Mike Goodlett

Mike Goodlett (b. 1958, Lexington, Kentucky) lives and works in the house in which he grew up just outside Wilmore. Over the years, he has embellished the house’s interior and even its structure with artwork of his own creation in a sort of visual call and response. Paper flowers bloom from cracks in the ceiling. Doorframes and windows are adorned with carvings. Delicate ballpoint pen-webs emanate from the electric outlets. Accessible only by an overgrown and narrow road, the house and studio are mostly hidden from view. Goodlett draws, paints, sculpts within the confines of the house, and creates works the artist Ben Durham refers to as “representations of desire itself.” Body parts are abstracted, intertwined, overlaid, and extruded into drawings and sculptures that camouflage unconventional sexuality. He and millions of others have spent lifetimes finding ways to shield their identities and disguise their “deviant” desires. It’s safer that way, but it can be lonely. Like a kinky predilection, Goodlett’s drawings and sculptures most often hide in plain sight. Goodlett received a BFA Degree from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1983 and has had solo exhibitions at the John Michael Kohler Art Center (Sheboygan, Wisconsin), Galerie Christian Berst (New York, NY), and Institute 193 (Lexington, KY).