Louisville Magazine

MAR 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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A t 81, ceramic artist Elmer Lucille Allen has never been a fan of the word no. ���Whenever someone told me no,��� she says, ���I just waited until I heard the word yes.��� Born in the Depression era at 174 W. Chestnut St., Allen, who was named after her father, remembers when Louisville was a segregated city. When she graduated from Central High School in 1949, options for African-American women were few. She then graduated from Nazareth College (now Spalding University) in 1953 with a chemistry degree but still found little work, so she moved north to Indianapolis, where color lines were not so prevalent, and became one of the nation���s frst African-American chemists. Te yes she heard that brought her home? It came in 1966 from the Brown-Forman Corp., where she worked as one of three women at the company. All of this would be enough to inspire a play based on her life (which, by the way, has been done), but that would just be the frst act. Allen is a mother of three, a grandmother, wife, founder of the frst Chickasaw baseball Little League, and developer of Kentucky���s frst African-American Arts Directory. After retiring from Brown-Forman in 1997, she attended the University of Louisville for her master���s degree in creative arts, and she is still studying, taking a variety of classes at the university as an ongoing student. She began her ceramics career as a way of fending of arthritis. ���Te clay is good for your hands,��� she says. ���It soothes them.��� ���I make things that I want, and I have always liked teapots,��� she adds. ���Tey are so tactile. Tey have a handle, a lid and a body, and even a blind person would be able to ���see��� them.��� She found that the process of hand-building tableware suited her nature. ���If I made something that I did not like, I could just let it go and start all over again,��� she says. ���But if I like what I see, I know that I am in the process of learning something.��� Her platters are dark and molten and she loves the openness of their construction. ���Tey have a high fre and that is where they get their richness,��� she says. Her current teapots are as colorful and graphic as a Lichtenstein, and just as playful. It���s fair to say that Allen���s can-do spirit permeates her craft. ���I am in the world,��� she says, ���and that keeps me an artist.��� Tese days, she is most proud of her work as the director and curator at the Wayside Christian Mission���s Wayside Expressions Gallery, located at 120 W. Broadway. Begun in 2005, the gallery brings together professional artists and those struggling with homelessness. It is important work and right in line with Allen���s credo, ���You just don���t let things stop you.��� Allen���s latest teapots can be seen as part of the Woman Work exhibition at the Weber Gallery (1151 S. Fourth St.) through March 22. Her studio is at the Mellwood Arts Center. www.kyoms.com www.ypal.o.rg 3.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 111

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