Kurt and Kremena

Because most of the folks who lived in the North Limestone neighborhood in 2008 singled out undeserved negative reputation as the neighborhood’s biggest problem, our students decided to make a video to highlight this issue.

The video included on-the-street interviews with residents of the North Limestone neighborhood, excerpts from oral history interviews recorded with people who live or work in the neighborhood, and two of the This I Believe essays written by class members that year. We premiered the video at our last class meeting at Al’s Bar, our "classroom" during CETA’s first year.

Listen to the This I Believe essay written and read by Patrick Smith, CETA 2008.

In order to help Transylvania’s neighbors feel more welcome on campus, we curated a Morlan Gallery exhibition of collections owned by people who live in the North Limestone neighborhood. Based on our belief that everyone has a cherished collection, the exhibition included collections of rooster ornaments, black angel figurines, records, and more, as well as a projection of excerpts from oral history interviews our students recorded with the people who owned these collections.

Listen to the This I Believe essay written and read by Alex Keyes, CETA 2009.

Though the students in the class had no quilting experience, we stitched more than 50 colorful quilts, working with kids at local elementary schools, Transylvania students and neighbors, Lexington’s Quilting Society, University of Kentucky students, and many others. We used the quilts to create a temporary installation by slipcovering the inside of Marty Clifford’s second-hand furniture store (now a local restaurant, Minton’s 760), before donating all of them to Kentucky’s Build-A-Bed project.

Listen to the This I Believe essay written and read by Kaitlynn Austin, CETA 2010.

CETA’s first public-art project, Pasted resulted in 3 temporary wheatpaste murals and committed us to making public art! We inaugurated the murals (located at Sav's Grill, Bullhorn Creative, and Sayre School) with a reception at Sav’s Grill. Listen to the This I Believe essay written and read by Paul Brown.

Because 2011 was the year of wheatpasting, it was hardly surprising that in the spring a Droner on the side of a Speedway on Winchester Rd acquired a head-dress copied from an indoor mural by Cricket Press, which was painted on the second floor of Bullhorn Creative, where CETA met.

One of the assignments in CETA every year is Art for an Unexpected Place: something (an object, action, or a series of things) that changes how we look at our everyday surroundings. Many thanks to Mary Carothers, Associate Professor of Photo/Art at the University of Louisville, for giving us this assignment when our class visited with one of her classes back in 2010! One year, our own Art for an Unexpected Place was a swing--fashioned from wood, a traffic sign, and some rope--which we hung outside of Old Morrison on Transy's campus.