Welcome to the Latitude Artist Community Winter 08' Update!
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Latitude artist Jessie Dunahoo to appear on ABC's Extreme Home Makeovers this coming Sunday February 17, 8pm. Some
of you may remember that ABC shot a segment about Jessie featuring EHM Designer Michael Moloney here at Latitude last
November. This segment is related to a house makeover (the Hughes Family) that was done in Louisville. We
are told that there can be no guarantee that our segment will be shown, but that it is highly likely. A
picture
taken during the Latitude segment is below.
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Update- Jessie Dunahoo and other Latitude artists at the Andrew Edlin Gallery, NYC this past Dec/Jan. Our show at
the Andrew Edlin Gallery just closed last week and it was certainly a great success. Jessie exhibited four pieces
there, two were priced at $20,000 and two at $5,000. While Jessie held down the main space, other Latitude/ Jones Shop
artists exhibited in an adjoining gallery area. A number of Latitude artists sold artwork- Albert Moser sold 17
drawings to one collector! (At the very bottom of our update you will find an essay about Jessie's exhibit.) Much
thanks to Phillip Jones of the Jones Shop for making this event a huge success!
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Piggy Bank Mania
The Bank of Lexington sponsored 10 local charities. Each selected charity was given 4 ceramic piggy banks to be
decorated by local artists of their choice, the banks were then placed in various public venues to help raise money for that
charity. Latitude was chosen to decorate a bank for the Down Syndrome Association of Kentucky. Our
piggy bank will be displayed at Third Street Stuff for the month of February and then auctioned off to raise further money
for them. Every Latitude artist participated in this- and special thanks to Latitude's Violet Sellers for her
guidance on this project.
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Happy Birthday Latitude! February marks Latitude's 7th Birthday. Some of you may remember that Latitude
sprang from a program we started called Minds Wide Open Art Center. We saved our old web page and if you want to
see a bit of Latitude prehistory - take a look here!
www.bruceburris.com/BURRIS/MWO.htm#menu1
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Blast from our past! We like to highlight Latitude events from the past on our Birthday updates. Latitude
has created many public art projects, the Haiku below is from a Haiku contest that Latitude sponsored two years ago. Poets
sent in their creations and Latitude artists chose three winning poems which were displayed on the giant outdoor LED screen
at Rupp Arena - for commuters to see. While Angela Snyder's Haiku didn't appear on the screen - we all loved it
and are happy we can share it with you now.
Haiku
By Angela Snyder
Monarch butterfly
Floating by my ear
Like a whisper
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Essay on Jessie Dunahoo's Installation at the Andrew Edlin Gallery
By Randall Morris
This is part of a blog reference to Jessie Dunahoo's work from Randall Morris, co owner of the Cavin- Morris Gallery.
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Jessie Dunahoo's pieces at Andrew Edlin Gallery fill me with that same awe, slightly uncomfortable, a thirst not quite
slaked...not in terms of aesthetics but in unanswered questions about the universe. Dunahoo is blind and so the
fact that their is such a tender fragility to the massive patchworks he puts together is all the more poignant. He
has made blind man's maps from textiles in order to navigate through an unseen universe. Figuratively and
literally. He travels along his tied guidelines to move. They are intimate, he has reduced the world to
manageable means by stitching together cloth and plastic, shopping bags and scraps ways that are less about detail and line than
they are about huge concepts. Words do not quite convey the sense of delicate tactility they are executed in.
There is something epic and affirming about the idea of this man moving in these spaces. And seeing this
exhibition and interacting with parts of it may be the only time on earth any of us will ever get to share this space. It
is truly an alternative universe but not internalized, it is very externalized. You are rewarded by the patterns of
some of the quilts but they do not have the same language as the Japanese boros or the African American Quilts. The
proclaim themselves but for other reasons, they glorify the resistance of survival. By merely being they
epitomize a sort of street zen.
For me this exhibition was art brut of a high order. Ephemeral, hovering on the edge of anyone's definitions,
flirting with giant ideas through virtue of their near intangibility. What can be wrong at all with an exhibition
that makes you shake your head with wonder at the organic genius we have as a species to find different and amazing ways to
stay alive.
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Latitude Artist Community
167 Saunier Street
Lexington, Ky 40503
(859) 806-0195
Owners: Crystal Bader, Bruce Burris