of work.  However, the shared memory that is created through such creative forms of remembrance brings new life to our community.  Where does this energy and effort originate?  Mayor Jim Gray said it well when he spoke a few words of recognition at the gallery opening on February 10, “Behind the persistence and determination is imagination and creativity.”

Photos By Geoff Maddock

Neighborhood Exchange No. 8

Now, it’s your turn.  Contribute your own ideas or pick a question to comment on:  Does your neighborhood have a traditional way to engage in remembrance?  How does creativity impact your connections with your neighborhood?  Have you experience or encountered something with your neighbors that has become a shared memory?  Exchange your stories and ideas here!

To make a contribution to the garden fund through The Bluegrass Community Foundation, click here.

At Third Street Stuff & Coffee

Can creativity generate business? Does creativity affect our public spaces? For answers, take a look at one coffee shop that embraces creativity’s true potential.

Before I knew my neighborhood, I met its coffeehouse.  To me, it was an oasis–a pulsating beacon of color and life calling me away from the desert of academia.  Still vibrant and vivacious as ever, Third Street Stuff & Coffee is a major part of day-to-day life in Lexington’s East End.  Not merely a thriving business, it serves as a shared community dwelling for artists, students, retirees, and children alike.  As a thread in the community tapestry, this little coffee shop has become something more than a local food spot.  It is interwoven in the cultural fabric of our neighborhood as a gathering place with creativity at its heart.

Third Street Stuff & Coffee is a hybrid–a mix of craft boutique and cozy coffeehouse–born of the heart of an artist.  Its owner, Pat Gerhard, had a swiftly growing craft business that emerged from her apartment in the 80’s and then grew into a shop in 1994.  When the time came for her business to expand further, Pat aimed for the urban core of the city and took on the huge task of reinventing a ramshackle store front near the intersection of 3rd and Limestone.  At the time, she was neighboring a dilapidated bus station and a drive thru liquor store.  Although Pat’s shop brought a new feel to this edge of town, she began to ponder how to bring more life to her space.  Inspiration stuck, and in 2004 she took a leap and expanded her space into a coffeehouse.  The place became full of life, and business blossomed.

Location has played an important role in the development of Third Street, as its known by regulars, but the unique feel and design of the space has an equally important part in its appeal.  Hendrick Floyd, one of the coffeehouse’s beloved baristas, explained, “Pat has created a visual space that makes people happy.  You can’t come into a place with this color and not feel lifted.”  From the metal walls covered in magnetic poetry to the ever-chaging kaleid0scope on the community bulletin board, Third Street is designed for interaction.  “I wanted people to be able to play,” Pat shared.  “I would love to have more walls; a wall covered in changing graffiti.  I love to see things expressed.”  The creativity of the space’s design is an element that generates both appeal and inspiration for both customers and the neighborhood at large.

Though Gerhard acknowledges her contributions to the style of space, she is quick to give credit to community members and young people who have influenced the direction of her business.  She embraces a business model that involves the changing needs and ideas of her community, so Third Street has taken on the characteristics of a shared work of art.  One major example from early on is the switch she made from disposable to reusable dishes.  As customers explained a need for a more sustainable style of kitchen, Pat began to grow in her environmental awareness and quickly got on board.  Although her business model is quite progressive, Pat simply states, “I learn so much from the people who come in here.  I do a lot of listening.  Young people are wonderful teachers.”  A space so defined by conversation and collaboration is capable of generating a great deal of connectivity within the community.

The space itself and its placement at a major crossroads are enough to bring people from the neighborhoods in droves, but something else  seems to generate a steady stream of committed customers.  I asked Hendrick if it was the caffeinated drinks, but he quickly identified an even deeper pull:  “The drink is an afterthought because it’s really about the community, the relationships you have with a person.”  Pat explained this dynamic as a simple solution to a common problem, “People need a place to meet when they’re out.  So, people meet each other here.  Connections happen because they came into a space they share.”  Third Street provides people with a place to cross paths.  “We might have 10 lawyers or 10 kids and they can all use the place.  It contains a lot of energy and is still effective,” Hendrick shares.  Age, race, profession, and socio-economic status are not a part of the equation and, as a result, each person can utilize Third Street according to their own style.

The approach Third Street Stuff & Coffee has to integrating creativity, business, and shared space is contagious.  I’m quick to agree with Hendrick when he cites that, in recent history, “It’s sort of a ground zero for the changes in this place.”  It has a style that generates relationships, and it’s situated at the heart of a neighborhood in need of fresh ideas.  Third Street is moving forward in a creative way, but it is tied to a long past.  “This place has soul,” Pat describes, “I like that it’s old and mixed up.  I do a lot of collage work and this place is like a collage.”  Spend some time people-watching in Third Street Stuff & Coffee, and you will see an incredibly wide range of people wander in the door.  They, too, bear resemblance to a collage.  Together, this quirky combination of people and place make up my creative neighborhood coffeehouse.

In Search of Creativity

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have.” 
–Maya Angelou

There are fundamental elements a neighborhood requires to thrive.  Like the food, water, and shelter we each need to survive, a community needs communal dwelling places, interdependence and communication among its members, and a measure of security and stability to flourish.  We come by these resources via economic and social means, but the underlying force behind development or regeneration of community connections is something we can all access:  pure and simple creativity.  With it, one is able to multiply even the most meager economic or social resources, yet this asset requires no special degree or qualification.  We each bear creative potential.  We each have the ability to harness a great deal of ingenuity for the purposes and goals we set forth.  If we choose to do so, we can also generate growth in our neighborhoods through creative acts.

The challenge, then, is gaining confidence and discipline in using our abilities.  Like a scientist working toward a breakthrough or a musician honing his concerto, we must work toward developing our skills.  A recent article in Banner magazine set forth the premise that “ideas continue to be humankind’s means of changing the world.”  It went on to outline the ways in which each of us can foster creativity from day to day, but it also highlighted the fact that we will encounter resistance as we exercise our creativity.

So, take a moment to assess.  Are you putting your creative capital to good use?  Do you need some inspiration to gain insight into what your creative capacities may be?  Have you encountered obstacles that have discouraged you in the use of your abilities?  Is it difficult to imagine a way to utilize your creativity to foster connections in your community?

This month, as some look for signs of spring, I am in search of creativity.  As I scavenge for examples of creativity in its everyday form, I welcome you to bring your thoughts on the subject.  I will share discoveries, questions, and book recommendations here.  In the meantime, put your imagination to work and we can conjure quite a creative conversation.