The Impulsive Traveler: Paducah, Ky., will bring out the artist in you

I hate gelatin. Sorry, Bill Cosby. But I just can’t bring myself to eat something that’s used to bind meat in a can.

So when artist Char Downs proposed teaching me how to make prints using gelatin, I was intrigued.

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I had my pick of art workshops all over Paducah, Ky. For more than a decade, this small western Kentucky town (pop. 26,000) has been luring artists from around the country with grants and other incentives through its Artist Relocation Program. More than two dozen galleries specializing in fabric arts, quilting, jewelry-making, bookbinding and just about any other art technique you can think of — or never would have thought of — line the streets of the LowerTown Arts District. Once a dilapidated ghost town, the neighborhood is now a charming, bustling community that reminded me a bit of New Orleans’s Garden District before Hurricane Katrina.

That commitment to the arts recently earned Paducah the Fan Favorite award among the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2011 Dozen Distinctive Destinations. Twenty blocks of downtown are on the National Register of Historic Places. “I’ve waited all my life to find this neighborhood,” said Char, who relocated from San Francisco six years ago. “You get inspired.”

I needed inspiration when she presented me with a slab of unsweetened gelatin at her Pinecone Art Studio. Was I supposed to paint on it or with it? Char coached me through the process, handing me a tiny roller with red paint and instructing me to coat the block of gelatin. Then she led me to a box of stencils, leaves, stamps, string and other items for creating images on the gelatin. “Go crazy,” she told me.

Timidly, I picked a single leaf and pressed it onto the gelatin. Then I put a piece of paper over it and rubbed gently with my fingertips. Peeling off the paper, I had, to my surprise, a nice-looking if amateurish print. Something I wouldn’t mind displaying on my refrigerator door.

I kept going, and with each print, I got more adventurous. A little bit of string here. A button there. My brush strokes grew increasingly impulsive. I was inspired. “That looks like a Jackson Pollock,” Char said when I showed her one print with a mish-mash of colors and shapes.

Walking out of class with my portfolio of art, I felt triumphant. But I wanted to see what the professionals could come up with, so I headed to the National Quilt Museum.

When I think of quilts, I think of my grandmother’s bedspread or the many bed and breakfasts I’ve stayed at. What I found at the museum was much more creative. None of the museum’s contemporary collection of quilts was made before 1980, and they definitely weren’t the kind of thing you’d tuck yourself under in bed.

Take “Sedona Rose” by Sharon Schamber, which won the Best in Show prize at the 2006 National Quilt Society’s Quilt Show and Contest. It’s embedded with 130,000 Swarovski crystals. Mark Sherman’s “Wisteria” looks like a stained glass window, with vibrant blue, green and yellow ovals. “The Map Makers” by Cassandra Williams, portraying Lewis and Clark and their guide, Sacagawea, is more painting than quilt. I was amazed by the detail in the faces: Lewis’s arched eyebrows, Sacagawea’s flared nostrils.