>> We're in downtown Lexington at one of the city's most iconic landmarks, the Kentucky Theater.

So get your popcorn popping, because this is your front row seat to Kentucky Life.

Welcome to Kentucky Life.

I'm your host and usher, Doug Flynn.

In the United States, there are roughly 500 professional blacksmiths, all creating vastly different work, but very few are blurring the lines between function and sculpture quite like husband and wife, Matthew and Karine Maynard.

With pieces featured from Manhattan to San Francisco and even a few abroad, these artist blacksmiths, based in Lawrenceburg, are firing up unique designs you won't find in a catalog.

>> I think that the more that technology is integrated in our lives, the more a part of us craves something more handmade, and that touches you on a human level.

This is an unusual way to make a living, first off, but then the fact that we managed to do it together.

>> We don't have a lot of angst at the end of our day- I have to work it out.

...we have literally beat steel all day long.

It's not a lot of anger or anything left.

>> When I was a kid, my granddad had a series of books called Foxfire.

There was a couple chapters in one of the books on blacksmithing.

And for some reason, it just really struck a chord with me, and growing up in Pike County, it was like the coal was literally on the side of the road or dig it out of the mountains.

So I had the ability to set up a little forge in granddad's barn and thankfully I didn't burn it down and he didn't stop me.

And that set a little spark.

And then that grew later in life into deciding to take a crack at doing this full time and it took off.

>> When I met Matt, I saw what he was doing and I just knew he was an artist.

He was taking this far past craftsmanship.

And I watched what he was doing and said, "I can do everything you can do just smaller."

So I had learned it in small metals or jewelry as an undergraduate, and I've never been taught how to weld, but I can solder, like all of this made sense.

So I said, "I want in," and I just nudged my way into the shop, I guess, helping Matt finish the commissions.

>> We create artistic metal work, some of it sculpture, but a lot of it is really architecturally driven.

By >> using the architectural space as our media and talking with the client in the space.

We can very often make suggestions that get to the point faster.

And we take cues from >> the environment around us.

Makers really allowed us a lot of artistic liberty.

>> They asked us to work on some gates for their culinary garden.

We did one gate with a spring theme and water and the other gate with a fall theme of >> harvest.

The gates were designed to actually be viewed as open, not closed.

So they're framed by dry stack stone columns behind them.

And as you enter, the elements in their bourbon are presented as young, it's springtime.

So they're just starting to grow.

There's an Oak tree and the leaves are just budding out on it.

As you exit, the garden is the fall or the harvest when wheat and the rye are all full, there's acorns on the Oak trees and everything is at its peak.

>> Those are on either end of the garden.

And then as you come down the hill, there's a beautifully well built stone bridge.

And we did the metal railing on there representing the wheat as ingredient in Makers.

>> We actively try to blur the line between function and sculpture with the railings because... And I think that there's no reason that something can't serve a purpose and still be artistically interesting.

>> Other times, though, we are asked to do things that someone's been told is impossible or doesn't exist.

We're given challenges that maybe the industry needs and they can't find someone to do.

>> We're not doing the fastest process.

We're doing something that does take more time and more labor.

But I think the end result is worth so much more >> Over 100 years ago, a blacksmith or jeweler, they used these little saws to cut the sheet metal and they would've cut a shape out and then hammered it.

Now we use the computers to cut the steel for us, but it's the same thing as having done that with the saw over 100 years ago.

And I love the fact that that is not our end product, that computer cut piece.

>> We're still putting our hands on it, heating it, hammering it, bending it, forming it.

The work that we do is appealing to people because there's so much effort put into it and heart, and I believe that translates through it.

There's a little bit of our soul in each piece.

>> We've been asked a lot by our clients like, "How do you two work >> together?"

Yeah, >> no, I don't know.

Somehow we do.

We give each other our own space.

It's about communication really.

If you can't do that, it's doomed.

So far were doing okay, I think.

Yeah.

>> He's just a really great guy too.

He first got me my own anvil and set of hammers.

I was like, "I really dig this guy.

This is a pretty cool guy."

And then when he bought me a welder, I was like, "I'm going to marry this guy."

I think it's good that we approach everything backward from each other.

So I see things with training in fine arts, and he's looking at it from a totally different realm, as a machinist he's looking at the numbers, when we both look at things with our two different perspectives and we come together, I think that makes it a good pair.

>> We want people to be happy with the things we create, not just now, but 10, 15 years from now.

If we can leave something in this world that makes it a little better, hopefully it outlives us and gives people a little bit of joy, then we've done our job.

>> Having stood the test of time, the Kentucky Theater has seen some challenges throughout the years, as it enters its second century, the friends of the Kentucky have taken on the task of reinventing the theater while continuing its best traditions.

Much like the Kentucky Theater, the Lexington Camera Club has been an institution in the city for decades.

And after a long hiatus, the club has reinvented itself and is back up and running stronger than ever.

In a recent exhibit, they collaborated with a group called Community Inspired Solutions to provide opportunities for teenagers to show their artistic creations alongside the adult members of the group.

The result is both impressive and inspiring.

>> We decided to continue the old club's tradition of inviting guests into the exhibit and being on the north side at the Loudoun house made us think that well, >> we ought to try and >> diversify a little bit.

We're mostly older and White for the most part.

And so we reached out to the Community Inspired Solutions group.

>> Community Inspired Solutions is a nonprofit organization that works with young people in the community here in Lexington to try to provide them with some opportunities they may not otherwise have a chance to be involved in.

>> Without somebody for people like me to pass the torch to, how does this flame of me that came before me carry on?

How does it endure any other way than to pass it through organizations, through kids that come up through these programs designed to help them build something that endures enough within them.

>> You can be in the same room with them or in the same space with them and have them taking pictures.

But when I get back to the office and I download them, there's so many times that things that were right in front of me that I didn't see, but they saw it.

They took pictures of it and I'd be like, "Wow, where was this?"

I know where they took the picture, but what they see, isn't always what we see.

And if you give them a camera and turn them loose with it, then you get to see a view of the world through their eyes.

>> I was asked to curate this What Endures show for the Lexington Camera Club.

And it was an honor to be asked because what it allowed me to do was to use whatever powers of persuasion I had to help rope in these young brown kids, specifically young brown kids who have aspirations of being a photographer.

>> These kids have grown up in the city.

So if you get them out in nature, get them outside to where they can truly explore and take pictures, they're really able to show you the vision of what they see through their eyes.

And it gives them a sense of pride and belonging and place and citizenship, ownership of a space like this, where they might have come to this park or drove by this castle 1000 times or 100 times in their lifetimes, never imagined that they will be having their work exhibited in a place like this.

And here they are.

>> Many of the kids in the club are really shy and soft spoken.

They don't have much to say, but if you give them a camera, they light up, it turns them on.

They're able to go out.

They're able to take photographs.

They're able to express themselves through their photography.

>> One of my favorite photographs is probably the butterfly house and probably the turtle, I took a picture of them.

I like the butterfly house because it has a nice whole view of the butterfly house.

And it's just sunny.

The sun shines on it too.

And it >> just looks very nice.

The photograph I took of the turtle that's in the zoo right now, appeals to me because it's a clear shot of a turtle, which is really hard to get and really clear shot inside the water too.

And it looks really nice too.

I'm proud to be in the exhibit because it means to me a whole lot because not everybody gets the chance to go and take pictures or be able to go out explore stuff.

>> Katie Mason is probably the shyest kid we have, even around us a lot.

So for Katie to come in here and sit down with you today was a major accomplishment for her.

I like to take pictures of nature because it keeps >> me calm.

How do we make the seeds of these things that we build last?

And we pass it on through the next generation.

That's how it happens, period.

>> Charles Williams was a visionary artist born in Blue Diamond, an old cold town outside of Hazard, where he drew inspiration from the superhero and space travel comics of his youth.

He received little recognition during his lifetime while working in Lexington until his untimely death in 1998.

His story inspired the founding of Movable Feast in Lexington, which provides meals to those affected by HIV and AIDS.

And more recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Williams work with retrospectives and major galleries in Atlanta, Chicago, and here in Lexington.

>> Charles Williams was an artist from Kentucky who was active between the '70s through to the mid '90s.

Charlie was largely a self-taught artist.

He had always been making art and never in an institutional setting.

Charles was born in >> 1942 in a mining camp in Eastern Kentucky, the Blue Diamond mining camp.

He was raised by his grandparents in Blue Diamond and he went to live with his mother in Chicago as