KC Studio editor Alice Thorson has compiled her calendar picks for this Labor Day weekend. For more ideas, visit Kansas City’s most comprehehnsive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events. We hope to see you out!
First Friday Art Openings the the Crossroads (times vary)
MARGARET EVANGELINE | IN BEAUTY THERE IS GUILT
September 1 – October 29
Weinberger Fine Art
Weinberger Fine Art is excited to announce the upcoming exhibition, MARGARET EVANGELINE | IN BEAUTY THERE IS GUILT. Join the artist at Weinberger Fine Art for a VIP cocktail reception and book signing on Thursday, September 1 from 5-8pm. The free event will be catered with food inspired by the artist with a performance by cellist David Downing.
This exhibition highlights new, large-scale abstract paintings recently curated from Margaret Evangeline’s New York City studio. The artist uses “mending gestures” while painting with crystallina – a pigment that sparkles – suggesting a preciousness and references kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken objects with gold. The paintings in this exhibition convey a practice of meditation in both their creation and in perspective.
Margaret Evangeline received her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 1978 and has an impressive resume; she has been consistently featured in solo exhibitions as well as creating site-specific installations in addition to winning numerous awards and residencies including the New York Foundation the for Arts Painting Fellowship, a grant recipient for the Pollock-Krasner Foundation of New York, and as an Art Omi Artist Residency Board Member and former resident. Her body of work ranges from photography, sculpture, performance, video, and painting.
Charlotte Street Foundation 2016 Visual Artist Awards Exhibition
September 2, 2016 – January 17, 2017 | Free
Kemper at the Crossroads
Opening Friday, September 2nd, 5:00-9:00PM at Kemper at the Crossroads, the Charlotte Street 2016 Visual Artist Awards exhibition will feature Charlotte Street’s 2016 Visual Artist Awards Fellows: Shawn Bitters, Madeline Gallucci, and Rodolfo Marron III. All three artists will be in attendance at the opening reception. The exhibition is on view from September 2, 2016 to January 7, 2017. Admission to the exhibition and accompanying programming is free and open to the public.
The exhibition is curated by Erin Dziedzic—Director of Curatorial Affairs at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. A full-color exhibition brochure with an essay by Annie Raab will be published in conjunction with the exhibition. Engaging programming also accompanies the exhibition, including presentations by the Visual Arts Fellows and performances by the 2016 Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards Fellows, J. Ashley Miller and Eddie Moore with Eddie Moore & The Outer Circle.
The 2016 Charlotte Street Awards Fellows were selected through competitive processes, which began with open calls for applications from artists based in the five-county Kansas City Metro Area. The selection process culminated with in-person studio visits with 10 finalists. The 2016 Charlotte Street Visual Award Panelists included, Erin Dziedzic, Curator + Head of Adult Programs at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Nicole Caruth, Director, Pedagogy + Public Practice at The Union for Contemporary Art; James McAnally, Executive Editor and Co-Founder, Temporary Art Review and Founder, Co-Director, Curator, The Luminary; Rita Gonzalez, Curator and Acting Department Head Contemporary Art Department at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Free Exhibition-related Programs
Exhibition Opening Reception
September 2, 2016 5-9:00PM
Kemper at the Crossroads
FREE
Back Where They Came From
September 2 – October 22 | Free
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art
The exhibition Back Where They Came From, September 2 – October 22, 2016, will focus attention on the depth and diversity of contemporary Native American artists and the works of art they create. Co-curated by gallery director, Sherry Leedy, and artist, Tom Jones (Ho Chunk) this exhibition will mark the gallery’s 32nd year and continues our commitment to exceptional artists working across media and boundaries.
The 18 artists included in the exhibition embrace a diversity of themes ranging from the political to the personal. The heritage of cultural influence is seen from the vantage point of today, reinforced by the past, reinterpreted and reinvented through a wide range of materials including photography, lithography, silverwork, beadwork, birch bark constructions, drawing and collage. The exhibition, Back Where They Came From will reflect the arc of experience between makers, materials, concept and tradition as Native American art continues to shift, evolve and transform into a new unexpected aesthetic, informed by the past, influenced by the present and moving toward the future..
The Art of War
September 2 – September 16
Todd Weiner Gallery
Opening Reception: First Friday, September 2, 2016
5:00pm – 10:00pm
Pieces curated from the collection of the US Army Command and General Staff College Art and Gift Collection.
Navah
September 2 – October 1
The Late Show Gallery
The Late Show gallery is pleased to announce Navah an exhibition featuring Colby K Smith, on view from 9.02.16-10.01.16 with an opening reception Friday, 9.02.16 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM.
As Smith, a resident artist of Studios Inc, describes the process and inspiration for his work, his focus revolves around ideas of gesture, order, the unexpectedly beautiful, and communicating the intangible.
“Navah is about painting, yet it includes a range of materials that extend beyond the traditional paint medium to include plaster and industrial materials. I love the process that exists through the manipulation of their endless combinations. Through this process, I establish marks that become as perfect as a gesture — those simple, quick moments informed by a lifelong pursuit. Through making this work, I strive to understand the nature of order, as I tend to find it lacking in my everyday life. I strive to make beautiful paintings composed of materials that are not independently considered beautiful.”
SHAMANS, MONKS, BUDDHAS, AND BEASTS
August 5 – September 30
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art from the Collection of Charles Novak
Charles Novak is a scholar of Himalayan art who has lived periodically in Nepal and the Himalayas since the 1970s. A graduate of Naropa University and a former Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal, he has exhibited and lectured on artwork from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and Thailand, since the 1970s.
The pieces in this exhibit are from his personal collection and are offered for sale. They include Tsaklis (Tibetan and Himalayan ritual miniature paintings), Tanka paintings, carved wooden animal and figural masks, and miniature lost-wax bronze figures of shamans, villagers and animals from Himalayan villages.
All works are from the 19th – 20th centuries.
The exhibition is organized by Elisabeth Kirsch.
First Friday’s 18th and Vine Jazz District
September 2 @ 4:00 am – 9:00 pm
American Jazz Museum
September First Friday: Luck of the Irish
September 2 @ 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm | Free
Mid-America Arts Alliance
The Young Folk of Ireland and The Killdares of Dallas, Texas,will play an outdoor show, and a preview of A Photo Album of Ireland will be on view in the gallery from 6–8:00 p.m. Both bands have their own spin on Irish music. All activities are free and open to the public.
The Young Folk are in back Kansas City from Ireland (after a successful visit for M-AAA’s Irish Music Showcase at the Folk Alliance Festival in February), and will start the night of free music at 6:30 p.m. They have been called “one of the most promising young bands to come out of Ireland in several decades.” The Killdares come to us from Dallas, as part of their farewell tour after 20 years together playing Celtic-rock fusion. Their set begins at 8:00 p.m.
A Photo Album of Ireland highlights the intimate works of amateur photographers in Ireland, from the advent of photography itself. It emerges from an ongoing archive, collected by the Gallery of Photography, Dublin. From the earliest photographs taken in the 1850s to the advent of the digital era in the early 1990s, these images reveal details about how people lived, worked, and gathered that official historical records may have overlooked.
6:00–8:00 p.m. A Photo Album of Ireland, on view in the Culture Lab
6:30 p.m. The Young Folk begin their set in the outdoor space
8:00 p.m. The Killdares begin their set in the outdoor space
Patterns-Pairings-Plaids
September 3 – October 1
Patterns-Pairings-Plaids
“Patterns-Pairings-Plaids”, new paintings by Emily Sall will be on exhibit at Main Street Gallery September 3-October 1. There will be an opening reception for the artist Saturday, September 3rd, 5-8 pm.
KANSAS CITY SYMPYHONY’S POPS in the PARK
September 5 @ 7:00 pm | Free
Theatre in the Park
Be here for the debut of the Kansas City Symphony’s new Assistant Conductor Jason Seber as he leads this FREE Labor Day concert program filled with familiar classics and fun movie music. Bring your family and friends, plus blankets, lawn chairs and a picnic dinner. The parking lot opens at 4:30 p.m. Gates and the Symphony’s Bush and Jamie Helzberg Instrument Petting Zoo open at 5 p.m. Pre-concert entertainment provided by the Youth Symphony of Kansas City begins at 6 p.m. . Media support from 99.7 The Point and 106.5 The Wolf.
