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Hello world!
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Just getting started with posts and putting up a new site. Be patient. I’m learning. In the meantime, follow @staceyrchinn and @lilcrowhandmade on all things social. Until next time! <3
CONTEMPORARY ART
Work that explores form, movement, and material through an intuitive, process-driven approach. Each piece evolves in response to the moment, balancing restraint with complexity to create objects that feel both deliberate and alive.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
REcreation is a solo exhibition spanning thirty years of making for artist Stacey R. Chinn. Each work REvisits, REinterprets, or REbuilds upon earlier pieces beginning in 1995–96. These sculptures, paintings, and mixed-media works incorporate ceramics, fiber, wood, metal, found materials, and more. They range from small wall and pedestal pieces to larger installations, all connected by a renewed sense of purpose, perspective, and identity.
For the past decade, Chinn has devoted much of her creative energy to functional ceramics, handcrafted jewelry, and design work. While those pursuits continue, this exhibition marks an important return to her truest artistic self — the visual artist driven by curiosity, experimentation, and the need to transform the familiar into something new.
REcreation is not just about re-making art; it’s about re-making the self. Each piece represents the courage to move forward, to reinterpret the past without being confined by it. As Rollo May wrote in The Courage to Create, “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.” That spirit lies at the heart of this show — REconsidering personal history, REsponding to the present through new work, and daring to be REinvented.
2026 – JUNE 5 – JULY 17
PAST EXHIBITS
EKU Giles Gallery, in partnership with the Kentucky Arts Council (KAC), presented DIVIDENDS: Kentucky Arts Council Grantee Retrospective, October 2–30, 2025. This group exhibit recognized 15 distinguished artists whose work exemplifies the enduring impact of 30 years of KAC grant funding. DIVIDENDS highlighted the lasting value of public investment in the arts—its power to shape careers, elevate communities, and enrich Kentucky’s cultural landscape. DIVIDENDS was a call to recognize the transformative role of arts funding—not only in individual practice but in the collective civic and economic fabric of the Bluegrass. The exhibiting artists—working across a diverse range of media and technique—represent only a fraction of the remarkable talent cultivated in the Commonwealth.
When curators Mary Rezny and Marco Logsdon staged their “3×33” exhibit — featuring three self-selected and loosely related works by 33 local artists — at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center in 2021, I saw it as a snapshot of Central Kentucky’s art community in all its variety. As I wrote in an essay for the show’s catalog at the time, “It’s a homegrown community of autodidacts and iconoclasts, fiercely individualistic, committed to their personal visions and their craft. In many cases here, they’ve been in it for the long haul, as evidenced by the high percentage of artists with signature styles developed over lengthy and productive careers.”
A FAVORITE PROJECT FROM THE PAST
URBAN SHAWL, McConnell Springs, Lexington, KY
May 2013 – December 2014
Locale played a significant role for Urban Shawl created specifically for the Lexington Art League’s offSITE exhibit. A public park and National Registered Historic Site, McConnell Springs exemplified Urban Shawl perfectly not only because it is recognized as the “naming place of Lexington” and accessible to everyone in the Commonwealth for free, but also for its mission as a “vital educational resource” which preserves the area’s distinct cultural history and restores the natural environment. Located amidst an industrialized area, McConnell Springs was my ideal choice as “trees line the boundaries of the park and serve as a buffer between parkland and the neighboring urban landscape.” Recognizing Lexington’s distinguished heritage and paying tribute to Kentucky’s cultural traditions was vital, as was the park’s natural vegetation.
Urban Shawl comprised of knitted “shawls” or afghan-like pieces which were fitted around the base of six trees spaced throughout McConnell Springs. Knitted from orange, red, blue, yellow and white biodegradable flagging tape (used in forestry but mocking that used in construction), each of the six patterns dissolved over time into the specific site for which it was made, thereby becoming a lasting part of the landscape, leaving its own legacy behind.
A special thanks to Presco Products for their kind donation of flagging tape and support of this public art project. www.presco.com
Description of offSITE
offSITE was a mini-installation exhibition on the streets of Lexington, KY presented as a complement to SITE, that opened at LAL’s Loudoun House Gallery on May 24, 2013. Twenty local artists were commissioned to produce installation surprises in unexpected spaces in Lexington in the month of May and afterward. The locations were revealed at the opening of SITE, as the public was asked to shift its way of seeing the surroundings.
CONTEMPORARY CRAFT
Discover LIL CROW, a curated line of uniquely crafted pottery and jewelry by the artist.
Lil Crow celebrates authenticity, creativity, and simple sophistication. Expertly handcrafted from eco-friendly materials, each unique piece is designed and created with an artist’s vision and refined attention to detail. A delicate balance of form, texture, and subtle palette results in timeless yet modern designs.
