Wolfe Brack, artistic director of InterUrban ArtHouse, beside “Pieces of Us” by Julie Forsyth (mosaic), Nicole Emanuel (portraits) and intern artists Emily Stark, Case Williams, Molly McGlynn and Nina Kulikov, during the recent 12 x 12 Member Show. “Nocturne,” by Hyeyoung Shin, is displayed at top left, and works by other member artists, including a bust by Glenn Lavezzi, appear on the bookshelf.
At Interurban Arthouse, artist director Wolfe Brack welcomes all
Embracing difference to enable harmony is the bedrock principle at InterUrban ArtHouse.
Although only a block from the heart of downtown Overland Park, this non-mainstream yet inviting community arts center is effectively ensconced in the tranquility of its bordering Colonial Village residential neighborhood.
Drive by and you might miss it — a former post office sorting facility reimagined as a nonprofit art haven in 2017. Walk in and you won’t forget it.
If you have yet to make it there, you should, if only to feel the palpable vibe of belonging. Because everyone there — including people of color, the LGBTQ community, women and other overlooked and underserved groups in the traditional art world — is welcome to create and/or appreciate and/or purchase at affordable prices a diverse range of engaging local art.
“We operate under the understanding that there are spaces that are not for everyone and not everyone has space,” says Wolfe Brack, the artistic director and day-to-day heartbeat of InterUrban ArtHouse. “Our ethos is that there is space for everyone. So Black, white, gay, straight, whatever — everybody’s on the wall sharing their story at the same time, instead of having to silo ourselves from each other.”
Observing Brack in his element, you might mistake him for an extraordinarily adept greeter, which, of course, he is. And so much more.
“I’m constantly engaging with different artists and different types of art,” Brack says. “I serve as many types of people as possible and make them feel like they belong. There’s camaraderie and a lot of creative energy exchanged. There’s always learning going on. You can come and do something. And if you’re doing it with heart, if you care, then you’ve got space here. Everybody can find a way to participate.”
ALL FOR ART AND ART FOR ALL
Anyone who wants to make art at InterUrban Arthouse can pay $10 a month to become a member artist, giving them access to two open-studio days a week. There are also 19 private studios that cost occupants in the low hundreds of dollars each month.
Regular exhibitions at InterUrban ArtHouse feature the works of member and studio artists and include a “storytelling night” for creatives who don’t do visual art but want to express what’s inside of them.
“There’s traditional storytelling, poetry, dance, music, theater, all the performance disciplines,” Brack says. “They have ten minutes to tell their own story or a story from their culture. It has been with a saxophone. A harmonica has shown up. Somebody wrote a little bit of theater that talked about her culture and its relationship to the world and how she navigates it.”
Every few months, select artists from InterUrban ArtHouse have individual shows curated by Brack at any of nine branches of the Johnson County Library. Each artist gets a stipend up front, “so they’re guaranteed something,” he says. “If they sell, just like a gallery sale, the ArtHouse takes a 30-percent commission and the artist gets to keep 70 percent.”
Brack also leads curation of InterUrban ArtHouse art displays in several corporate spaces, where the employees are typically tickled and then some. “They’re so genuinely happy and excited when we put artwork in there for the first time,” Brack says. “People need it.”
In addition to offering conventional art classes, InterUrban ArtHouse helps artists garner practical knowledge and opportunities to grow their platform. Pertinent lessons include recordkeeping and bookkeeping, grant writing, portfolio guidance, legal considerations for artists and how to price and market art. Artists can also have their headshots taken and up to five of their artworks shot by a professional photographer to help them get where they want to go as an artist.
“So many artists have moved through our space,” Brack says. “They come through and then they move up and out, onto the next level.”
GREAT UNDERSTANDING
Brack can relate to the artist’s experience of working hard and at times struggling to find their true path, because he has lived it.
“I lived it,” he says, “but I don’t know if I really saw myself changing it.”
Yet changing the way things can be for artists is precisely what Brack is dedicated to at InterUrban ArtHouse. By sharing his nurturing humanity, earned wisdom and good humor with myriad artists from various backgrounds and points of view, all involved can bring out the best in their art and themselves.
“He is even keeled and kind and sweet and loving,” says InterUrban chief executive officer Angi Hejduk. “And he really takes the time when people walk through the door, to see them and hear them, because we have art lovers as well as those creating art, and all get equal time.”
Brack grew up in Kansas City and arrived at his artistic calling in a roundabout way. Graduating from Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, he went on to attend Rockhurst University and later the Kansas City Art Institute. It was around this time that he learned to be a fire-breather and made numerous connections in the local performing artist community, including co-founding the performance art group GLOW, for which he adorned the bodies of lithe dancers in black-light paint.
Essentially a self-taught artist, Brack continued to develop his love of drawing and sculpting, typically in extraordinary miniature. His talent caught the attention of textile artist Sherry Whetstone when both worked as cashiers at Barnes & Noble bookstore on the Country Club Plaza, and they quickly became friends.
“I can remember him making these little things out of polymer clay,” Whetstone says. “And I asked him if he could make a Smurf, because my son loved Smurfs at the time. And he said, ‘Yeah,’ and he did it. And I thought, if he can make a Smurf, he can make anything.
“So I said, ‘I love African masks. Can you make some African masks for me?’ And he said, ‘Sure, do you have a book that I can reference?’ I gave him a book, and, to this day, I still have some of those tiny original masks that he made. I used some of them in my art, which I gave him credit for, and some of them I just kept. I’ll never get rid of them, because they’re special to me.”
Today, Whetstone is a member artist and textile art teacher at InterUrban ArtHouse. Brack still calls her his mentor.
“I believed in him,” Whetstone says. “I saw that he had something. And anything I asked him to do, he did it. He didn’t back down from a challenge.
“The InterUrban ArtHouse should be feeling very, very blessed to have Wolfe Brack on their staff. I am so proud of him. I am not surprised, because he has superior intelligence. He has a great understanding of art. He gets it. He understands that people create in different mediums with different ways of thinking and it’s still art. He doesn’t put anybody in a box. His mind and heart and eyes are open to all art and that’s what you need.”
A PERFECT FIT
While Brack was still working at Barnes & Noble, local community artist Nicole Emanuel, the eventual founder of InterUrban ArtHouse, telephoned the bookstore.
“I answered the phone when she called,” Brack recalls. “She said, ‘Hey, I’m looking for books on circus culture, circus motifs, circus performers, and I’m trying to find out if there are any circus performers in town.’ And I said, ‘I am one. What do you want to know?’”
Brack wound up successfully booking a panoply of circus-style performers, including himself as a fire-breather and a ringmaster, for an elaborate art event produced by Emanuel in the Kansas City Crossroads.
Years passed. Then, after stints in retail clothing, culinary school and working as a chef, Brack got another call from Emanuel, who told him that she was now heading a young but growing arts organization and needed help moving forward.
“She said, ‘Would you come interview?’” Brack recalls. “I said, ‘Where is it?’ She said, ‘Overland Park.’ And I was like, ‘Am I allowed there?’ Because I’d been there maybe twice to go to Whole Foods and the like.”
Emanuel convinced Brack to put himself out there and he was hired at InterUrban ArtHouse, which at the time was headquartered in an old church basement across the street from its current location.
“I realized we were taking off,” Emanuel recalls, “and we needed somebody to curate, we needed somebody who had grown up in the area, we needed somebody who was in touch with communities across the board, and my first and favorite choice was Wolfe. I completely trusted him, because he’s exactly the kind of artist that the InterUrban focuses on, which is folks that are not necessarily in the mainstream that need affordable space and camaraderie and understanding.
“I also wanted to bring someone on board that I did not have to teach the basic fundamental concepts of what InterUrban needed to achieve, and Wolfe has that innately. He’s Black. He’s gay. He’s local. He’s a creative himself, but he’s also a producer for others. So he’s a perfect fit in my mind. Also he knows everybody and he’s universally liked. Plus he’s hilarious and completely goofy. The two of us are like children together.”
SMALL THINGS, BIG WONDERS
Brack’s personal art practice exudes its own childlike wonder, but it’s hardly immature. In his office hang some of his favorite creations, such as one-third of a triptych titled, “Gross Mismanagement of the Urban Planning Department,” which wryly satirizes urban sprawl with layer upon layer of meticulously detailed structures that combine to form a visual calamity both unsettling and playfully intriguing.
“I call it my ‘Sprawl Series,’” Brack says. “I love little buildings. I love architecture. It’s like, what am I looking at? And then you look closely and you see.”
Then there’s what Brack calls his “Quirks,” ultra-tiny faces meant to represent quirks of humanity, rendered in the same polymer clay he began creating with as a kid.
“I love small things,” he says. “I’ve always loved small things. I am a small thing.”
Small or not, Brack is a force, whether working on behalf of the cavalcade of different artists at InterUrban ArtHouse or the art that he puts his name on.
“My personal practice is ultimately the career that I want to see me through to the end of my days,” Brack says. “I want to be able to make a living from it. But that means I have to find time to do it, while at the same time supporting other artists and showing other people’s work, because I get excited showing other people’s work.
“I just keep having all these different experiences. We’ll see where it takes me.”
And where it takes InterUrban ArtHouse.
Learn more at www.interurbanarthouse.org.
Photos by Jim Barcus
