Louavul, Kentucky

(Blogger has been doing it's own thing recently so please bare with me through formatting weirdness, broken posts/links and whatever other fun is on the virtual horizon! Sorry!) So, we trucked our film set town to Louisville, rebuilt it and then celebrated! That is the easy sounding/less painful version of events of course! The set had been in storage at L.O.T. in downtown Louisville Kentucky for a few months, packed into the slightly creepy basement of a former Y.M.C.A. We re-assembled most of it (space constraints left two poor larger house facades in pieces in the underworld) in about a week prior to Derby mayhem and returned during the towns post-Derby hangover to officially open the doors of Leonard Wood's fictional Kentucky town in an epic event of art openings!

I'd heard L.O.T. could throw a good opening and Art Without Walls seemed like their party planning skills were on point but the Gravity event really was spectacular mostly due to incredible food by Amber & Matt of Red Clover (truffle oil popcorn! homemade brautwurst cart! tasty little southern biscuits- which, I am told, were actually inspired by the set itself!)  and spirits, both of the alcoholic & disposition kind, which made everybody feel at home as they wandered in and out of the surreal film set depicting the story of their fellow neighbor Leonard.

The other artists exhibiting in the space shared the opening with us as well including Brian Harper's ceramic sculptures which are lovely, delicate beauties whose dramatic feel complimented the feel of our own show quite well (also, he is probably the nicest artist I have ever met). Another show on display loosely used David Foster Wallace as a point of entry for some pretty esoteric video & mixed media work and another piece by an artist named Joel Feldman categorized images into eleven subsets that he found patterns of around Ai WeiWei's artist compound in rural China (the images flashed across eleven screens in almost a new vision of documentary or a new journalistic medium that I found realy intrigueing). I also met a ton of other local artists, musicians, and art lovers including the lovely Monica Mahoney whose red limo piece is almost a symbol of Louisville art and can be seen throughout the streets of the town at all hours and Al Shands whose farmland contains a collection of contemporary sculpture and painting that probably rivals most institutions (and that I was lucky enough to take a tour of during our most recent trip! It was incredible! Maybe I will elaborate in a separate post?).

The night receded into the mythical bar Freddie's across the street from L.O.T. and then even further into a beautiful house on the outskirts of town with friendly company and (of course it being the home of bourbon and all) drinks, slowly pushing us into our hotel beds in the wee hours of the morning! I cannot imagine a better experience and more love from a town than what I felt as we opened the doors for eveyone to share in Leonard's local story. I don't know how to thank everyone for their help in bringing Gravity to Louisville and borrowing Gravity, the inspiration for the story, from Louisville! I really hope to spend more time there which we might do in the near future- in the form of a live performance of the film! Now, after an unexpected flight delay which ended in a sleepover in Detroit, we have arrived in the thunderstorms of upstate New York at another beautiful place I am so lucky to be a part of!