Time for weekly calendar picks from KC Studio editor, Alice Thorson. This Friday is the opening of a mixed-media ceramics show at the Kemper, the grand opening of studios.gallery at Studios, Inc., and Alicia Olatuja at the Folly. Spire Chamber Ensemble will perform Duruflé’s Requiem Friday through Sunday, and Kansas City Wind Symphony will perform at Village Presbyterian Sunday night. For more ideas this weekend, check out Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events. We hope to see you out!
A Whisper of Where It Came From
March 11 – July 24
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
A Whisper of Where It Came From highlights works by six artists who integrate ceramics into their broader mixed-media art practices including painting, printmaking, sculpture, collage, and installation. Artists Huma Bhabha, Nicole Cherubini, Mark Cooper, Jiha Moon, Sterling Ruby, and Arlene Shechet each activate the tactility of clay by creating surfaces that capture the gesture of the artist’s hand. The works of art, created during the past decade, include references to figuration, abstraction, landscape, and still life traditions.
Arlene Shechet’s gestural sculptures embody notions of improvisation in the playfulness of shapes and colors she employs, and become a record of the artist’s hand through the built layers and impressions formed in the clay. Giving equal focus to form and duration in her sculpture, Shechet’s practice is akin to the Buddhist philosophy of considering the whole of the work. Mark Cooper’s mixed-media installations feature organically shaped structures, lotus flower–like ceramic vessels and vibrantly colored forms displaying stylistic influences from Asian art and culture. Korean-born Jiha Moon draws attention to complex cultural iconography by blending references such as computer emoticons, lotus blossoms, Hopi Kachina figures, and talisman-like works inspired by Korean norigae in her paintings and sculptural ceramic objects and installations.
Artist Huma Bhabha imaginatively combines raw and industrial materials such as clay, plexiglass, wood, wire, and Styrofoam to create forms whose gestures convincingly mimic the human body. Bhabha’s crude gestural portraits drawn and collaged onto photographs of abstracted earth textures, rubble, and landscapes, serve as a setting for her sculptural works and provide imagery that speaks to the artist’s inspiration from the landscape in and around her birthplace of Karachi, Pakistan. Sterling Ruby’s large-scale ceramic basins are loaded with an array of ceramic objects made to resemble tools, rocks, animal tusks, and shards of rusted metal. Gathered inside the pinched, poked, and prodded vessel’s interior and splashed with glazes in an earthy palette, Ruby’s collection of disparate objects appears both fossilized and fresh. In her practice, Nicole Cherubini uses both ceramic and unfired clay, finished and working material, to approach historical and contemporary motifs of vessels and tiles. Together, artist’s works in A Whisper of Where It Came From speak to the expanded field of contemporary ceramics.
Grand Opening @ Studios Inc.
March 11 @ 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Studios Inc
The Studios Inc is excited to announce its newest program and exhibition space, studios.gallery. The Grand Opening will be Friday, March 11th from 5 to 9 pm at Studios Inc, 1708 Campbell, Kansas City MO 64108. It will be an incredible event showcasing an array of the best makers in KC including premier artists, beer, music and food!!!
Each year that an artist is in residence, they donate a piece of their artwork to the Studios Inc Collection. This growing collection of work from Kansas City’s most prominent artists has inspired Studios Inc to create studios.gallery.
studios.gallery will exhibit this impressive and diverse collection of artworks by past and current resident artists to the public through purchase, a lending program and an additional exhibition space. The Art Lending Program will increase exposure for the artists, and Studios Inc will work hard to ensure that the artists’ work garners the acclaim that is deserved. All of the artwork that is purchased or leased from studios.gallery is priced at a fair market value, and one hundred percent of the proceeds will go directly into the sustainability of the overall organization, as well as other community-based programs.
Come experience the grand opening of studios.gallery! Learn more about the exciting new programs at Studios Inc, and cap the night off with craft beer and rock n roll provided by Torn Label Brewing Company and Cosmic Cowboy Studio.
The Folly Theater Spotlight Artist: Alicia Olatuja
March 11 @ 8:00 pm | $20 – $50
Folly Theater
This years “Spotlight Artist”, Alicia Olatuja , performs with her quintet on Friday, March 11th. Although still making a name for herself, Alicia Olatuja has performed at the 2013 Presidential Inauguration, and with acclaimed bassist Christian McBride. With her strong, lustrous tone, the native of St. Louis has a voice that has been described as “breathtaking” by those who have heard her perform. This will be her first performance in Kansas City.
Music to Die For: Durufle Requiem
March 11 @ 7:30 pm | $25
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
March 12 @ 7:30 pm | $25
Community of Christ Temple
March 13 @ 5:00 pm | $25
Grace Cathedral
Acclaimed organist Jan Kraybill joins the Spire Chamber Ensemble in the virtuosic setting of the beloved Requiem by Maurice Duruflé. One of the greatest choral works of the 20th century, Duruflé’s setting is both gentle and disturbing, passionate and becalmed – a beautiful and ultimately uplifting response to the text of the Requiem Mass. Additionally, we will give the world premiere of a new work by Zachary Wadsworth and honor great modern day choral composers who are no longer with us as we perform Sir John Tavener’s Song for Athene (made famous by its performance at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales) and Stephen Paulus’ The Road Home. Join us as we remember our loved ones through songs of transcendence, inspiration and uplifting beauty.
“A Celebration of Music and Art”
March 13 @ 7:00 pm
Village Presbyterian Church
The Kansas City Wind Symphony continues its 18th season, “Nights of Dreams, Imagination and Magic” with a free concert at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 13, in the Village Church Sanctuary. Entitled “From Russia with Love,” the program features guest pianist Kairy Koshoeva performing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The second part of the program features Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with an art exhibit and projected artworks by Village Church artists.
While completing her doctorate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kairy Koshoeva appeared as soloist in numerous venues in the Kansas City area, including Village Church. She currently teaches at the New School for Music Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Koshoeva has won awards around the globe including the top prize at the International Piano Competition in Vicenza, Italy, and was a Gold Medal winner of the Rachmaninoff Award in Moscow, Russia.
