Louisville Magazine

NOV 2017

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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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.17 61 spend three hours a day in a studio classroom. For the first couple of years with Spal- ding, accreditation remained in question and the school wasn't even sure if the students were going to get a bachelor of fine arts degree. ey knew it most likely would happen, Smith says, but she calls those first students "totally brave." e original degree was a bachelor of arts un- der Spalding's School of Liberal Studies as an interdisciplinary degree with a con- centration in art. Courses included light, color and design; drawing; three-dimen- sional design; four-dimensional studies; several electives; and a senior thesis/ exhibition. Steph Parks found out about the art school through her sisters, who attended Spalding. Parks originally started college the fall after graduating from high school, in 2007, but it wasn't a right fit and she had some personal events pop up that led her to drop out and work in- stead. e only thing she cared about at the time was making art, so she decided to apply to what was then still KSA. She submitted a portfolio of mostly digital photography and a couple paintings. She went in for a portfolio review and got a tour of the facilities. "At the time I was in wonder," she says, mentioning how she thought the converted chemistry labs were cool. e admissions process wasn't as rigorous as she expected — the school wanted to beef up its enrollment. (Davenport jokes that "120 applied and we accepted 140.") Her first year, Parks says, professors seemed well-versed and pushed her hard — often having her redo her work completely. "It was a little hurtful at first, but I was producing better art," she says. Behind the scenes, McClure struggled to be a hands-off president and let the art school flourish while still keeping it in line with regulations. "I remember one of the early days I was furious with Churchill," McClure says. "I can't even remember what it was about. I stomped across the street and I was gonna give him a piece of my mind and I sort of skidded to a stop at the doorway of a classroom. Churchill was teaching and those students were hanging on his every word. I was like, 'OK, that's what this is about.' I sort of hung my head and turned around and came back to my office." Davenport soon was named president. "Lots of folks at Spalding really bristled at that," McClure says, "but honestly, I thought, well isn't he cute." She explains that the title went with the nonprofit component of the school and was more of a marketing effort. In terms of the Council on Postsecondary Education, in terms of Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation, Mc- Clure says, "It was Churchill a little in costume. I was OK with that. It certainly helped with the ability to raise funds for the school of art." Not all has been cute and rosy. In 2013, Maier left. Davenport wouldn't say exactly why, but Maier says it got too tough to work with him. "He would come in yelling at us over nothing, and Skylar and I were working our butts off," Maier says. She says he'd sometimes promise scholarships or jobs without proper procedure or considering the finances. She says she would then have to clean up the mess and get yelled at for it. It got to the point where she spent most of her time looking at transcripts and managing recruitment. "One day I thought, you know what? I've become a school administrator. We went from startup nonprofit — I just thought, this isn't what I want to do." (She is now the executive director at Water- front Botanical Gardens.) Until I mentioned Maier to Davenport, she didn't appear in his telling of the story. Even though the two didn't part ways on the best of terms, he says, "Without Kasey Maier, there wouldn't be a KyCAD. She was dynamite." For Parks, Maier's exit caused the school's climate to change. She saw Maier as a "mom figure" who organized social activities for students. Accreditation wasn't solid. Of the 30 students who showed up at orientation her freshmen year, half were gone for various reasons by the second year. "I noticed that the class before us were still kind of like hanging in there but not really," she says. (Less than a third of students who enter U of L and Spalding graduate in four years.) Furthermore, Parks had taken a photography class and decided that was what she wanted to fully pursue, but the school only offered a couple of basic courses. "I'd found out that U of L had toy camera photography, alternative and historical process photography, experi- mental — all of this stuff," she says. She transferred and got her degree at U of L — having to start over because her credits wouldn't transfer due to Spal- ding's different schedule. She's now in grad school for social work, pursuing a degree in arts administration. For other students, though, the school clicked. One kid, Edward Taylor, came in with the intention of using the school as a launching pad to get into a reputable out-of-state art college. "Just a year," Taylor told the staff. Taylor graduated last spring with a focus on fashion design (which fell under the school's current in- terdisciplinary sculpture concentration) and has since been interning with a local fashion designer. By 2014, it became clear that the art school was struggling without a business-minded leader. "I'd get a new board member and say, 'Can you give me a little $20,000? I gotta make payroll,'" says Davenport. One day, businessman Terry Ty- ler went to lunch at the home of Bill Blodgett, a lawyer, early supporter and board member. Len Moisan, president and CEO of the fundraising organization the Covenant Group, was there. "So I grabbed my wallet as soon as I walked in," Tyler says. But what they were really after was filling a job. "Churchill said, 'I've been through 46 payrolls. I can't do it anymore,'" recalls Tyler, who had retired after 35 years at Mercer Human Resource Consulting. At first he declined. Turns out, his and Davenport's mothers knew each other — they'd met at summer camp in Maine as kids. "ere was some magic there," Tyler says. "I realized this is a once-in-a- lifetime deal for Louisville, Kentucky." Plus, he spent a good part of his time working with underprivileged kids. e school's mission, he says, "really grabbed me." Tyler became the president, Chur- chill the chancellor. "Again, titles that are not appropriate in an art department at Spalding," McClure says. (During one interview I ask Davenport, who isn't teaching this year, what he does all day. Communications director Cary Willis interjects, "He chancells." e room of about four KyCAD staffers laughs. "You can't afford — literally afford — to spend $40 or $50 million that you would need to start from scratch," Spalding University president Tori Murden McClure says.

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