PATRICK SMITH BIO
PATRICK SMITH, Liv Moody. Acrylic on Paper, 22 x 30 inches
PATRICK SMITH
BIO
Lexington-based artist Patrick Smith. Known for his striking realism and psychologically charged imagery, Smith creates intimate portraits that explore the human figure as both a physical and symbolic form.
Working in acrylic on paper, Smith renders his subjects with exceptional precision, capturing the textures of skin, tattoos, and adornment with equal sensitivity. His figures—often drawn from his personal circle—exist in moments that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant. Themes of identity, vulnerability, desire, and mortality run throughout the work, frequently accompanied by symbolic elements such as skulls, serpents, and ornamental motifs.
While undeniably contemporary in subject, Smith’s work is grounded in a long tradition of figurative art. From the idealized forms of ancient Greek sculpture to the anatomical rigor of Renaissance masters like Michelangelo, artists have long turned to the human body as a primary vehicle for meaning. Smith extends this lineage into the present, replacing mythological and religious figures with modern individuals whose bodies carry the visual language of contemporary life.
In this context, tattoos function as contemporary markers of identity, much like symbolic attributes in historical painting. The result is a body of work that bridges past and present—honoring the traditions of figurative art while reinterpreting them through a distinctly modern lens.
Full Sized Bigger Work invites viewers to reconsider the role of the human figure in contemporary art, offering a perspective that is at once technically rigorous, emotionally direct, and deeply rooted in art history.
EDUCATION
2008 BA in Studio Art, Transylvania University
EXHIBITION HISTORY
2026 Full Sized Bigger Work, SOLO EXHIBITION, WheelHouse Art, LOU, Louisville, KY. USA
2024 Shadows from an Unlit Room, Fine Art Editions Gallery, Lexington, KY. USA
Works by Patrick Smith, Mulberry and Lime, Lexington, KY. USA
Sex and Psychedelics Magazine, San Francisco, CA. USA
2023 Cult of Personality, Moremen Gallery, Louisville, KY. USA
2022 Re: Representation, Curated by: Dan Cameron, Jonathan Ferrera Gallery, New Orleans, LA. USA
2021 The End of The Beginning, Moremen Gallery, Louisville, KY. USA
2020 The Intimacy of Others, Institute 193, Lexington, KY. USA
Face/Off, UK Art Museum, Lexington, KY. USA
2019 Miniature Invitational, Living Arts and Science Center, Lexington, KY. USA.
Untitled Solo Exhibition, The Drugstore KC, Kansas City, MO. USA.
Fusion 2019, Hatori Onsen, Kaga City, Ishikawa, Japan.
2018 New Works by Patrick Smith, SOLO EXHIBITION, Swanson Contemporary, Louisville, KY. USA.
Fusion 2018, Hatori Onsen Kaga City, Ishikawa, Japan.
The Nude: Brutal Beauty, Lexington Art League: Loudon House, Lexington, KY. USA.
Pangaea, City Gallery, Lexington, KY. USA.
2017 Demographically Speaking, A Figurative Exhibition, Curated by Daniel Pfalzgraf, Lexington Art League: Loudon House, Lexington, KY. USA.
Fusion 2017, Hatori Onsen Kaga City, Ishikawa, Japan.
PRHBTN Exhibition 2017, Lexington Art League: Loudon House, Lexington, KY. USA.
2016 Solo Exhibition, SOLO EXHIBITION, Swanson Contemporary, Louisville, KY. USA.
Sunday Salons in September, SOLO EXHIBITION, Moveable Feast, Lexington, KY. USA.
Burial Grounds Graphic Art Exhibition, SOLO EXHIBITION, Burial Grounds, Olympia, WA. USA.
Opening Exhibition, 21C Museum Hotel Lexington, Lexington, KY. USA.
PRHBTN Exhibition 2016, Lexington Art League: Loudon House, Lexington, KY. USA.
2014 Sunday Salons in September, SOLO EXHIBITION, Moveable Feast, Lexington, KY. USA.
Red, Yellow, Kill A Fellow, SOLO EXHIBITION, Swanson Contemporary, Louisville, KY. USA.
2013 I’ll Be Your Mirror, Morlan Gallery, Lexington, KY. USA.
2012 Glitter In The Gutter, SOLO EXHIBITION, Swanson Contemporary, Louisville, KY. USA.
2010 Untitled Solo Exhibition, SOLO EXHIBITION, Swanson Contemporary, Louisville, KY. USA.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As Oscar Wilde has already said, every portrait painted reveals more about the artist, not the sitter. His exact quote implies the romantic notion that only artists who paint with feeling put themselves into the piece, but in truth, every artist does become the central character in their work. Great efforts have been made to morally audit artists as a prerequisite to the sanctioned appreciation of what they produce, a human tendency that ultimately killed Oscar Wilde and has always struck me as all of the least beautiful things a person can do wrapped up into one package. I believe Oscar felt the same way.
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3 New UK Art Museum Exhibitions Explore Graphic Arts, Portraits and Boston Massacre
By Whitney Hale Nov. 10, 2020
"Face Off" includes portraits by two artists with Kentucky connections, Patrick Smith and Victor Hammer. Smith's "Self Portrait in Fur" (left) is seen here with Hammer's "Portrait of Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff."
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 10, 2020) — University of Kentucky Art Museum will expand its offerings on display for the public with three more free exhibitions opening today drawn from its own collection. Patrons are invited to explore Larry Rivers reexamination of the Boston Massacre and a literal face-off of work between artists Patrick Smith and Victor Hammer. In addition, the museum will continue its campaign celebrating the contributions of donors with a show highlighting graphic art donated to the institution by Richard Freeman and others.
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“Face Off: Patrick Smith with Victor Hammer”
Patrick Smith is a Lexington-based painter known for his realistic works on paper based on photographs he takes of various friends. These detailed works are informed by the artist's deep interest in the history of representational art, and his process of collaborating with his sitters on their poses, costume, makeup and lighting. The resulting images are powerfully intimate, as heads and torsos that are often tattooed or pierced embody states of confrontation, vulnerability and reverie. Smith has also consistently depicted himself, playing with assumptions about gender and exploring qualities of fragility and theatricality.
Smith's paintings in this exhibition are presented in combination with several prints by the Austrian artist Victor Hammer (1882–1967) who came of age during the Vienna Secession — a period dominated by artists like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Hammer's works in different media are part of the museum's collection. His mezzotint portraits depict his friends, including affluent individuals and diplomats, who — like the artist himself — were living in the complex and dangerous context of Europe in the 1930s.
Both artists, while coming from distinct historical periods and points of view, share a painstaking attention to detail and a commitment to labor-intensive processes that give their depictions of unique human beings a profound humanity and intensity.
In collaboration with UK Art Museum, a solo exhibition of recent works by Patrick Smith will also be on view at Institute 193 from Nov. 11-Dec. 19.
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The UK Art Museum’s current hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday. The museum will be closed Sundays and Mondays.
The mission of the UK Art Museum, part of the UK College of Fine Arts, is to promote the understanding and appreciation of art to enhance the quality of life for people of Kentucky through collecting, exhibiting, preserving and interpreting outstanding works of visual art from all cultures. Home to a collection of more than 4,800 objects including American and European paintings, drawings, photographs, prints and sculpture, the Art Museum presents both special exhibitions and shows of work from its permanent collection.
The UK Art Museum is located in the Singletary Center for the Arts at Rose Street and Euclid Avenue. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.
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December 31, 2020
By Cooper Gibson
As you enter Institute 193, you come face to face with Kiki. The portrait depicts a voluptuous woman lounging in a plane of matte black nothing; her long brown hair accented by caramel strands. She is nude, careful attention paid to the way light and shadow travel across the flesh of her thighs, pubic area, stomach, breasts, chin, and face. The most striking parts of this image are her red-lipped smirk, as if she is caught in mid-laughter, and her cat-eye sunglasses. Her shades and makeup serve as the only clues to the viewer of who she might be. She is laid bare yet still withholds information from the viewer. Because we cannot clearly see her eyes, her gaze belongs to her. Why is she smiling? Could she be playing a joke on the viewer? This small painting serves as an introduction to Patrick Smith’s 2020 show “The Intimacy of Others”. The show is comprised of a series of portraits that span Smith’s career and are exemplary of his
Patrick Smith, Christina, 2020, acrylic on Arches paper, 18.5 x 22.5 inches.
contemporary academic realism. However, to try and label Smith is to try and name the ineffable. Smith’s set-up delivers a different punchline, often one you weren’t expecting.
As Institute 193 director Elizabeth Glass writes in the press release for Smith’s show, “Patrick Smith’s paintings appear to capture glimpses of personal, private moments meant to be seen by a single person, or no one at all.”
Smith’s portraits challenge the viewer to see his subjects in another way. They are his friends, people who (if you’re a Lexingtonian) you have probably passed on the street, seen at their jobs, or followed on Instagram. I first became familiar with Smith’s work when he painted a portrait of my friend Armani. Armani, a 2018 painting, depicts the titular subject nude save for a pink-puce shroud draped around their head and shoulders. The draping invokes something virginal about Armani, implying a certain Madonna-esque status. Like many of Smith’s paintings he relies on accessories and decoration to give clues to the viewer about who they are. Armani’s eyeliner serves as a hint about who they may be beyond the frame of the painting. Unlike Kiki, Armani gazes directly into the eyes of the viewer. Their face held in a soft expression that is at once seductive and oppositional, Armani dares the viewer to look, and they look back.
Patrick Smith, Kiki, 2019, acrylic on Arches paper, 15.25 x 19 inches.
In bell hooks’ 1992 collection of essays “Black Looks: Race and Representation” she coins the term “Oppositional gaze”.
“Looking at films with an oppositional gaze, Black women were able to critically assess the cinema’s construction of white womanhood as objects of phallocentric gaze and choose not to identify with either the victim or the perpetrator.” (hooks, 1992, 122)
In Smith’s portraits his subjects confront the viewer, they are seductive, vulnerable – and by exuding these qualities, powerful.
Two of the most compelling images in the show are Armani II and Alyssa II. Like Kiki, these images depict a playfulness. So rarely do we see images, or hear stories of, Black leisure, pleasure, and joy. In Alyssa II the subject has her hands above her head, her hair in twists cascading down her back, barely visible to the viewer. Her eyes are closed, and she smiles. The light caresses her face and side. Although she is positioned in a color field of magenta, the viewer could easily imagine her resting on a bed, a sofa, or lying in the grass on a warm summer day. Her guard is down, she is not threatened, she is safe.
Following the 2020 murder of Breonna Taylor by Louisville Metro Police Department officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove, global outcry about the systemic mistreatment and killing of Black women made headlines and ignited engagement in Black Lives Matter and the defunding of police. In Alyssa II we see something so rarely depicted in the media, a Black woman at peace.
Patrick Smith, Alyssa II, 2019, acrylic on Arches paper, 19 x 17.25 inches
In Armani II, we are treated to some of the playfulness present with Smith’s work. Gone is the virginal Madonna from the previous picture of Armani, now in a sea of royal blue we see Armani up close and personal. Their tongue is stuck out as if to tease us, or express disgust. The focal point of the image is the small surgical steel bead shining from the center of Armani’s tongue. While many of Smith’s subjects bear tattoos and piercings, I find the single visible tongue piercing in Armani II to be one of the most striking aspects of the image, and the show. This single piercing positions them as rebellious, alternative, unique; however, if they close their mouth this insight to their character is lost. Armani II dares us to look and see what’s hidden.
Patrick Smith, Armani II, 2018, acrylic on Arches paper, 15 x 12.75 inches.
Showing concurrently with “The Intimacy of Others” is “Face Off: Patrick Smith with Victor Hammer” at the University of Kentucky Art Museum. The exhibition is comprised of Smith’s paintings and prints by Austrian artist Victor Hammer (1882-1967). Like Smith, Hammer’s images are of his friends. However, Hammer’s subjects (affluent individuals and diplomats, living in the complex and dangerous context of 1930s Europe) serve as a stark contrast to the subjects of Smith’s paintings: the working class, people of all genders, and people of all races.
A moment in “Face Off” features Smith’s 2018 Self Portrait in Fur next to Hammer’s 1926 Portrait of Albrecht Graf von Bernstorf. This moment showcases some of the cheekiness of UK Art Museum director Stuart Horodner and curator Janie Welker. The facial similarities between Smith and the subject of Hammer’s painting, Albrecht, are uncanny. This pairing of the two images is evocative of the feeling of time travel. And, in a way, so is Smith’s work. His attention to detail, color, light, and composition are reminiscent of the masters. The portraits are timeless; without the nods to contemporary life (the tattoos, piercings, and styling of his subjects) his work could very easily exist in another century.
The timelessness and the timeliness of Smith’s work are their strongest qualities. Smith’s paintings utilize the tools of the masters to question the very hierarchies that created mastery. His subjects exhibit agency, a self-directedness. They dare the viewer
Left: Patrick Smith, Self Portrait in Fur, 2018, acrylic on paper. Right: Victor Hammer, Portrait of Albrecht Graf von Bernstorf, 1926, mezzotint on paper. Gift of Mrs. Carolyn Reading Hammer.
to not only look, but to see them as the fierce bitches they are. Most importantly they challenge subjectivity. Whose image should be painted? As Smith’s figures take on poses from classical paintings, they insert themselves into history – often in places where they would not be allowed.
References
• Hooks, Bell. 1992. Black looks: race and representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.
• Title Art: Patrick Smith, Christina, 2020, acrylic on Arches paper, 18.5 x 22.5 inches.
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Art exhibit has people smushing faces against window to see
By CHRIS MURA
Updated 10:46 AM EDT, July 22, 2018
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Robert Morgan’s work announces itself. The artist’s newest exhibit of found object art, “Pangaea” — his first Lexington show in years, a collaboration with Patrick Smith — is on arresting display at the City Gallery on Main Street.
Smith’s realistic paintings mingle with Morgan’s toddler-sized sculptures covered in bright paint and assorted trinkets, perched on upside-down trash cans.
“We totally love it,” said Celeste Lewis, director of the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, as she described how passersby would smush against the glass to get a better view of the exhibition in its first days.
The show is an exhibition of uniquely Lexington stories. Both Morgan’s found art and Smith’s paintings deal with the stories of Lexington residents and the evolving character of the city.
The unconventional art went against what Smith said he saw as a trend in Lexington of showing art that seeks to imitate New York or Los Angeles art, or art that is more academic than radical with no sense of location.
“This show is the complete opposite of that,” Smith said. “You couldn’t see this show somewhere else.”
Morgan came up with the name of the exhibit, and in a concept statement he said “the idea of an ancient motherland came to mind in the planning of this exhibition. You may see the faces of the citizens of this lost world or hear stories of their personal tragedies and triumphs. Either way you are ship wrecked on strangely familiar shore of a forgotten world.”
Morgan said he specifically placed the front piece, “The Island of Lost Souls,” in the window facing Main Street in order to tell the story of a 19-year-old meth addict who lived with Morgan for a short time. His nightmare inspired Morgan to craft a sculpture that represented the boy’s life and shattered childhood.
Morgan uses small objects such as snow globes, toy reptiles, and Dollar Tree knickknacks like letters to tell a full story.
“It’s my vocabulary,” he said.
Smith creates paintings by starting with a base photograph, tinting it sepia, and then applying paints in layers that create a slightly raised, textured effect. Smith said he strives for realism in his portraits.
“I think it’s disappointing when you see a painting and it looks like a painting,” he said.
The art isn’t for everyone. Morgan described how a visitor to the exhibit became convinced the sculptures were possessed and left the gallery. Smith has also faced criticism for his art, including a critical Herald-Leader letter to the editor when a self-portrait from Smith’s January exhibition, which is available now at the City Gallery, was published in the paper.
The artists were unfazed. “You only get negative press if it’s good,” Smith said. “I do want people to be turned around a little by the medium,” Morgan said as well.
The two artists are long-time friends, but “Pangaea” marks their first gallery collaboration.
“Even though our work is very different, we feed off each other a bit,” Morgan said.
The artists’ work is complementary but doesn’t compete with each other, Smith said. The themes and even colors work together to create a unified message for visitors.
“I was shocked how well they went together,” he said.
The pieces are available for sale through August 5, when the exhibit closes. But someone who wants to buy a found art piece must love the story behind the art as well as the physical structure, Morgan said, because the story is integral to the piece.
“It’s like adoption,” he said. “It’s not for decor.”
The City Gallery and “Pangaea” were set to be part of Friday’s Gallery Hop.
IF YOU GO
“Pangaea”
What: Art exhibit by Robert Morgan and Patrick Smith at the City Gallery.
Where: City Gallery at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center, 141 E Main St.
When: Through Aug. 5.
Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sun., closed Mon.
Admission: Free
Online: lexingtonky.gov/about-downtown-arts-center
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Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com
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Art: Patrick Smith’s wild life
Lexington artist keeps it very real
by Peter Berkowitz May 14, 2014
St. Ursula
“Too Wild for Mass Consumption” — that’s what Lexington artist Patrick Smith posted on his Tumblr last December as he worked on the series of paintings opening this week at Swanson Contemporary. Smith’s subject matter is mainly his peers, a sometimes-troubled gang of bohemian Southerners who celebrate what he calls “a really eccentric sex life … promiscuity, but safe promiscuity.”
Smith, 27, began painting when he was “pretty old, actually, like 19. It was something I started doing, and then I could do it for as many hours as I had in front of me. That was different than most things I had tried to do.”
The largely self-taught Smith threw himself into his new love of painting. To make something new, he’s learned, he’s needed to use new materials. “I use the highest-end kind of non-traditional materials I can get. So I have DayGlo that’s, like, industrial, and it looks like it. I use aluminum paint, and then I use a variety of different glitters.”
Gallerist Chuck Swanson came into his life after a few years of showing work in “less official venues,” as Smith calls it. “There was this moment where I really needed something to change in my life. And I thought, ‘I’m going to get a show at a gallery, and then that will be Act Two of where I can go.’ And it worked! … I just walked in and said, ‘Can I get a show?’ and he said, ‘Sure,’” Smith laughs, clarifying that Swanson agreed after seeing Smith’s portfolio. “It was not an arduous process.”
One piece that’s on view in this month’s loosely heaven-and-hell-themed show is “St. Ursula,” a favorite of many who saw it in progress. Smith thinks that one worked especially well because “it was a piece that had layers of experimentation — and every layer worked.”
If there is an intentional theme running through the show, he says it’s a reflection of his collaborations with photographer/sculptor Bob Morgan. More than half of Smith’s show came from drawings Smith did over Morgan’s photographs. “Those are definitely the more homoerotic parts of the show,” says Smith. “Not all of them, because I take homoerotic photographs, too,” he adds, laughing.
Smith knows it isn’t common in Kentucky to see such bold depictions of male bodies in art galleries, but “I’ve found that people get that — I haven’t had a hard time explaining that to anyone,” he says. “It’s pretty unprecedented, but we’re just going with it and seeing what the response is going to be. And I’ve gotten exclusively positive responses from people. And largely from the feminist community, actually, who’ve been relieved to see naked men (instead of women).”
Six of Smith’s pieces have been purchased by 21c Museum Hotel, whose Louisville location features a statue of the naked David out front. Smith notes that his show goes further by depicting erect nudes. But he ensured that the effect wouldn’t seem like a cheap ploy for attention. “There’s a lot of layers to them. So you can’t say, ‘Oh, Patrick’s trying to have a hit show by having a bunch of naked men on a canvas.’”
That’s not usually a formula for a hit, he’s told. “Oh, is it not?” he laughs.
So who does he do it for? “Wild people. I’ve found that what I want people to do in front of a camera is something that is on the level of ‘wild’ that … I can call it ‘realism,’ in how I experience people in my actual life. I don’t want anything sanitized. And I’ve found that the models who know what that is are also living an extremely wild life. So they just act like themselves, and I take a picture. I know a lot of them personally.”
Is he as wild, or a voyeur capturing moments? “I’m definitely wild,” Smith says. “Yeah. Definitely.”
‘Red, Yellow, Kill a Fellow’
May 16-June 21
Swanson Contemporary
638 E. Market St.
This article appears in May 13, 2014.
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VISUAL ARTS
Art exhibit trains a 'Mirror' on gay Lexington
By Rich Copley - rcopley@herald-leader.com Updated November 11, 2013 1:00 PM
Longtime artist and activist Bob Morgan curated I'll Be Your Mirror at Transylvania's Morlan Gallery. Lexington Herald-Leader
When Bob Morgan immersed himself in Lexington's gay culture in the 1960s and '70s, he says, he thought he was just living the life he wanted to live: being an artist trying to make the community more open to people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning.
"We didn't have any LGBTQ," Morgan says, using a now relatively common acronym. "That was all very hard-fought for.
"Now it rolls off people's tongues. But for years, the men and women were separate, and the trans didn't belong to either group, and there was no cohesion or vision or purpose for any group for many decades."
Now, he realizes that he and many of his friends were absorbing, living, making and recording history as the LGBTQ community became more visible and accepted and gained more rights.
Morgan, a well-known Lexington artist, has curated a new exhibit, I'll Be Your Mirror, which puts that chronicle on the walls of Transylvania University's Morlan Gallery.
The exhibit takes the viewer through more than a century of history, from a purported drag-queen soldier of the Civil War through mid-century Lexington drag-queen icon Sweet Evening Breeze to today's young gay and allied artists.
Along the way, the works Morgan has gathered touch on figures who constituted an active but secretive gay culture in Lexington.
"We loosely called it '150 years of the les-bi-gay-transgender community in Lexington and Central Kentucky,'" Morgan says, describing the exhibit's mission. "We wanted to explore myths, stories and faces of the community.
"There were some specific old tales of the community I wanted to make sure got heard and seen by a new generation, because so much has been lost."
Part of that is due to the AIDS epidemic, which claimed many gay residents in the 1980s and '90s. Another part of it is because people who have been at the forefront of the movement to usher LGBTQ issues into cultural conversations are getting older.
Morgan, 64, is particularly interested in drawing viewers to the beginning of the exhibit, which starts with a self-portrait of young Kentucky artist Katelynn Ralston but quickly drops back to the 19th century and Civil War soldier Marcellus Jerome Clarke, also known as Sue Mundy.
"There's old texts, telling in elaborate detail about some of his get-ups and feminine behavior," Morgan says. "Now, historians say that was all made up. I found entries in Civil War soldiers' journals, who did their memoirs when they were old men, that talked about Sue Mundy and seeing her all dressed up and stuff.
"When I was a kid and first met all the old gay men downtown, some of them were born in the 1800s, and they all loved Sue Mundy and talked about him all the time. He became part of the myth of the local gay culture, whether it was true or not that he rode into battle dressed in drag."
Morgan said that in the 1970s, as the gay rights movement gained momentum, the image of fighting drag queen Sue Mundy was embraced by many in the community.
There are a number of older images in the show of Mundy, of black drag queens and of Sweet Evening Breeze, including a portrait of her male persona, James Herndon.
But the images get more plentiful, and in some cases more explicit, as the 20th century goes on. They include images of the Thomas January house on Second Street, which Morgan says functioned for years as a private gay club, and images by and of Central Kentucky artist Henry Faulkner.
As the works show, the secrecy and refinement of early 20th-century gays gave way to the 1970s and '80s and a more flamboyant and open community that favored clubs like Cafe LMNOP and even had floats in Lexington's Fourth of July parade.
"People were floored," Morgan says of the reaction to the floats. "They did not know how to handle it."
Institute 193, a Lexington gallery, partnered with the Morlan Gallery to create the catalog for I'll Be Your Mirror and put much of the exhibit together. Gallery director Chase Martin says the Institute previously had worked with a number of the artists in the show, including Morgan. But he says he was struck by the overall amount of material, about 50 percent of which came from Morgan's personal collection, including Faulkner's scrapbooks, which are presented in a display case.
"I would not necessarily have known any of these stories if I had not known Bob before," Martin said. "It's a cool context to have, especially now."
It's a time when many of the rights for which activists including Morgan fought are coming to pass nationally and in Lexington, a city that in 1999 passed the state's first fairness ordinance and recently elected a gay mayor, Jim Gray.
Patrick Smith, an artist in his 20s, says that through the growing acceptance of gays, maybe things have gotten too normal. "A lot of flair has gone away," he says. "There's a lot more frumpiness in today's culture."
Smith is one of several artists Morgan asked to create new works for the exhibit. Some were longtime compadres, including Libbie Sherman. Others were young artists like Smith and Ralston.
The latter is entirely appropriate in the view Morgan's longtime friend and colleague Diane Kahlo.
"Through Bob's work and his activism, and sometimes it's just being there and having the work, students have come to him and in turn used their work in a very healing and searching process," Kahlo said.
The exhibit title, I'll Be Your Mirror, is taken from the song of the same name written by Lou Reed, who died last month. The song, originally performed by the Velvet Underground and Nico, talks about showing people they are beautiful despite what they think of themselves. That is the type of community Morgan says formed many years ago and endures to this day.
He says he is surprised that despite society's more openness in terms of sexuality, many young artists have the same sorts of identity and vocational struggles he faced decades ago. He said that's why he wanted to get pieces from younger artists: to show that the history is continuing and evolving. One photo shows Jackson E. Schad, a Central Kentucky artist who is transgender, showing another person going through gender transition how to take hormone-therapy drugs, a process Morgan said was unheard of when he was younger.
"We didn't think what we were doing when we were Patrick's age was necessarily historical either," Morgan says. "But it ends up being that, and I was trying to give young people a sense that what they were doing was historical, too, though none of us know it when we're doing it."
'I'll Be Your Mirror'
What: Exhibit of art depicting the history of Lexington's gay culture
When: Through Nov. 25. Gallery hours: Noon-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri.
Where: Transylvania University's Morlan Gallery, in Mitchell Fine Arts Building, Fourth St. between Broadway and Mill St. Learn more: www.transy.edu/morlan
Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/visual-arts/article44452998.html#storylink=cpy
