J.T. Daniels and John Raux in Daniels’ studio at Studios Inc. (from the artist)
A blank wall does not fill on its own. An empty, white-walled gallery invites, beckons, welcomes. And like merging rivers, the forces that arrive not only transform the empty space, but also are themselves transformed in the act of coming together.
At this point in their friendship, John Raux and J.T. Daniels have stood side-by-side on scaffolding and ladders for hundreds of hours, painting murals all over Kansas City, facing the same blank walls of buildings that gradually fill by the movements and gestures of their spray cans. Their friendship soon moved from ladders to sitting down for coffee on a regular basis, finding commonalities in their lives and work, commonalities that would eventually generate the idea for a combined exhibition opening in August at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center.
Both artists are accustomed to painting large, whether it is in murals on buildings or in their studio practices. But what’s on their minds in the weeks leading up to their show is not the size of the Leedy-Voulkos walls that they need to fill. What’s on their minds right now is the art that emerges from their gestures and movements when they are freed from the commercial and community concerns that inform their public murals, and instead focus on what each of them needs to say in this particular moment.
Both artists share an uneasiness in their sense of belonging. J.T. is biracial, with a white mother from Iowa and a Black father from Kansas City. John was born in Senegal and spoke French until he moved with his mother to Kansas City when he was 5. Both artists spent many years in the church as believers yet now no longer connect with the forms their faith took in the context of orthodox Christian belief. And it’s in these connections of their internal dissonance and uneasiness that they’ve found some common language to explore new directions in their artwork.
Their painting process even starts in a similar place, both of them beginning with sweeping gestures and organic movements, whether it is in a sketchbook or on a large canvas. But whereas J.T. quickly moves from big gestures toward filling in the spaces with human faces and figures, John moves toward abstraction through sinewy lines and shifting shapes.
“Ten years ago I made a very deliberate choice to do work that paid,” said J.T., “and murals for hire was the way to make a living, to get myself and family out of poverty.”
In his own mural work as well as in his collaborations with Sike Styles, J.T.’s murals throughout the city are immediately recognizable for their bright colors and their unique style of diverse figures and images articulating the shared identity of specific neighborhoods and community in Kansas City.
“In mural work I’m hired to show the faces of that community,” he said, “so I become like a conductor of diverse stories.”
But a change came last year when he began a residency at Studios Inc., offering the chance to make another shift, away from the forms of his work that he feels have become commercialized and predictable — valuable as it had been to him at the time — and instead to find his own voice, not just the voice he was hired to portray in a mural. This is an uncomfortable place for J.T., who shies away from the attention focusing on him. However, it’s been a game changer. “This has been a process of realizing what I want to paint.”
A similar situation prompted John Raux’s shift last year when he moved into a new studio space at Bad Seed, the former farmer’s market at 19th and McGee. John is no stranger to the Crossroads and Kansas City’s arts community. He was an early collaborator for the Middle of the Map Fest, organizer of the festival’s Forum, artist-in-residence at BNIM, a studio resident at The Drugstore, and more. John has traveled the world and takes his inspiration from his experiences in cross-cultural exchange. But in the wake of COVID-19, John faced a series of medical challenges as well as changes to his work and living situations that made it difficult to find the time, space and energy for painting.
Then in 2023 he found himself in a new studio at Bad Seed, with blank walls large enough for him to imagine new possibilities as the Leedy-Voulkos show approached. He gathered his painting supplies but also relocated his flatfiles and previous work that had been scattered in different storage spaces throughout the city, now all in one place for him to recollect and consider all that has brought him to this moment. He has spent this time in the studio not only in conversation with J.T. over what their work together might become, but also in conversation with himself — or rather, the many forms his self has taken over the years which he was now poring over in his flat files and boxes of old journals and photos.
“The chaos is absolutely part of my process,” says John. “It always has been, and I actually embrace and thrive in the messiness of it.”
Yet through his conversations with J.T. and the call for work that will fill such large, empty spaces, how the chaos in this moment gets articulated is a fresh challenge. How do John’s abstractions interact with J.T.’s figures?
As for J.T., in the current painting he’s working on in his studio and in other new work, the faces no longer have to resemble community members for a mural. Rather, these new faces became layers of one person’s identity and interior life, swirling and swimming and layering upon one another. Rather than looking to the community for inspiration, the approaching show has pushed J.T. inward to consider the various internal voices that have accumulated over his lifetime, and how he might turn his gestures and movements on the canvas into something that reveals this internal cacophony of voices in a new way.
“This show is about my own story, my own internal work,” he says, “where each face does not need to represent a person, but might simply be a shape, or a voice, or they might just be a feeling or how a space gets filled.”
The Raux and Daniels exhibit runs at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, 2012 Baltimore Ave., from Aug. 2 through Oct. 25. For more information, 816.474.1919 or www.leedy-voulkos.com.
