William Kay: Light, Color, and Movement

October 23rd – November 14th

Light, Color, and Movement is a luminous and emotionally charged exhibition by Kansas City artist William Kay. Through vibrant abstraction and experimental technique, Kay invites viewers into a world where music, nature, and literature converge in radiant harmony. His work embraces abstraction and technology, using color, light, and layered compositions to evoke both ethereal beauty and analytical precision.

After earning an MBA from the University of Missouri, he joined an apparel manufacturing business, where design became a fusion of creativity and commerce. In the 1970s, his passion for photography led him to the Kansas City Art Institute, where he studied experimental techniques. During this time, he co-founded the Kansas City Artists Coalition, later serving as its President.  His dual life—apparel designer by day, artist by night—reflects a lifelong devotion to the expressive power of light, color, and movement.

“I want viewers to feel the pulse of color and the rhythm of light,” says Kay. “Each piece is a conversation between emotion and abstraction—an invitation to pause, reflect, and feel.”

Leo Esquivel: Spirit in the Fire

Leo Esquivel: Spirit in the Fire

September 4th – October 13th

Leo Esquivel’s Spirit in the Fire exhibition showcases his latest explorations in sculpture, digital art, and Mardi Gras ephemera, inviting viewers into a vibrant world of cultural symbolism and material experimentation. Esquivel’s works push the boundaries of common construction materials, transforming these common materials into dreamlike, fantastical entities that blur the line between the natural and the imagined.

The exhibition also celebrates Esquivel’s deep connection to Kansas City’s Mardi Gras traditions, featuring an array of Krewe artifacts. Along with these physical works are a series of digitally rendered characters—born from his mask-making practice.

Leo Esquivel was born and raised in Houston, Texas. He earned his BFA in Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1995 and was a co-curator of the Dirt Gallery in the late 1990s. In 2003, he received the prestigious Charlotte Street Foundation Award. For the past two decades, Esquivel has built a career as a professional decorative painter based in Kansas City, all the while continuing to expand his artistic vision.

 

2025 Annual Student Art Exhibition

2025 Student Art Exhibition

April 24th – May 9th

Opening Reception, Thursday April 24th 5-7pm

Awards presented at 6pm

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce the 2025 Annual Student Art Exhibition. It features the work of 32 undergraduate artists. All currently enrolled students at UMKC were eligible to submit work across a variety of media, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and graphic design.

This year’s jurist is Kim Klein-a notable figure in the Kansas City art scene for the past 10 years.  An avid collector of contemporary arts, she also works as an art consultant and designer.  With a background in art direction and television production; she’s managed the art departments of numerous newspapers & world-wide public relations firms, owned her own graphic design company, and interviewed many notable figures.

Participating Artists: Anaiah Williams, Ashley Appleberry, Charles Marcelo Lampe, Clay Van Walleghem, Dallas Hall, Da’Mya Thomas, Danielle Hughes, Eve Herr, George Vegeta Mendez, Harryson Salcedo, Ian Sprick, Isabel Harryman, Joeley Poarch, Juan Medrano, Julio Villarreal, Katarina Hill, Katie Valdovinos, Kenzie Hunt, Mackenzie Klaus, Madison Williams, Mai Duong, Maria Baez-Cupul, Maria Bisby, Mary Angotti, Melissa Murphey, Samantha Carr, Seb Skaggs, Taylor Cook, Thessa Ryan, Valentina Jimenez, Violet Hernandez, and Yasmin Mohamed.    

A Reality & Ready To Transmit

Student Special Projects Exhibitions

Dec. 5th – Dec. 13th

Opening Reception, Thursday Dec. 5th 5-7pm

The UMKC Gallery of Art is proud to present A Reality and Ready to Transmit, an exhibition of new work by our talented artists in the Media, Art, and Design Department for the upcoming Student Special Projects Exhibition. This showcase features the creative achievements of UMKC Studio Art students under the guidance of Barry Anderson and Elijah Gowin. This exhibition highlights a diverse range of artistic practices from digital renderings to handmade books. Each artwork is a unique expression, reflecting the individuality, creativity, and personal perspectives of each artist as they interpret the world around them and explore their personal voice.   A Reality: This exhibition explores the multifaceted concept of “the real.” Some artists draw inspiration from the natural world and its inhabitants, while others look inward using deep emotions to reflect internal truths. Still others venture into alternate realms, imagining entirely new worlds. The exhibition brings together diverse artistic perspectives, with works in painting, sculpture, assemblage, video, and augmented reality that examines, questions, and challenges our understanding of existence. Each piece offers a unique interpretation, reflecting each artist’s distinct worldview and their ongoing search for meaning in an ever-changing world.   Ready to Transmit: As we near the end of 2024, feelings of flux and instability permeate daily life, making the search for personal grounding and the expression of one’s voice a crucial act of choice and control, with the hope for connection. This collection of hand-made books created by students features individual explorations of change, personal identity, and the search for one’s voice. These handmade creations stand alone as intimate statements surrounding choice, control, and hope. The works on display showcase a variety of materials, binding techniques, and printing methods ranging from handmade to machine-printed technologies. Many of the books invite the viewer into tactile, visual experiences, offering opportunities for interaction and engagement.

I Made This for You and Me

Exhibition images

I Made This for You and Me,

Hadley Clark

September 5 – November 15th Opening Reception: Thursday,September 12th, 5-7PM

Memory Circle Workshop: Saturday, October 12th, 12-3pm

Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, level 6

UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to present, I Made This for You and Me an installation of sculptural garments from the studio of artist, educator and designer Hadley Clark.  This exhibition captures the artist as she eschews garments’ utility on the body in favor of the personal and spiritual signifiers they carry on the wall. The exhibition is also reflective of the artist’s negotiation of her own place within the fashion industry; an industry for which she was educated, trained, pursued, and began to pull away from after years of struggle coupled with a broadening understanding of the industry’s socioeconomic and ecological impacts worldwide. I Made This for You and Me marks the first solo exhibition of Clark’s sculptural garments which include jackets trailing their own scrap, hand-me-down shorts as hung curtains, a set of coats pulling on either end of their shared yardage; each with colors and surfaces collaged and uneven, like a feeling as it passes. The exhibition captures the artist as she ventures outward from the garment-forward practice she once pursued and draws on the activities of her home life that inspired this new body of work. Says Clark of her home-as-studio “it is an ever-expanding circuit, traveling from my sewing table to my home closet, from scraps to the backyard compost or maybe back to the studio, to garden beds and then to kitchen stovetop, from the changing of the seasons, and then back again, and maybe a little wider next time. “. Functionally, this cycle serves as a belief system underpinning her practice and results in work that is created slowly and humbly using plant-dyed, found, and donated textiles. Incorporating discarded cuts from the floor of Clark’s studio, the work leaves space for consideration of the emotional and psychological content embedded in the fabric we wear. This in turn memorializes the garments in the life of its wearer and illuminates the connections between materials and our personal experiences.  The artist will host a mending workshop at the gallery during the exhibition that will include technical hand sewing demonstrations as well as a space to intimately connect participants and their garments through the act of stitching. Memory Circle Workshop will take place on Saturday, October 12th, from 12-3pm. Hadley Clark received her BFA from University of Kansas in 2001 as well as high-end fashion design and garment construction from the The New School | Parsons Paris in 2010. Clark maintains a fine art studio practice as well as an eponymous fashion label. In addition to her independent studio work, Clark leads regular community-based workshops relating to her own studio interests on subjects as varied as sewing basics, methods of mending, 3-Dimensional construction, and collaging with reused textiles. Clark is currently a resident at Studios Inc, in Kansas City.  

2024 Annual Student Art Exhibition

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2024 UMKC Annual Student Art Exhibition

April 25 – May 10

Opening Reception: Thursday April 25, 5-7PM

Awards presented at 6pm

Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, level 6

 

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce the 2024 UMKC Annual Student Art Exhibition. The exhibition features the work of 44 students in a wide variety of media including drawing, painting, photography, video-animation, printmaking, bookbinding, graphic design, and mixed-media. The opening reception will be Thursday, April 25th, 5 -7 p.m. with Scholarships and Awards presented at 6 p.m.

Serving as the exhibition juror this year is curator and gallery owner Robert Gann. Gann is the proprietor and executive curator of Habitat Contemporary Gallery, a commercial art space located in the heart of the KC Crossroads Art district.  His gallery is known as an exhibition space for the new cultural vanguard, featuring both emerging and mid-career artists. Gann has held many positions in the arts community including associate director at Studios Inc, purchasing consultant, international art fair affiliate, lead archivist at D2 Research, freelance art journalist and Programs Director at KCAC.   Gann is also an Honors Graduate from UMKC, in the field of Art History and Museum Studies, he combines his educational and practical experience in redefining the cultural environment of Kansas City.

Participating Artists: Abby Guzman, Alex Lopez, Amy Hurley, Anaiah Williams, Angela Vetaw-Brinkley, Anh Bui, Ashley Appleberry, Ashley Davis,             Ben Lewis, Chanah Brown, Charles Marcelo Lampe, Da’Mya Thomas, Do Thi Truc Quynh, Ella Foster, Emerald Westley, Emily Binnicker, Eric Quinones,         Estrella Hernandez, Gabrielle Depew, George Vegeta Mendez, Grace Miller, Hugo Juarez-Avalos, Jacob Reeves, Josie Newman, Juan Medrano,             Karine Robinson, Katarina Hill, Kate Valdovinos, Kiersten Grobe, Lewa French, Lizneth Alvarez, Logan Miriani, Mackenzie Klaus, Maggie Schoemehl,             Maria Baez-Cupul, Megan Mozingo, Novalee Rivera,  Octavio Galicia, Raya Olivia Gentry, Rebecca Hayes, Simone J.G., Mai Duong, Zarifa Imanli,               Leigh Woody.        

Zine Archive

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still, anon / Headjobs vol. 01, Monty Protest / toward the queerest insurrection, anon / The Post Human Dada Guide, anon / Vonkoma, Cheeks Studio.

 

a Midwest Zine Archive, the Exhibition

February 15 – March 21

Closing reception on March 21, 5pm-7pm

 

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to present a Midwest Zine Archive (MZA), the Exhibition, celebrating zines and their middle-American makers. The interstate collection curated by Zach Frazier (they/he) of Astringent Press and UMKC Department of Media, Art and Design, will be on display for public viewing beginning, February 15, until the show’s closing reception on March 21, 2024.

In conjunction with the display of the inaugural batch of zines to MZA, community programming, generative workshops, and periodic installations featuring the works of various co-curators, and more, will take place in the UMKC Gallery of Art — all in dedication to the Midwestern zine.

At the close of this exhibition, twelve identical archival boxes will be packed for delivery to their respective homes across the Midwest. The archive will also be accessible to a broader public in digital video at the close of the exhibition. Special thanks to the founding steward institutions of this MZA, including — Charlotte Street Foundation (MO), the Emily Taylor Center for Women and Gender Equity (KS), Public Space One (IA), Late Night Copies (MN), and The Bindery (WI).

For more information please contact the UMKC Gallery of Art.

 

Spring 2024 Gallery Hours – Monday 9am -5 pm | Tuesday 9am-5pm | Wednesday 9am-5pm | Thursday 9am-5pm | Friday 12-5pm

 

84/61 : Women’s Work

84:61 website

Artwork courtesy of the artist, Michele Pred                                

84/61: Women’s Work

October 12th – December 15th  

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 12th, 5-7 PM

In 2022, white women working full time earned 84 cents and Hispanic women earned 61 cents for every dollar earned by white men.* 

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to present 84/61: Women’s Work. Curated by UMKC graduate students, Deborah Baxter and Silvia Arellano Fernandez, the exhibition features artwork by fourteen locally and nationally recognized artists: Autumn Breon, Stasi Bobo-Ligon, Mona Cliff, Rachel Ann Connell, Manuela Viera Gallo, Jay Lynn Gomez, Michelle Hartney, Linda Jurkiewicz, Holly Ballard Martz, Nancy Morrison, Michele Pred, Valentina Trinidade Soria, Robin van Hoozer, Vanessa Viruet, and Ellen Weitkamp.

The exhibition includes painting, sculpture, collage, textiles, and video works. Themes include explicit political calls for equal pay and reproductive freedom; domestic labor, care work, and low-wage labor performed disproportionately by women of color and immigrants; family and cultural histories of women’s labor and activism; and interrogations of power systems and the American Dream.

The exhibition and related programming (to be announced) aim to prompt discussions about how art can promote solidarity and sorority among working-class women, students, and artists. Join us for our opening reception, Thursday, October 12th from 5-7 P.M. to participate in these important conversations.

*wage statistics from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research 

Fall 2023 Gallery Hours:
Monday 12-5 pm | Tuesday 10am-5pm | Wednesday 3-5pm | Thursday 10am-5pm | Friday 1-5pm

From the Canoe: A Missouri River Adventure

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Steve Snell

From the Canoe: A Missouri River Adventure

September 5th – 29th

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 7, 5-7 PM

Artist Lecture: Thursday, September 28, 12:30-1:30 PM

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce a new exhibition by artist and professor Steve Snell. From the Canoe: A Missouri River Adventure is a video and painting exhibition exploring the confluence of art, adventure, and life along the Missouri River told through the act of painting, storytelling, and paddling all 2,341 miles of it, from Three Forks, Montana to St. Louis, Missouri.

The exhibition consists of 44 paintings, a video installation from the bow of the canoe, and a newly created video series titled, Adventure Art on the Mighty Mo’. Each episode in the series takes place at a different site, in which a watercolor painting is created. Painting becomes the vessel through which larger questions are asked, observations made, and river stories are told. The exhibition becomes an updated portrait of the river, challenging some of the stereotypes associated with it, and inspiring broader public engagement and appreciation for our local water resources.

Steve Snell is inspired by the mythology of American history and the Western landscape and how it materializesin popular culture. He explores, critiques, and celebrates this heroic, constructed, and complicatednarrative through paintings, videos, and wilderness adventures. With experiences ranging from pushing a Conestoga-like wagon across fifty-five miles of frozen Nebraska farm roads (previously the Oregon Trail) to paddling and painting the entire Missouri River in a canoe, Snell seeks connection with the present moment through a reinterpretation of past stories and legends.

This project is generously funded by Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. It is also supported in part by the Kansas City Art Institute.

 

2023 Student Exhibition

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2023 UMKC Student Art Exhibition

April 27 – May 12

Opening Reception: Thursday April 27, 5-7PM

Awards presented at 6pm

 Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, level 6

Participating Artists: Lizbeth Alvarez, Ashley Appleberry, Hugo Juarez Avalos, Maria Baez-Cupul, Lucja Basinska, Chanah Brown, Sydney Brown, Ciara Carrel, James Devero, Seth Dunfield, Curtis Franklin, Brynn Fuqua, Nathan Gano, Abby Guzman, Maahum Hamayat, Isabel Harryman, Katarina Hill, Grant Kendall, Daniel Kirk, David Kirk, Lilyanna Law, Ronnie Lawrence, Mariah Markt, George Vegeta Mendez, Logan Miriani, Megan Mozingo,Josie Newman, Thecla Okwara, Mattie Peter, Novalee Rivera, Naomi Schaefer, Emily Sellers, Jacqulyn Seyferth, Dori Tran, Sara Unrein, Katie Valdovinos, Sam Ventrillo, Abigail Wendlandt, and Leigh Woody.

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce the 2023 UMKC Student Art Exhibition. The exhibition features the work of 33 UMKC students in a wide variety of media, including drawing, painting, photography, video, animation, printmaking, bookbinding, embroidery, graphic design, and mixed-media work. The opening reception will be 5 – 7 p.m., Thursday, April 27th. Scholarships and Awards will be presented during the opening reception at 6 p.m.

Kimi Kitada served as guest juror for this exhibition. Kitada is an independent curator and arts educator. She is currently a curator at the Charlotte Street Foundation. Previously, she was a curatorial assistant at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and she served as Public Programs & Research Coordinator at Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York. She is a co-founder of alt_break, which provides free and accessible contemporary art programming through partnerships with local, community-based nonprofits in New York. Kitada received a BA in Art History and Classics from Bucknell University and an MA in Museum Studies from NYU.