Alice Thorson

Alice Thorson

Alice Thorson is the editor of KC Studio. She has written about the visual arts for numerous publications locally and nationally.

Cristina Muñiz: “The Powers of Overcoming”

Cristina Muñiz: “The Powers of Overcoming”

Although she completed her B.F.A. at the Kansas City Art Institute just three years ago, Cristina Muñiz has been making art for more than 20 years. It shows in the mature personal vocabulary she has evolved, fired by memories of growing up in a big Mexican-American family in San Antonio, but reaching out to encompass the broader realm of human experience. “What I push my work towards is to a point where it doesn’t exclude anybody,” Muñiz says.

Harold Smith: Art As a Platform for Activism

Harold Smith: Art As a Platform for Activism

On a warm evening in late February, the premiere screening of “The Gospel According to Glenn North” played to a packed meeting room at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Many in the audience had come to honor North, the nationally renowned inaugural poet laureate of the 18th & Vine Historic Jazz District, but they left the event with a new appreciation for the talents of the documentary’s creator, artist Harold Smith.

Editor’s Letter, May/June 2017

Against the backdrop of police violence toward black men and a surge in racist sentiments, many of the nation’s cultural institutions are making a concerted effort to put black creative expression front and center. The trend is apparent in Kansas City, where exhibits such as the Kemper Museum’s “Rashid Johnson: Hail We Now Sing Joy” […]

“New Works by Madeline Gallucci,” Weinberger Fine Art

“New Works by Madeline Gallucci,” Weinberger Fine Art

Five years out of the Kansas City Art Institute, Madeline Gallucci is making her mark on the tradition of Kansas City abstraction, bringing it up to date with the information explosion and frenetic pace of the digital age. As a painter, Gallucci mines the tradition of Abstract Expressionism, but she imprints it with her own […]