Quest Lawrence, an intern at Louisville Tourism and the Office of Arts and Creative Industries, does something out of the norm while working with artistic and creative minds in Louisville. Lawrence not only helps to find new artwork like murals throughout Louisville, they also plot it on an interactive map they made online for everyone to enjoy.
LEO Weekly sat down with Lawrence to understand why they do all this work, and what work needs to be done to help shine a light on local creatives in Louisville.
Some parts of this interview have been edited for clarity.
LEO: Who are you?
Quest: My name is Chris Lawrence, and I work between Louisville Tourism and Louisville Metro's Office of Arts and Creative Industries. And I've been working, I guess, a little over the last year, mapping public art in three forms. So art in public space, the Louisville Metro gallery collection and murals. So basically just going out and surveying, going to different neighborhoods and finding what they consider public art.
LEO: So what made you want to be part of this project?
Quest: Well, it's funny, but I actually had GIS experience that kind of led me to this position. I used to work for a local design firm that contracted with Comcast. So I have a lot of experience with the walkout and survey process as far as the telecommunications industry is concerned. So that job entailed me getting actual walkout and survey data from businesses who perform that kind of work, and basically figuring out what hardware is up on the telephone poles and the lines. And essentially my job at that place was to redesign their infrastructure, their internet architecture, essentially. That experience with GIS led me to this job which prefers that you have GIS experience. And because during the pandemic, I lost this job where I had this GIS experience and decided to go back to school, it kind of just fell into place. It was like the perfect storm. So my school sent out a call for this position, and I applied. I went through an interview process, and I ended up getting the job. So it was really neat to serendipitously come across this while struggling to find work that was suited for me. So it was just perfect.
LEO: How do you find these art pieces you put out on the site?
Quest: I basically use that same process that the walkout and survey folks would use, but instead of going to each individual, it was like, ‘Okay, I know that this is a residential part of the neighborhood.’ I'm looking for more commercial parts of the neighborhood where there's more likely to be art, and then asking those folks at the businesses, ‘Hey, do you know about any other public art that might be in the residential areas?’ So as you go out and meet these people, you start to aggregate these murals.
LEO: I was wondering, is there a weird story about how you've come to find a particular art piece?
Quest: It was a statue that I found in the highlands. There's a statue called a highland the Highland Totoro. When I got to it, it started raining. And so initially, when I first started this project, I would park in one spot, and then I would just walk around the whole neighborhood, usually on foot, because I found it a lot easier to see things like walking through, as opposed to just driving by. And I ended up parking on a residential street, and on my way walking to Bardstown road, I actually found this piece called The Highland Totoro, which I think is really awesome. It was like an old tree that had been cut down, and the owner of the property actually had an artist come and carve out the character from the Studio Ghibli films. And it was just really, really amazing, because it was raining that day, and I would rather not walk in the rain. And so it was wild. Because in the My Neighbor Totoro movie, when the main character meets Totoro, it's raining as well.
