LEXINGTON, Ky.—Transylvania’s Morlan Gallery opens 2010 with a photography exhibit focusing on Kentucky. MY/KY: Life through the Lens opens January 15 and runs through February 12. An artists’ reception will be held Friday, January 15, from 5-7 p.m. in the gallery.
Kentucky, it seems, has always been an enigma, simultaneously admired and derided. Daniel Boone wrote, “I returned home to my family, with a determination to bring them as soon as possible to live in Kentucky, which I esteemed a second paradise, at the risk of my life and fortune.” Mark Twain, on the other hand, said, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens twenty years after it happens anywhere else.”
 |
| Socorro, digital print 2009. Carla Winn. |
Regardless of such widely variant response, the mystique of the Bluegrass State swings broad and wide—from the loftiest spire to the deepest, most verdant hollow. MY/KY: Life through the Lens is a small group invitational exhibition that attempts to capture not only the attractive but also the elusive Commonwealth. In artistic tradition, five Kentucky photographers have given us a new way of seeing the Kentucky, its people, its industry and its land.
Don Ament reframes Kentucky’s energy concerns; Angela Baldridge (Transylvania class of 2004) examines tobacco’s tradition and industry; Frank Döring gives an insider’s view of the equine world; Mary Tortorici’s depopulated landscapes offer a fuller view of the people who do live in them; and Carla Winn offers studies of the faces of Kentucky’s contemporary “Daniel Boones.”
Looking to “place” for inspiration, these five artists address what “My
Kentucky” means to them, and they invite you to consider your Kentucky.
 |
| AB3, 2009. Digital print by Angela Baldridge. |
Artist’s talk
Angela Baldridge will give a talk in Morlan Gallery on Wednesday, Feb. 10 from 3:30-4:20 p.m. The talk is free and open to the public.
After receiving her degree from Transylvania in 2004, Baldridge completed coursework for a Master’s in visual communications at Syracuse University at the New York and London campuses. She works primarily as a photojournalist, shooting regularly for the Lexington Herald-Leader. Her passion for telling others’ stories began when German survivors of World War II shared their stories with her for a college portrait project. Since then, her work has taken her to California, New York, Mexico, Germany, Hungary, England and all over Kentucky where she has been inspired by people’s shared and individual stories.
Gallery hours
The Morlan Gallery’s regular hours are Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. and by special appointment. The gallery will be closed Monday, January 18 in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. For more information, contact gallery director Andrea Fisher at (859) 233-8142 or visit www.transy.edu/morlan.