Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/891238
LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.17 57 HOW TO MAKE AN ART SCHOOL By Mary Chellis Austin Photos by Jessica Ebelhar Magic. at's how Churchill Davenport describes the Ken- tucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University. Davenport, the school's founder and chancellor, grew up here but spent most of his years away studying and teaching at what many consider top art schools: Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut; New York City's Pratt Institute; Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), in Baltimore. He'd meet students from Kentucky and wonder why they all de- cided to come out east to get a good art education — and why few returned to Louisville. On trips back here he'd think: Louisville is an art town. Louisville needs — deserves — an art school. Around 2007 he was in town visiting his mother and told her, "I'm gonna start me up a little college." A white-haired 73-year-old in classic professor attire (blazer, jeans), Davenport tells the story on an August afternoon at the Spalding campus, just south of downtown. He first came to Louisville in the 1950s when his father, the Rev. Stephen Davenport, moved the family from Boston so that he could head St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Prospect. e minister went on to found St. Francis School. His name appears in many New York Times wedding an- nouncements. e St. Francis congre- gation included the late Brown-Forman chief executive Owsley Brown II. Another Brown, Laura Lee, was in the choir. Churchill Davenport's wife, Laurie Fader, says that his family founded New Haven in 1638. e ministry goes back 13 generations of Davenports. "He's got it in his blood," Fader says. Davenport didn't take the divine path like his father and brothers did. At 21, he was still in high school, suffering from dyslexia long before it was a widely recognized disorder. But he felt he could understand art. "Just all of a sudden I'd bump into Picasso and — whoa, what's this all about? I'd go to shows in Baltimore and New York and I'd bump into Cezanne," he says, before casually explaining his family's connections to the upper echelon of the art world: "My mother knew the Whitneys and stuff." He ended up attending MICA in Baltimore, where he watched the school's president at the time, who happened to be from Louisville, grow that campus from one to 30 buildings and revive a whole section of town. Ever since Davenport got the itch to start his own school, he's seemed to do nothing but preach. His mission is twofold: create an art school as a regional hub that competes with the biggies — the ones that art-minded kids across the country aspire to attend, such as the Rhode Island School of Design, Savannah College of Art and Design and others in art hubs like the East and West coasts and Chicago; and make the school an open door for all students who seek a creative practice, regardless of academic achievement or socioeconomic status. "e thing about art," Davenport says, "I think of it like prayer, right? Anybody can pray." Davenport called up every poten- tial backer in Louisville that he could. "ey'd say, 'Sounds cool, Churchill, but starting a college is kind of a hard proj- ect,'" he says, his eyes twinkling at his brashness. He met an artist named Bryce Hudson, who had a space in Portland and invited his artist friends to come hear Davenport's spiel. "I got a call from Bryce," says Skylar Smith, who was teaching at the Univer- sity of Louisville and Jefferson Commu- nity and Technical College at the time. "He said, 'ere's this guy Churchill Davenport in town,' and I'm like, 'First of all, is that a real name?'" e lights in the building weren't working, so the group of about eight sat in the dark on the floor and had a conversation. e year before, 21c had opened. De- veloper and filmmaker Gill Holland had recently come to town after marrying a Brown and was helping transform East Market Street into NuLu, a district with new galleries and restaurants. e New Center for Contemporary Art sprung up (in what's now Revelry). ere were rumblings of an addition to the Speed Museum dedicated to contemporary art. "You know, they always say Louisville's weird," Davenport says. "I don't quite go for all that. It's too simple for me. But it's a crossroad. ere's a lot of curious people here and there's a yearning." To Smith, who attended MICA and the The Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University wants to become a regional hub.