Mayfield's Ice House Gallery benefits from Kentucky Arts Council

The Kentucky Arts Council has awarded more than $170,000 to several schools, arts organizations and individual artists, as part of an effort to aid the recovery after the December 2021 tornadoes in western Kentucky.

The council received $115,000 in funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and $26,000 from regional partner South Arts. The council allocated $35,000 from its own budget to fund 50 grants.

“In the wake of the tornadoes that devastated areas of western Kentucky, we knew there were individual artists, arts organizations and even school programs that were going to suffer and need help in recovering,” said Chris Cathers, arts council executive director. 

The Kentucky Arts Council coordinated assistance to artists, arts organizations and other creative and cultural institutions following the tornadoes. 

Nanc Gunn, executive director of Ice House Gallery and the Mayfield Graves County Art Guild, said that after recovering as much artwork as they could from the rubble, collecting computers and other office supplies, her focus was on the future of the actual Ice House building.

“After all that, it was, ‘How are we going to exist without a building?’” Gunn said.

She said Craig Potts, executive director of the Kentucky Heritage Council, traveled to Mayfield to examine the building from a standpoint of historical restoration, and several engineers studied the building in an ultimately futile attempt to save it. On Good Friday — a little more than four months after the tornado hit Mayfield and surrounding areas — a crew bulldozed the Ice House.

“I found I’d lost my identity,” Gunn said. “I always thought of myself as the Ice House Lady.”

When Gunn found out the Mayfield Graves County Art Guild would be one of several organizations receiving $5,000 grants from the arts council to aid in disaster recovery, she was overwhelmed.

“The arts council has given a great gift to us,” she said. “It’s not only a monetary gift through grants to keep us up and operating, but also through friendship.”

The guild started offering classes again, using the Graves County Cooperative Extension Center, which was undamaged in the tornado. It also partnered with Regions Bank to feature artwork and artists at work in the bank’s public space.

“We did not think we’d be as far along as we are today,” Gunn said. “After the tornado hit, we had nothing. So I was running the art guild out of my home. We have a public presence at the bank, though, and so many other facilities have opened their doors to us.”

Among those places is Paducah City Hall, which can accommodate art shows. The guild has 125 pieces of artwork on exhibit in city hall featuring the work of African-American artists.

“If anything good came out of the tornado, it’s all these new connections we made in the community and the new artists we’ve met by having to use other groups’ facilities,” Gunn said.