Major Matt LeMonds
Full disclosure: I never “got” abstract art. I honestly don’t know how I was able to pass the required humanities courses for my liberal arts degree. But one chilly day in March, sculptor Dave Caudill guided me on a leisurely tour of Crestwood’s Yew Dell Gardens, where more than a dozen of his pieces are situated throughout the landscape. I had several “a-ha” moments as we stopped and looked at each piece, be they twisted and shaped stainless-steel pipes or bronze formations.
The first of those moments occurred when one work caught my eye, and I blurted out, “This one just looks like they’re dancing!”
I then looked at Caudill, a Louisville native, to see if it was grossly obvious that I was naïve and uncultured.
“It’s called, ‘Carefree,’ ” he said with a grin.
How about that.
“I think one of the most fascinating things about abstract art is that it goes in so many directions that most everybody sees different things in it,” Caudill said. “Then you get a chance to discover something new every time you walk by and see a different angle.”
We then came upon “On a Lark.” I was feeling a bit more confident in my interpretations and was fascinated by the movement of the stainless steel. “I see wings, and it leads the eyes, and then you’re looking into the trees,” I said.
Drawing the eyes upward was exactly what Caudill wanted to achieve. “I call it the ‘child’s-eye view,’ because when all of us were young, we were looking up at everything, and the world just seemed limitless,” he said. “The idea of blue sky really struck me as something that could be drawn on to complement the sculpture itself because, to me, the idea of art is inspiring.”
That inspiration can be seen in Caudill’s latest commissioned work, “The Birth of Hope.” The 24-foot sculpture was installed in December 2024 near an entrance to the Lexington Detention Center on Old Frankfort Pike. It was the first commissioned work from Lexington’s Percent for Art Program that supports publicly accessible works of art.
For Caudill, it was an opportunity to make a difference.
“It’s like a gateway into the city,” he said. “[The program] wanted to have something that would be a positive image for the detention center, which is not something most people want to think about. But I thought that the most important thing that was shared by all the people at the detention center was hope, and if I could create something that might inspire hope—or at least inspire people to think about it a bit—that might be a contribution.”
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What inspires the artist himself?
“Somebody asked me not long ago about my muse, and I told them that it’s light,” he said. “It’s light in all of its manifestations, whether it’s sunlight, daylight or moonlight, or the light of streetlamps on the stainless steel, which is just sublime. I think that sunrise and sunsets are daily miracles.”
Caudill combines his enchantment with light, his love of the outdoors, and his fascination with compound curves into each piece of art.
“I was always intrigued by the little tendrils that are sent out by climbing vines that reach out with a little tendril and wrap around something else—just tiny pieces of sculpture,” he said. “So, when I started working with stainless steel rods, I just started moving in that direction. As you move around the piece, because those curves are compounded, you see things from a different angle all the time, and it reflects light in different ways.
“The light bouncing off of the plants in the garden—whether it’s the flowers or the green or whatever—is all there right in the sculpture along with the blue in the sky. It just distills everything right there into that one little vision.”
Caudill always had a vision of being an artist, but it was a dream deferred. After studying at the Louisville School of Art, he began his career working in public relations and graphic design.
“Louisville at that time was no place for a sculptor interested in abstract art,” he said. “Then approaching midlife, I needed a crisis. So, I decided that there was no better one than to become an artist and starve.”
In 1996, Caudill created “Angel of Harmony” off the coast of Nassau, Bahamas, to become an artificial coral reef. “Since my focus was abstract work, I was thinking, ‘Let’s think about a piece that’s designed to be an environmental piece because it’ll be the structure on which corals and sponges grow, and it’ll be a symbol of humanity and harmony with the rest of nature,’ ” he said. “So that’s what happened there, and then I was hooked.”
Nearly 30 years later, “Angel of Harmony” is covered with algae, sea fan coral, sponges and fish.
Caudill also left his mark in Bolivia with “The Bolivian Odyssey,” a stone labyrinth based on a human fingerprint and used as a walking meditation device. The work became another extension of Caudill’s intent to inspire creativity.
“Creativity is really important, and it’s not just in terms of the making of the sculpture but the viewing of any kind of art,” he said. “It leads people to think differently, and that opens the door to creative problem solving in the rest of their lives.”
Many of Caudill’s sculptures can be found at Yew Dell Gardens, and some are available for purchase. Their presence scattered throughout the gardens can awaken a new appreciation for modern art—even for a mediocre liberal arts major. As I was leaving Yew Dell, I couldn’t help but think my humanities professors would be pleased.
For more on Dave Caudill and his artwork, visit davecaudillart.com.