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1. Louisville's next big band has a song titled "Vaccines Made Me Gay."
Meet GRLwood.
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2. Artists can live at Bernheim.
Printmaker and U of L teacher Rachel Singel is the first to receive a new spot dedicated to a regional artist-in-residence.
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3. Speaking English is optional.
Since its inception in 2013, Spanish-language theater company Teatro Tercera Llamada has produced 12 full-length plays at venues throughout the city.
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4. 52,000 people attended the sold-out Taylor Swift show...
...at Cardinal Stadium in June, and 300 came to several sold-out shows of a Frankenstein puppet adaptation called Creature last October at the Workhouse, a cave on Lexington Road. Creature is doubling its capacity this November with shows at Suspend on Washington Street. And Cardinal Stadium is nearing the completion of its $63 million expansion, meaning 6,000 more seats for Swifties.
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5. Metal is getting a makeover.
In a little more than a year, 110 exterior doors in drab alleys and garages downtown have been covered in colorful art.
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6. Walden builds character.
The company's season, which produces 150 public performances a year, begins in late September with Blue Stockings.
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7. Our orchestra is changing its sound.
“I think, that when we look back — when the Teddy Abrams chapter of the Louisville history is written — we may have somehow, in some way, changed the way this art form is practiced.”
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8. J.R. Ward sold out 625 tickets in two minutes.
The local author, whose books are a mixture of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, is throwing an event Sept. 28 & 29 at the Marriott downtown. The waiting list: 2,200 people.
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Read our profile of Ward here.
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9. Kids of color play all roles.
The Youth Repertory Theater Troupe of Louisville offers underrepresented kids a chance to get on stage.
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10. The Speed has a Rockwell (for now).
Study of Breaking Home Ties is on loan from the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University.
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11. Our venues are internationally ranked.
According to the concert-industry trade publication Pollstar, three of the world's top 200 theater venues, based on ticket sales, are: the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall (32nd), the Brown Theatre (162nd) and the Louisville Palace (181st).
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12. The Ballet created this cryptic billboard.
The story behind the series of messages that sprung up in July.
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13. This office is a museum.
Paul “Pablo” Mills Holmes’ tiny office is like the ghost of plays past, plays present and plays yet to come.
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14. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Scott Carney of Wax Fang and Cheyenne Mize covered the Talking Heads' performance...
...from the 1984 live concert film, Stop Making Sense, at PeteFest earlier this month.
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15. "It's all just storytelling."
The 40-year-old producing artistic director of StageOne Family Theatre is an accomplished playwright, poet, director, hip-hop artist, spoken-word performer and educator.
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16. Dreams can be inspiration.
The magazine’s art director, Suki Anderson, has drawn about 300 of her dreams since February, posting them daily to her Instagram.
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17. The city gasped when the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts caught fire in June…
…(even those who rarely attend events there) because its existence ensures dance, music and theater has a home. P.S.: It’s reopening this month!
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18. Wilma Bethel won't stop teaching.
She estimates that she has taught 150 students per year, multiplied by 40-plus years.
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19. Percussionist Dani Markham played with Childish Gambino at the Grammys.
And she’s touring with the rapper-singer this fall. We’re not surprised. In 1998, here’s what Louisville Magazine had to say about Markham, when she was a sixth-grader and member of the
Louisville Leopard Percussionists.
“Asked about her favorite percussionists, Danielle Markham… cites Bob Becker, a xylophone virtuoso who is a member of the Canadian percussion quintet Nexus, which regularly performs with symphony orchestras around the world. ‘He plays a piece that I play — “Log Cabin Blues,”’ says Danielle, referring to a xylophone rag that is considered appropriate for college-age percussionists to perform at recitals.”
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20. A record store can double as a gallery.
Surface Noise hosts intimate unplugged shows, and displays new art every second Friday of the month. “I want people to hang out, break bread, trade ideas,” owner Brett Eugene Ralph says.
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21. While researching this package, our art director asked her Facebook followers to name their favorite local artist. Ninety-six different names.
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22. Louisville is a hot filmmaking spot.
In the last couple years, several movies have been filmed in town, including: And Then I Go, featuring Justin Long, about junior-high kids who navigate anger, anxiety and alienation; The Art of Self-Defense, a dark comedy with Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots; and River Runs Red, starring Taye Diggs, John Cusack, George Lopez and Luke Hemsworth, about police brutality,
in theaters Nov. 2.
And, in 2016, Mom and Dad, an apocalyptic zombie movie with parents turning on their kids, starring Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair. While in town, Blair visited the Louisville Zoo with her son and posted a photo on Instagram.
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23. $354,668 is funding artists' travels.
Al Shands' Great Meadows Foundation offers grants to regional artists to travel anywhere in the world to see artwork, meet with other artists and curators, and experience new environments to inspire their work.
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24. A Kentucky School for the Blind graduate and 2018 Grammy nominee — bluegrass fiddler Michael Cleveland — blew us away...
...at Forecastle and is onstage again at Bourbon & Beyond, along with Robert Plant, Sheryl Crow, Sting, Lenny Kravitz, John Mayer and others, Sept. 22 and 23 at Champions Park.
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25. Billy Keith harnesses the sun.
“I’m not going for perfect,” the artist says. “If I was going for perfect, I’d use a stencil. But that takes all the organic fun out of being alive. And it’s all about being alive.”
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26. Old books make fresh poems.
“Sometimes I’ll go over a word and realize it was a great missed opportunity and there’s no going back,” Zachary Goldstein says.
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27. Forecastle is in July, but is September festival month?
In addition to Bourbon & Beyond, Louder Than Life gets, well, loud the following weekend at Champions Park, with performances by Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, Godsmack, Deftones, Limp Bizkit, Bush, Billy Idol, GWAR — sorry, the editor of this actually likes those bands and got carried away.
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28. "We claim space and kick ass."
The Spinsters Union of Louisville is a DJ collective for women and gender-non-conforming people.
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29. Cat Butt/Dog Butt is in the U of L Archives.
“We were one of the first institutions in the country to do underground music,” says Elizabeth Reilly, photographic curator at the archives. “We want to archive, remember and preserve all different aspects of Louisville."
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30. The Instagram account @louisvilleartscene reveals all kinds of artists and happenings in the city.
From there, we’ve discovered @the.art.cartel and @portlandlouisville, run by Danny Seim, who last year posted this photo of Mayor Fischer at the Dolfinger Building in Portland, where he announced an arts partnership.
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31. Steam Exchange is a program in Smoketown that introduces kids to painting, bookbinding, screen-printing, sculpture and how to beautify the neighborhood with murals.
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32. Murals are neighborhood pride.
Beautifying Louisville.
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33. "There's no barrier to it."
Inside LFPL's new artist-in-residence program.
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Cover photo: Russell neighborhood mural // by Danny Alexander
