In an old bank building in downtown Nicholasville, Eddie Clements has established a new sort of depository to invest in the art of Jessamine County.
"It's a very simple concept, but it's a useful one. It's the community banking on their art," Clements said of his gallery, the Art Depository, that showcases art almost exclusively from Jessamine County, from its elementary and high school students to Asbury College artists and county citizens.
Clements said he decided to set up the gallery like a bank president would with lenders, creditors, stockholders, and depositors. "The stockholders are the board," he said. "How do we get funding to develop this and how do we promote the arts within Jessamine County? The lenders are area businesses and area people who want us to lend art to them and the depositors are the artists that come here and deposit the art and the creditors are basically the community, we help them learn the appreciation of art," Clements said.
Unlike most banks, Clements has some young depositors with impressive and diverse portfolios as a recent trip to the Depository displayed colorful-possibly impressionist-portraits by local third graders. "That's third grade art, that's awesome. When you're getting that kind of perspective out of third graders it's wonderful," he said.
For the last five years Clements has taken part in hosting an art show for Jessamine County students, this latest drawing 800 people to peruse 700 pieces of art. The art isn't just observed; during that show 80 pieces were sold.
"Total strangers love and buy their work," said East Jessamine art teacher Joann Cullip. She credits the draw and attention to the art to the method in which it is displayed. "He treats students' work just as nicely as he would treat a professional artist's work...It's like having a miniature museum to me."
When Cullip started teaching in the mid-1980s, the only place outside of the school she was able to display student art was in the front window of a now-closed local grocery. "It would be (a sign saying) 'Buy a Ham' next to a work of art."
This attention to detail in the presentation of students' work in a gallery that itself is a piece of art, "Not your normal white-walled gallery," as Clements said, is not lost on Cullip's class.
"(Having the art displayed) outside of the school lets other people see it and you'll have other people ask about it, and it's just surreal," said East Jessamine senior Charlie Knower, who plans to major in art this fall at Centre College and seek a career in video game design. Knower displayed a number of her drawings and sold decorative boxes during the countywide art show. "The fact that I got to sell stuff before (going to college) encourages me."
It's a boost in students' outlook on art in their own lives that makes Cullip want to continue the partnership with Clements.
"It helps them realize that you don't have to be a 'professional' to make art and that's a valuable thing," she said.
Clements said local nonprofessional artists were surprised to find out how many others like them are in and around Nicholasville.
"Those people didn't realize their neighbors, basically, were doing art too, and it bonds the community even more," he said. "We are so, so strong in the arts, but we don't know each other. We don't realize how strong we are here and this is an avenue of exposure for each other and the community basically.
"It's just another form of community, building art through community and community through art," he said.
Aside from bringing the local art community together, Clements wanted Jessamine County residents to see what students had accomplished in their art classes. After going to a show a few years back of his now 11-year-old son's class work, he was surprised by the quality of work they were putting out. He said he wants to teach them the proper way to present art and further their own knowledge of their art.
Taking an art class wasn't part of the plan for junior Amanda Byrd when she transferred into East Jessamine, but a glitch in her schedule knocked her out of the school band, so she replaced it with Cullip's class. She displayed a painting of colorful flowers in the Art Depository. Now it is hanging in Congressman Ben Chandler's local office as part of a wider competition to choose art for his Capitol office.
Now, Byrd wants to be an art teacher when she is done with college. "Art is my time at school where I don't really have to really be thinking. I can kind of just be creative and I want others to be that way too, and I wouldn't mind teaching that," she said.
Another one of Cullip's students, Alicia Schroeder, plans to volunteer this summer at The Art Depository. "It's very, very out of place in such a small town; very out of place. It's amazing we have a place where we can go in a small town where you'd never think anything like this would exist with this sophistication," Schroeder said.
Though just a sophomore and still a couple of years away from deciding where she wants to attend college, Schroeder said she is interested in pursuing an art career of her own at the Art Institute of Indianapolis.
Cullip said she hopes more students will be drawn to a life with art after high school by their work that ends up on display in Clements' gallery.
"I don't think our work was not appreciated before, but I think it helps them see that when you have a professional setting, it makes them feel more proud."
For more information on events at the Art Depository go to www.artdepository.blogspot.com/