We're unveiling Art on the Grounds

We’ve been making art and media inside our building on Madison Ave since we cut the ribbon on it in 1982.

Now we're very excited to unveil art outside our building, too. We got an incredible response to our call for proposals from visual artists for major public artworks — everything from murals to sculture to interactive multimedia — and selected four of them for permanent installation in a series we’re calling Art on the Grounds. 

We’re very proud to officially unveil two of them.

The first is installed just outside our front door. “Sun Quilt,” a stained glass piece by Dan Neil Barnes is made up of five interlocking squares that mimic the quilts common throughout the region, “connect[ing] the rich history of Kentucky to the present with bright, translucent glass.”

The installation is Barnes' first in Eastern Kentucky, though he has made art in the state for 20 years. Mounted on a double-sided bench, the panes and wood mimic the angles of the building’s architecture, “invit[ing] the visitor,” as Barnes wrote in his proposal for the piece, “to experience something familiar and comforting in a whole new way.”

The second Art on the Grounds installation ready for unveiling does the same. Addison Williams is a photographer and member of EpiCentre Arts who lives and works here in Letcher County. He turned his camera on five of our artistic tools: the curve of a mandolin, archival film running through a Steenbeck editing machine, a microphone in our Richardson Theater, the lens of a camera, and a soundboard and microphone in the WMMT studios.

 “The idea was to combine some of the visual aspects of an indoor art display with the exterior of a more traditional building mural to create a ‘sidewalk gallery,’" says Williams. “Each photograph represents a core aspect of Appalshop’s productions.”

We are so thrilled to be able to support these two regional artists, and to have their beautiful artwork enliven our footprint in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

We know arts and cultural work don’t just happen inside organizations or professional studios. We’re proud to help facilitate work outside our building in as many mediums as we work inside it. 

As Barnes wrote about his stained glass sculpture, “The piece draw[s] visitors into the building, pointing the way to exciting things inside.”

The same could be said of all our Art on the Grounds. Stay tuned for more announcements of our other beautiful installations on the Appalshop grounds.

More information available at @appalshop on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.