The Kansas City Art Institute exhibit and sale, Dec. 2-4, will include ceramics by Elias Oliver. Pictured is an Oliver artwork from last semester’s sale. (from the artist)
Our 2022 holiday gift guide focuses on local artist-made gifts and specialties, from handmade brooms to gourmet chocolate and a wide selection of affordable objects guaranteed to delight anyone on your list.
Egawa + Zbryk Framed Artworks
Rie Egawa and Burgess Zbryk, who collaborate as the design team Egawa + Zbryk, are well known for their furniture, light fixtures and home décor items as well as numerous public artworks, including the “Barnacles” installation in the Power and Light District, a One Percent for Art commission they completed in 2011. The two also make works of art, including a new series of five framed geometric reliefs in different color variations that reflect their ongoing investment in clean modernist design based in dimensionality and repetition. Executed in gouache on watercolor paper, the framed works measure 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 2 1/4.”
Price: $250 each, available at www.artworkarchive.com/profile/rie-egawa/collection/basalt
Hannah Carr Sterling Silver Earrings
Fun is the province of Kansas City designer Hannah Carr, a 2014 Kansas City Art Institute alum and former Charlotte Street studio resident, who has used beads, polymer clay and sterling silver in jewelry marketed under her Earwack label.
Check out Carr’s lightweight “Sterling Silver Wiggle Hoops” measuring approximately 2 inches in diameter, and her similarly sized “Sterling Silver Flower Hoops.” Carr does whimsical dangles too, including her “Mirror Daisy Dangles.” She incorporates a linear flower motif in her “Wavy Stem Hoops,” available in another iteration in her “Sterling Flower Studs.” Each pair is made to order and may be slightly different in shape.
Price range: $30 to $62. Available through the artist’s website, earwack.com.
2022 Mayor’s Christmas Tree Ornament
Every year since 1987, Hallmark artists have created a Mayor’s Christmas Tree Ornament from the wood of the previous year’s Mayor’s Christmas Tree. Hallmark artist Sheyda Best designed the 2022 iteration, titled “Celebrating 50 Years,” in honor of Crown Center’s 50 years of hosting the tree on Crown Center Square. Best’s ornament depicts the dark green tree encircled by a gold Crown Center banner atop a drum stand bearing a 50th logo. The delicate, laser-cut design includes a sprinkling of snowflakes and renditions of holiday decorations in gold, silver and white against a light wood backdrop from the 2021 Mayor’s Christmas Tree. Proceeds from the sale of the ornament benefit the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Fund, which assists Kansas City residents in need during the holidays.
Price $16.95, plus tax. Available beginning Nov. 25 at Crown Center Customer Service on Level 2 of the Crown Center Shops or call 816-274-7251
Vases, cups and more at Belger Glass Annex
Like the Belger Crane Yard ceramics center, the Belger Glass Annex, which opened in summer 2021, is a hub of creativity. On site, and through its robust website, the glass annex offers a variety of unique objects for sale, including a changing variety of bud vases, stemless wine glasses and cups. Also available for the holidays are one-of-a-kind pieces expressing the visions of individual artists such as Jessalyn Mailoa, creator of a line of striking glass earrings, and a blown glass “Zanfirico Ballotini Jar,” embellished with a swirly net-like design, by Miguel Alaniz. A “Holy Vase” shows off the glass mastery of Glass Annex head of department Tyler Kimball, and a single flower occupies the center of Robert Flowers’ “Ruby Floral Disk.”
Prices range from $35 to $1,300. Available at Belger Glass Annex, 1219 E. 19th St., and belgerarts.org/glass
Chico Sierra custom shoes and rolling pin artworks
Chico Sierra has exhibited his prints and paintings featuring dense expanses of images and symbols drawn from Mesoamerican iconography at galleries and museums around Kansas City. His aim, the artist says, is “to connect the dots of his cultural history and create new stories based around humanism, class structures and social justice.” Lately, Sierra has been experimenting with using common objects as vehicles for his imagery, including eye-catching custom shoes in vivid colors and carved and painted rolling pins. “The rolling pins were inspired by the cultural imprinting from family and community,” Sierra says. “My mother makes really amazing flour tortillas and I remember her using a rolling pin, a sacred device in my home.”
Prices: Custom shoes, $250; rolling pins, $75. Available through www.chicosierra.comimagesfromtheartist
Amanda Lee Lazorchack hand-crafted brooms
“When we imbue everyday objects with power, we transform the mundane into magic, through the cadence of ritual,” says Kansas City crafts artist Amanda Lee Lazorchack, who brings the soul of a poet to her creation of exquisite, entirely functional, handmade brooms. Her selections range from one-of-a-kind “Walnut House Brooms” with custom wood handles and sweeps dyed with walnut hulls, to a variety of smaller, hand-held brooms, including hand-tied and plaited “hens wing” brooms in multiple colors that are almost too pretty to use. Browsing the artist’s website with its quietly dramatic “Turkey Wing Broom,” aromatic “Lavender Wands” and task-friendly “Mushroom Brushes,” is an aesthetic adventure as satisfying as any gallery visit.
Price range: $6 to $212- plus. Available through the artist’s website, www.pleasesendword.com
Coco Rico hand-painted laser-cut ornaments
Nestled amid sprigs and boughs of greenery, Coco Rico’s laser-cut ornaments, delicately hand-painted with images of animals, insects and birds, will bring gentle joy to any holiday tree or arrangement. Trained as printmaker with a BFA from Purdue University and holding two master’s degrees from the University of Dallas, the Mexican American Kansas City artist says her “stylized way of drawing comes from enjoying the linear quality of children’s coloring books.” Ready to hang from thin, natural cotton twine, each ornament measures 3 1/4” and is painted with acrylic and ink on lightweight wood.
Price $22. Items available via etsy, www.etsy.com/shop/Cocosrico. (A pickup option is available for local KC customers.) For custom order requests contact the artist via Instagram.com/socorroricos or email: socorrorico@yahoo.com
Andrew Erdrich triangular pendant lamps
Just in time for the holidays, Kansas City Art Institute sculpture and art history grad Andrew Erdrich has come up with an elegant line of pendant lamps. The 8 x 8 x 13 1/2” lamps were inspired by his wide exposure to architectural fixtures during his day job as a carpenter and his involvement with such projects as Rye (plaza branch), Earl’s Premier, Fox & Pearl, the new Golden Ox and The Local Pig. Made of painted Baltic birch plywood, screened with Japanese shoji paper and hand-wired from designer components, the lamps are triangular, with each face bearing a geometric pattern derived from a Chinese window lattice design, selected, the artist says, for “its upward movement and visual similarity to art deco designs.”
Price: $350; orders will be delivered in March. To order, contact the artist at andrewerdrich@gmail.com.
Johnson County Developmental Supports holiday cards
Holiday greetings don’t get better than this. Invention and imagination rule at the Johnson County Developmental Supports Emerging Artists Program for adult artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and each year the artists turn their hand to the creation of whimsical holiday cards. Humor is abundant, as are images of animals, Santas and elves, along with all manner of creative takes on traditional holiday motifs. Readers may remember the “Twelve Days of Christmas” package in our 2021 Holiday issue, featuring wildly divergent and entertaining illustrations by JCDS artists of the drummers, turtledoves, hens and other characters in the popular song.
Price: $15 for seven assorted holiday cards. Cards may be purchased during regular studio hours, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday, and any time through the JCDS Emerging Artists Online Store, jcdsemergingartists-com.3dcartstores.com.
Paulina Otero Jewelry
Soft geometries and biomorphic shapes are the hallmarks of Paulina Otero’s jewelry line, including a series of “Link” earrings employing frosted acrylic in soft colors and neutrals, and iridescent “Luna Earrings” inspired by the work of well-known textile artist Jason Pollen. Otero’s Underwater Collection includes her “Kagua” and “Akoya” earrings, striking for their colorful interlocking biomorphic shapes in bright colors. Born in Mexico and currently based in Kansas City, Otero says she has “a major interest in combining industrial and domestic materials such as yarn, felt, wood and plexiglass to inspire a desire to touch,” which can also be seen in her whimsical mobiles and tufted “Mirror” artworks.
Price range: $45 to $74. Available through the artist’s website, www.paulina-otero.com/store
Nelson-Atkins Roasterie coffee and Andre’s chocolate batons
Coffee and chocolate are a match made in epicurean heaven, and you can indulge your gift recipients’ love of both at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Museum Store. Featured are three varieties of chocolate batons inspired by artists in the museum’s collection created for the museum by popular local chocolatier Andre’s. Each sounds better than the next: Caravaggio Dark Chocolate Batons, Monet Raspberry Milk Chocolate Batons, and Van Gogh Lemon Batons, all with complex flavors including citrus, blueberry, caramel and vanilla. Four special blends of coffee with similarly adventurous flavoring notes, created for the museum by the Roasterie, provide the perfect complement. Choose from The Nelson-Atkins blend, Rispal blend, Wilderness blend and Lily blend, all artfully packaged and designed to match up with the batons.
Prices: Batons, $7.95; Coffee, $16.95All items also available from the museum online holiday catalogue, filled with dozens of gift ideas, issuu.com/nelsonatkins/docs/nelson-atkins_gift_guide_2022.
Where to Find Great Artist-Made Gifts
Kansas City Art Institute End-of-Semester Exhibition and Sale
Dec. 2, 5 – 8 p.m.
Dec. 3, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Dec. 4, noon – 5 p.m.
Kansas City Art Institute
www.kcai.edu
(from the artists and Johnson County Developmental Supports)
JCDS Emerging Artists Annual Holiday Sale
Dec. 7, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Johnson County Arts and Heritage Center
8788 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park
Artworks may also be purchased during regular studio hours, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.,
Monday through Friday, and any time through the JCDS Emerging Artists
Online Store, jcdsemergingartists-com.3dcartstores.com
Lawrence Lithography Workshop 2022 Holiday Print Sale
Dec. 2, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Dec. 3, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Sale continues through Dec. 22, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Wednesday – Friday; 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Saturday
The Lawrence Lithography Workshop
2011 Tracy Ave.
www.lawrencelitho.com
KC Clay Guild Holiday Pottery Sale and Studio Tour
Dec. 2, 5 – 9 p.m.
Dec. 3, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Dec. 4, 11 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Various locations
www.kcclayguild.org
Belger Holiday Open House and Studio Sale
Dec. 2, 10 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Dec. 3, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Belger Crane Yard Studios
2011 Tracy Ave.
belgerarts.org/studio-holiday-sale-2022
Irma Starr Holiday Open Studio
Dec. 2, 3 and 4, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
610 W. 51st St.
www.irmastarr.com
Lawrence Art Guild Holiday Art Marker
Dec. 10, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Dec. 11, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Cider Gallery
810 Pennsylvania St., Lawrence
lawrenceartguild.org
