Elmer Lucille Allen (born in Louisville, Kentucky, August 23, 1931) is a ceramic artist and chemist who graduated from Nazareth College (now Spalding University) in 1953. [1] Both her father and brother were named Elmer and the family chose to name her Elmer Lucille. [2] She became the first African-American chemist at Brown-Forman in 1966. [3]
Allen was born in the Depression era in Louisville, Kentucky, at a time when it was still a segregated city. In an interview she stated that she "never went to school with whites" until she was a junior in college. [1] She took her first art class, a sewing class, in seventh grade at Madison Street Junior High School. She stated in an interview that the first artist she identified with was her teacher, Ms. Hattie Figg, who taught painting at the junior high. She learned many functional crafts in junior high, such as shoe repair, printing, sewing, and carpentry. She also learned various crafts at the Plymouth Settlement House and Presbyterian Community Center. She was also a Girl Scout, and this activity fostered her interest in art. She graduated from Central High School in 1949, at a time when African-American women had very few opportunities available to them. She attended Louisville Municipal College, a co-ed, all Black school from 1949 to 1951 and then switched to Nazareth College where she was one of only a few Black students. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Nazareth College in 1953. [4]
Elmer Lucille Allen became involved in the Louisville arts scene in 1980s. She helped form the Kentucky Coalition of African American Arts and was a founding member of the Arts Council of Louisville. [1]
Allen retired from Brown-Forman in 1997, after which she devoted more time to her art. Starting in 1981 she began to study art at the University of Louisville, receiving her Masters of Creative Arts with a focus in ceramics and fiber in 2002. [5] Allen's textile work incorporates shibori dyeing techniques. [6]
Speaking of her ceramics, Allen states, "I make the things that I want, and I have always liked teapots." She enjoys the fact that if she made something she did not like, she could simply start over again. Her platters are typically dark and molten, while her teapots are colorful and graphic. She states, "When I rented my first studio in 2005 at Mellwood, I knew that I was truly an artist." [7]
In 2004, she became the first recipient of the Kentucky Arts Council Governor's Award in the Arts for Community Arts. [8]
In 2019, the Imagine 2020 Mural Festival commissioned artist Brandon Marshall to create a mural celebrating the life Elmer Lucille Allen. [9]
Louisville is the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeast, and the 27th-most-populous city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 24th-largest city. Louisville is the historical county seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border.
Spalding University is a private Catholic university in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.
Catherine Spalding, known as Mother Spalding, was an American educator who was a co-founder and longtime mother superior of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. She pioneered education, health services and social services for girls and orphans in Louisville and other Kentucky cities. On January 6, 2003, the Louisville Courier-Journal named Spalding as the only woman among sixteen "most influential people in Louisville/Jefferson County history."
Simmons College of Kentucky is a private historically black college in Louisville, Kentucky. Founded in 1879, it is the nation's 107th HBCU and is accredited by the Association for Biblical Higher Education.
Stephen "Steve" Rolfe Powell was an American glass artist based at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, where he taught for more than 30 years. He often created elaborately colored three-foot glass vessels incorporating murrine.
Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women (KCIW) is a prison located in unincorporated Shelby County, Kentucky, near Pewee Valley, Kentucky, operated by the Kentucky Department of Corrections. Male and female inmates prior to 1937 had been housed at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Frankfort
Gregory Edward Fischer is an American businessman and entrepreneur who served as the second mayor of Louisville Metro from 2011 to 2023. In 2019, he was elected vice president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and in 2020, he served as its president.
Patty Prather Thum was an American artist from Louisville, Kentucky known for her landscapes, paintings of roses, and book illustrations. She studied art at Vassar College and the Art Students League of New York and maintained a portrait and landscape studio in Louisville for 35 years. She taught art, illustrated books and magazines, was an inventor, served as the president of the Louisville Art League, member of the Louisville Women's Club, and was the art critic for the Louisville Herald until 1925.
Dolores Delahanty is a social activist and political leader in Louisville, Kentucky. She was a founding member of the National Women's Political Caucus during the early Civil Rights Movement, and she was critical to the success of Kentucky's Fair Credit Law. Delahanty has devoted her life to improving the lives of others, primarily those of Kentucky women and children.
Crystal E. Wilkinson is an African-American feminist writer from Kentucky, and proponent of the Affrilachian Poet movement. She is the winner of a 2022 NAACP Image Award, a 2020 winner of the USA Fellow of Creative Writing, and a 2021 O. Henry Prize winner. She teaches at the University of Kentucky. Her work has primarily been in involving the stories of Black women and communities in the Appalachian and rural Southern canon. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Kentucky 2021.
Lucille Caudill Little was an American patron of the arts and philanthropist who served as president of the W. Paul and Lucille Caudill Little Foundation in Lexington, Kentucky.
Ann Stewart Anderson was an artist from Louisville, Kentucky whose paintings have "focused on the rituals of being a woman." Anderson is known for her part in creating the collective work, the "Hot Flash Fan," a fabric art work about menopause funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. She was the executive director of the Kentucky Foundation for Women.
Anita Douthat is an American photographer.
Amanda Matthews is an American sculptor and painter from Louisville, Kentucky, United States, who lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Alma Lesch was an American fiber artist known for her fiber portraits. She was "the undisputed grande dame of Kentucky textile arts." A historic marker notes her achievements in Shepherdsville, Kentucky where Lesch lived and had her studio. Lesch's quilt, Bathshebas Bedspread, was included in the Objects: USA exhibit in 1969, which was organized by S.C. Johnson and Son.
Marcia Shallcross Hite was an American watercolor artist.
Cianne Fragione is an American-born Italian abstract artist based in Washington, D.C. She is known for her mixed-media works that incorporate found objects and textiles with heavily layered oil paint and collage. She can be found in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Cecil H. Green Library at Stanford University, and Georgetown College.
Barbara Tyson Mosley is an American artist, known for her abstract landscape paintings, mix media artwork, photography, and fiber art. She is active in Louisville, Kentucky and within the Black community.
Eleanor Young Love (1922–2006) was an African-American librarian from Kentucky. She was the daughter of Whitney Young and the sister of Whitney Young Jr. She worked at the Lincoln Institute., an all-black boarding high school in Lincoln Ridge, KY, formed when schools were segregated in Kentucky., where her father was president. She received her degree from Atlanta University, now Clark Atlanta University, her M.Ed. from the University of Louisville, and her D.Ed. from the University of Illinois.