What an odd thing a shelf is. A shelf is just a shelf really, right? Put a thing on it, though, and it is immediately transformed into something else. Once we begin to populate our shelves with objects – whether with precious memorabilia, beautiful images, feathers, or found knots – the whole thing becomes something else. We put objects on shelves to somehow honor them or know them better; we may even wonder if time will reveal something more about them. We might also believe that they could withstand the test of time – simply by being placed on a shelf.

This venture has been a long and healthy haul – and now our future is even more robust. When we (my Co-Publishers Tom Martin, Art Shechet and I) first launched UnderMain in 2014, we were simply having fun. We enjoyed uncovering what we thought was hidden in the shadows or living under the main thoroughfares of the then-present consciousness of art and culture in our region.

In March of this year, UnderMain held its third panel discussion of the Critical Mass Series. The series was founded and is undertaken annually as a way to examine the role that criticism plays for Kentucky artists and institutions. The co-founders and regional partners believe that critical discourse can help us engage in a more meaningful dialogue regionally and with the national and international contemporary art world.

On Wednesday, March 28th, 2018, UnderMain held its second Critical Mass panel discussion on critical thinking in the arts, examining, in part, what role criticism plays as Kentucky artists and institutions engage more readily with a national and international dialogue. This year, our partners were The Great Meadows Foundation and KMAC Museum, with KMAC Curator Joey Yates moderating. We conducted Critical Mass I in 2016 in partnership with the University of Kentucky Art Museum. Critical Mass III will take place in Northern Kentucky in 2020.

Oh man, that is so creepy! This, David Kenton Kring acknowledges, is a common response to his figurative works and that makes him feel just fine.

Kring is after a response from the viewer with his figural works and no apologies are needed if your first reaction is to be creeped out, turned off, or experience an unpleasant feeling of fear or unease. His motivation, however, is much deeper than mere shock value.

Last month Art Shechet and I visited Robert Morgan to learn more about his artistic practice. Morgan has been making art since he was a very young boy and shared a story about standing up in the third grade during introductions and stating, “I’m Bobby Morgan and I am an artist.” Everyone laughed because, Morgan believes, they did not really know what that meant.

For many years, Louis Zoellar Bickett – a Lexington-based, self-taught, conceptualist with extraordinary bravado – has been recording his thoughts and feelings through poetry. In a recent interview with me, Louis stated that it is the writing of a literate sentence that thrills him above all other modes of artistic expression. This may come as a surprise to those of us who know him for the 10,000 Selfies, The Archive or his performances like the Cultural Mudding Rituals.

I put my high heels in the back seat as I set off early that morning for work and then my date with Robert at Charmed Life in Lexington, Kentucky. I was going to remember this one whether I liked it or not, permanently, forever – and hopefully – happily ever after.

I walked into the M S Rezny Gallery located in the proposed Distillery District of downtown Lexington, Kentucky and immediately thought the exhibit Connecting Fibers was challenging. There is some fine work here, but I had to question why I felt so bothered. On one hand, the exhibit acknowledges the status that fiber art has attained over the years. On the other hand, it denies it by returning us to the age-old debate of art versus craft

UnderMain’s Christine Huskisson recently was in New York for the Whitney Biennial 2014. Beyond the event’s interest to all artists working in America and beyond, there is another bit of relevant information between the Whitney Museum and Lexington. For many years Barbara Whitney Henry Peck, wife of George Headley and daughter of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art, lived on La Belle farm in Lexington. The farm is now home to the Headley-Whitney Museum.