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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62 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.17 Events and marketing manager Kevin Wilson calls Davenport the school's "spiritual advisor." No matter his title, Davenport remains one of the school's biggest fundraisers.) In the spring of 2015, five years after the original class began studies, the school saw its first graduating class of nine (a mix of students who began class- es in the school's first and second years). e following fall 65 freshmen entered, putting the total enrollment for that year at 140. e goal from the time the school merged with Spal- ding was to change its name to something that would: 1. communicate that it's a col- lege and not a high school or community art center; and 2. express a design compo- nent. e Kentucky College of Art + Design at Spalding University, or KyCAD, would do that. "Design was sort of a code for jobs," Tyler says. Artist and KyCAD pro- fessor Ezra Kellerman says, "People bring their kids here and are like, 'How are they gonna get a job?' Well, how are you gonna get a job with a business degree? I don't know. It doesn't guarantee you employment." (A Kentucky Art Council report from two years ago shows that creative jobs account for more than 100,000 jobs in the state, or 2.5 percent of the total market, and generate almost $2 billion in earnings for the state.) "Art school" doesn't necessarily come to mind when you see the FLAB, or fabrication lab, in what used to be a storage room. Boxes of 3-D printers, do- nated from GE Appliances' design space FirstBuild, and laser cutters pile up on the concrete floor. e students will soon work on coding. "At that point you're go- ing into the digital realm even though it is sculpture," professor Andrew Cozzens says. "If a student came into a (job or in- ternship) with understanding of how to use a 3-D printer, laser cutter and basic coding, they're extremely employable. Companies are actually starting to come out with a lot of dialogue in regards to wanting art majors, creative problem solvers. We got this donation exactly for that reason." e school's BFA in studio art offers five areas of study (digital media, general fine arts, graphic design, interdisciplin- ary sculpture, painting/drawing) and two concentrations (pre-art therapy, illustration). (Ogden is now the chair of the department. Spalding still offers art classes separate from KyCAD to its students in other majors. KyCAD classes aren't yet available to those students or to anyone in the public wanting to take a painting class, for example. at's something the school is working to offer.) Contemporary art and art edu- cation is all about interdis- ciplinary, Smith says. "Art with business, with health. What if we connected art and the city's obsession with sports together? I don't know what that would look like. When students get this BFA degree, they need to be able to adapt in the environ- ment that they're in, which means that they're not just in their studio making art 24/7 when they graduate. is is an opportunity to create an art school in the 21st century." During the 2017 sum- mer break, KyCAD held an event it called the Summer Soirée. e accent over that "e" pretty much describes the level of sophistication in the room. It took place at the school's recently renovated 849 Gallery on South ird Street, in what was originally a car dealership in the 1930s. Freshly painted drywall displayed art — all kinds, including some impressive Dali-esque works — from the senior exhibition. e room of about 100 included board and committee members, dressed in summer cocktail attire, as though they were attending a Vanity Fair party. Brown-Forman beverages flowed from a chicly lit bar. In other words, people with checkbooks and pull in the art community were in attendance. Board chair and investment-management com- pany owner Todd Lowe stood behind a podium and touted some of the school's recent successes: a graduating class of 25, some of whom were heading to faraway schools for post-graduate studies; an incoming freshman class of 60; students accepted to prestigious out-of-state summer art programs. Owsley Brown III stepped up to the mic and announced that Davenport couldn't make it because he was painting in Italy all summer long. "Generally speaking, we think that this is sort of a miracle school," Brown began with the enthusiasm of a motiva- tional speaker. He took a few minutes to thank everyone for their support, financial and otherwise. en he pitched P2E, or Pathway to Excellence, which is what KyCAD named its fundraising campaign that began in 2014. Out of the $8.5 million goal, they had raked in $5.5 million, he said. (After the soirée, that would reach $6 million. A year ago, Brown gave a million of his own money in honor of his late father.) As rah-rah as the soirée was, Tyler acknowledges the height of the financial hurdle the school faces. For the 2016- 2017 school year the budget was $3 million — without a lot of cost sharing for the back-office expenses that Spalding has largely covered. If the 140 currently enrolled students all paid their tuition in-full, that would about cover expenses for the year. But the open-door mission means that most are there on financial aid, either from the government, Spalding or the art school. Tyler says that the school could break even at 600 students, a tough ask consid- ering it has roughly the same enrollment as it did two years ago. "We only got a couple people that are making contributions to this school," Tyler says, "and we don't have enough students to sustain the budget for oper- ations. Why would anybody come here? It's a huge risk." e way everyone at the school talks about Moira Scott Payne, she might as well be the deus ex machina in this story, swooping in to put the school on its proper path. At one point during the soirée, Payne, the new president and dean, stepped up, having been in town for only a few days, and talked about how excited she was to be here and how impressed she was with what the school had been able to achieve thus far. Mc- Clure stole the stage briefly to emphasize Payne's role. "I have a reputation to be something of a risk-taker," she said. "e riskiest thing I have ever done was shaking hands with Churchill Davenport and saying 'yes' to KyCAD. Churchill understands the art; Terry understands the business. Nobody understood aca- demia." Spalding recently had its 10-year review with SACS. "I was really riding hard on our poor artists about, 'No, no, I have to have syllabi. No, there have to be "People bring their kids here and are like, 'How are they gonna get a job?' Well, how are you gonna get a job with a business degree? I don't know. It doesn't guarantee you employment," says professor Ezra Kellerman.

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