Lexington, KY - Though Lynn Sweet is perhaps best known for the unique line of sculptural, Neo-Modern furniture he has been creating for the past 40 years, the Lexington artist's Kenwick home and studio is testament to a deep-seated, creative DIY spirit that doesn't stop with his innovative woodworking - in fact, it doesn't stop for much of anything.
Sweet purchased his Preston Avenue abode 15 years ago, and has spent considerable time gutting, refinishing and adding onto the home, which he affectionately terms "La Casa Dulce." Not one to relinquish an opportunity to keep himself busy or get his hands dirty, Sweet headed up most of the handiwork himself, from stripping and replacing the molding and windowsills, to designing and building a 1,000 square foot addition onto the rear of the home, which was originally built in 1929 as an 1,800 square foot, single-family Aladdin "kit" house. The home has seen a handful of iterations since that time - notably (and perhaps infamously), it was used as a "cat house" or a "house of assignation" for a brief spell in the late 1950s and early '60s, according to Sweet. At that time, the interior staircase in the living room was blocked off, and the upstairs was converted into a separate quarters with an exterior entrance, which Sweet now leases out as an apartment.
Sweet, who works as the facilities manager for the University of Kentucky's art studio and also as an instructor at the college's Fine Arts Institute, claims that his new addition was at least partially inspired by being tired of having to throw a futon on the floor every time he had company. The addition includes a large "daylight basement" art studio, a back deck (dubbed "the bridge"), and a large bonus room on the main floor, equipped with a slate-tiled fireplace and loads of natural light. The room also features a unique, hand-crafted Murphy bed - when folded into the wall, the bed is completely disguised behind a Japanese-style wooden cabinet, and the room transforms from bedroom to dining room in approximately six minutes.
"I wanted to keep as much of it as I could original," he said of the remodel. "The front part of the house has the original molding, the original floor and the original windows, but they were all taken apart, repaired and reassembled."
"It gets more modern toward the back - the molding becomes cleaner, crisper, less intricate," he added.
Overall, the remodel has resulted in a finished product that's an eclectic blend of the original early 20th century architecture and Sweet's signature touch, which is evident throughout the home, from the woodworked cabinets to the abundance of artful accent pieces, almost all of which he has created himself.
"If it looks like I might have made it, I probably did," he said. And while that may sound like a bold statement in a home that contains dozens of handcrafted pieces in almost every room, taking a closer look at things while moving through the home, it is soon apparent that it is no exaggeration.
From the 1980s shelves and accent tables that he describes as "postmodern, wiggly-pointy, art wacko, nuevo wave-o," to the abstract, fresco-style wall panels that Sweet has been focusing much of his creative efforts toward in recent years, there is no question that this is the home of an artist - and a highly motivated and inventive one at that. The decor, warm and eclectic, is rounded out by Sweet's sleek, architecturally inspired pieces, which have become his defining style, to a certain degree, as well as by pieces he has collected and traded with other artists, including Rodney Hatfield, Clay Wainscott, Arturo Sandovol, Marilyn Hamann and many others.
Though his style has inevitably shifted over the years, Sweet's aesthetic has long gravitated toward the modern - which is why it may come as a surprise that he got his start making replicas of 17th- and 18th-century furniture in his early college days at UK.
"My girlfriend's father (Charles Wilson Kelly of Versailles) had a high end antique shop," he explained. "The first time I met him, we went out to dinner and he asked if I had ever carved anything. He was interested because he wanted me to carve some claw feet for some chairs he wanted to make."
Sweet started working to copy and restore antiques for Kelly, which were sold as reproductions in his fine antiques gallery, Kelly Antiques. He developed an affinity for it - so much so that he found out, years after Kelly's death, that a recreation of a Chippendale chair he had made had been sold to Christy's as an original, unbeknownst at the time to the family.
After a few years of replicating period pieces, Sweet's desire to create his own designs prevailed. Inspired largely by early 20th- and mid-century architecture and furniture, and utilizing the skill he had already honed as a craftsman, he began crafting his original, highly detailed and unique Neo-modern pieces. Perhaps best described as functional art objects, the pieces are playful and elegant at once: desks and vanities with intersecting planes and hidden compartments; petite end tables with squiggly ("wiggly-pointy") legs; shelving cabinets with surprising angles and curves - almost everything finished with the smooth and beautiful veneer laminate that has become part of Sweet's repertoire.
Though he still invites commissions for furniture, these days Sweet spends most of his creative time working on his fresco-style paintings, a number of which were recently featured in New Editions Gallery "Gridworks" exhibit. Having shifted a bit from the clean, smooth, architectural style of his veneered woodworking, Sweet's aesthetic now lends itself toward rougher edges, and surfaces that are eroded or that otherwise appear to display the effects of time and weather. It's an aesthetic that is inspired at least in part by visits out west to Santa Fe, N.M., which he tries to make a few times a year.
"Out west, you see fences and gates and doors that people have painted, and then they fell apart, and they painted them again and they fell apart again - you see the under-layers popping through, and it looks almost like you're looking at old truck fenders," he explained. "The last color would be red, and underneath it would be green, and underneath that it would be black - it just appeals to me, the evidence of time."
Sweet spends about 20 hours a week in the studio, which he dubs as "La Cueva" (the cave), typically devoting 40-60 hours on one piece, utilizing a complex process that includes mixing earth pigment with artist's medium and calcium carbonate chalk or marble dust (which he sometimes procures from Chevy Chase marble and granite specialists Counter Culture Plus), followed by lots of layering and finally cutting into the layers to reveal what's underneath. The final product, as he points out, can be somewhat of a surprise - contrary to the extreme precision required for the woodworked pieces, which tend to take anywhere from 200-400 hours to complete, the effects of a fresco as he manipulates it can be difficult to control or predict.
"Stuff that happens is kind of out of my control," he said. "It's happenstance, it's some serendipity...it's exciting to see what will happen."
Sweet's work can be found in a number of local collections and galleries, including New Editions Gallery on Euclid Avenue and Main Cross Gallery in Victorian Square. He also built the Bishop's chair, two presider's chairs, four attendants' chairs and the ambry at Christ the King Cathedral. For more information, please contact lynn.sweet@insightbb.com. For images of his work, visit www.neweditionsgallery.com or www.lynnsweet.net.