A scientific and artistic collaboration by: Jason Pollen, Mol Mir, Steph Nowotarski, and William Plummer
January 30- March 7, 2020
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 30th, from 5-8pm
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5 & 6
What if you could clone yourself from a piece of you as small as your fingertip? Or if you never scarred after an injury? What if you were effectively immortal?
Remarkably, for the planarian flatworm, specifically of the species Schmidtea mediterranea, these seemingly fantastical scenarios are quite ordinary. And they’ve been performing these biological feats on the planet for ages. Planarian ancestors likely existed before the Cambrian period, 146 million years ago, and flatworm relatives show up in the fossil record 40 million years ago. Despite their long history, as far as we can tell, they have remained largely unchanged. Flatworms like Schmidtea mediterranea can be found all over the world, from fountains in Italy, to lakes in Mexico, to our neighboring Brush Creek.
Four intergenerational artists have plunged into the muck of local waterways and emerged with an even greater appreciation for the complexity found, where, at first glance, there appears to be little to look at. Our exploration combined with a desire to facilitate empathetic cross-disciplinary dialog led to Body of Inquiry: The Art, Biology, and Being of Flatworms, a collaboration between art and science: two seldom yet undeniably-intertwined fields where sensory-perception, curiosity, and creative problem-solving converge.
The immersive installation at the UMKC gallery celebrates the joy of discovery, inviting visitors to engage with and observe planarian flatworms on micro, macro, and life-size scales. Explore our interpretations and examine your own in this two-room body of work featuring video projection, live planarians, and individual responses from each artist. What can these flatworms teach us about being human?
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 7, from 5-7 pm
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5 & 6
A Longing for Interspecies Companionship is an experimental, multi-disciplinary exploration of interstitial spaces and the invisible links contained within, entangling all animals, plants, fungi, and minerals. These spaces and connections are often disregarded, due to our humanist ideals of exceptionalism and individualism. Through the use of computer programming, animation, sculptural structures, and audio environments, Mosely exposes these overlooked and ignored correlations between biological and mineral entities.
Mosely sees his role as a knowledge seeker and translator, and throughout his practice allows biological studies to inform his artwork. His practice then serves as a way of translating these otherwise imperceptible relationships across biological and mineral categories, emphasizing the interdependence of all living creatures. Mosely’s animations represent plants acting in relation to their insect, mineral, and fungal companions, helping us envision action-based responses and enabling us to learn how to get along with other living beings. It is the artist’s hope that his work compels viewers to reconnect to their environment and sense the lively territory we are all engaged with.
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 5, 2019 from 5-7p
In 2019 Hand Print Press marks their quarter century partnership with The University of Missouri-Kansas City and their professional explorations in printmaking. To commemorate this anniversary, Hand Print Press decided to revisit and reflect on their artistic output and to use their collective past to start their future. For the exhibit “RE:Prints”, members both past and present were invited to search through HPP’s archived portfolios to find images to inspire new prints. Whether it was to pay homage to, riff on, or have a dialogue with the archived prints, members were given free rein to use any printmaking technique(s) to interpret their inspirational print. The result is a remarkable exhibit which shows the wide range of subject matter, unique processes and brilliant techniques that are under the big umbrella of printmaking.
About HPP
Hand Print Press is unique in the region for this commitment to professionalism and its mission of mentoring young printmakers. Over the past 25 years, HPP has funded grants for UMKC printmaking students and the purchase of equipment and supplies for the printmaking studio. Three national juried print exhibitions in the university’s gallery have been sponsored by HPP, providing UMKC students and the general public with exposure to a wide range of printmakers. Hand Print Press has partnered with UMKC to bring in visiting artists for workshops and lectures open to all UMKC students and the public. The artists of HPP have shown their works in the UMKC Gallery of Art, The Nerman Museum of Art and other venues around Kansas City and the region. HPP portfolios are in private and public collections throughout the region including, American Century Collections and the Spencer Museum of Art. In the past, HPP members have partnered with local writers to produce exhibitions highlighting both the strong literary and printmaking communities in the region. HPP members have presented and participated in community workshops and events to bolster and promote printmaking in the region.
Images left to right: “Desert Pollinators” by Erin Parrot, “Moonlight Requisition” by Megan Lashbrook, “Fibonacci” by Katya C. Enriquez
2019 UMKC Student Art Exhibition
May 2 – May 11
Opening Reception: Thursday May 2, 2019, 5—7PM
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5 & 6
Awards presented at 6pm
Guest Juror: José Faus
Participating Artists: Allison Spedding, Angel Goldenberg, Anna Diouf, Benjamin Cottrell, Colin Mosely, Emily Spreitzer, Erin Parrot, Jacob Wold, John Campbell, Katya C. Enriquez, Liz Dickinson, Luke Blevins, Madelyn Stewart, Marley Rogers, Megan Lashbrook, Megan VandeVelde, Noah Kellough, Rabecca Steger, Sarah Komer, Thang Nguyen, Tracy Khiew, Vince Fallis, Zachary Wolter
The UMKC Gallery of Art announces the 2019 UMKC Student Art Exhibition, which runs Thursday, April May 2 to Saturday May 11. It features the work of 23 graduate and undergraduate artists. All currently enrolled students at UMKC were eligible to submit work across a variety of media, including painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, graphic design, and video. An opening reception will be 5 – 7 p.m., Thursday, May 2. Scholarship awards will be presented during the opening reception at 6 p.m.
José Faus served as the juror for the 2018 UMKC Art Exhibition. Faus is a local multi-disciplinary artist, writer and UMKC alumnus. Faus is a founding member of the Latino Writers Collective, sits on the boards of the UMKC Friends of the Library and the Charlotte Street Foundation and is board president of The Writer’s Place. Faus has published chapbook, This Town Like That and full-length book of poetry, The Life and Times of José Calderon.
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5 & 6
Participating artists: Paige Nicole Gordon, Fuko Ito, Lueking Knabe, Isabella Matute, Lilly McElroy, Trish Nixon, Madison Mae Parker and Rye Lanae Boothe, Madelyn Stewart, Phoebe Varisco, and Lauren Louvel Louise Whitacre
Curated by Jennifer Baker
UMKC Gallery of Art and UMKC Violence Prevention and Response Program present Flesh Out, a group exhibition organized to honor Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The exhibition and related programming supports artists from the Kansas City community by creating platforms for discussion and action around sexual violence prevention. Expressing the gendered, cultural, and generational concerns of fourth wave feminism, the exhibiting artists deploy a spectrum of technical strategies to address modes of desire, fragmentation, and anxiety embedded within a culture of discrimination toward female-identifying and queer bodies. Enlisting the body as site, image, and/or tool, each artist suggests the possibility of a mended world through empathetic, vulnerable, and sometimes absurd gestures of self-preservation, courage, hope, and love.
List of exhibition programing
Thursday, March 21st 5:00-7:00 p.m: Flesh Out exhibition opens. During the opening reception, Madison Mae Parker will perform a durational version of her one-woman play Unravel, directed by Rye Lanae Boothe. Gallery visitors can enter and exit the performance as they wish.
Wednesday, March 27th, 10:00-11:30 a.m: The Neosho, MO Fish Hatchery Equal Opportunity Training (This is a private event, and not open to the public.)
Thursday, April 4th, 6:00-8:00 p.m., Unravel: A theater production performed by Madison Mae Parker and directed by Rye Lanae Boothe. This performance premiered in November 2017 and has been adapted for the UMKC Gallery. Unravel is the portrayal of a young woman who, as a coping mechanism, becomes disassociated with her own body, and subsequently the journey to reconnect with herself. All are welcome, but space is limited so please arrive on time or early. Performance begins promptly at 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 6th, 2:00-4:00 p.m., Writing and Performance Workshop: With Madison Mae Parker and Rye Lanae Boothe. This workshop will explore how the words we write and the stories we tell live in our body; how we might better listen to our bodies allowing the work to be fully alive. All ages and experience levels are welcome. Please bring a favorite notebook and writing utensil and wear clothes you feel comfortable moving in.
Saturday, April 13, 3:00-5:00 p.m., Quilting Bee With fiber artist Lueking Knabe. Visitors are invited to contribute to a communal quilt project while participating in an informal discussion about creating space for personal care and healing. All ages and experience levels are welcome, basic quilting instruction and materials will be provided.
AWARDS: Best of Show (Chancellors Prize) 1st Place (Undergraduate) 2nd Place (Undergraduate) Honorable Mention (Undergraduate) 1st Place (Graduate) Honorable Mention (Graduate)
JUROR: José Faus Guest juror is José Faus, a local multi-disciplinary artist, writer and UMKC alumnus. Faus is a founding member of the Latino Writers Collective, sits on the boards of the UMKC Friends of the Library and the Charlotte Street Foundation and is board president of The Writer’s Place. Faus has published chapbook, This Town Like That and full-length book of poetry, The Life and Times of Jose Calderon.
ELIGIBILITY: Any student currently enrolled in classes at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Each artist may submit up to three works for review. Any type of artwork (painting, photography, sculpture, prints, 2D, 3D, graphic design, video, motion graphics) is eligible.
APPLY: Works should be submitted via Google Forms Application by April 5, 2019 at 11:59PM. Late submissions will not be accepted. You may submit up to three works, however you must fill out a new form for each piece. Save images for upload as “FirstName_LastName_1,” “FirstName_LastName_2,” etc.
March 18, 2019, 11:30-12:45pm:Art Student League Exhibition Prep Workshop and Free Pizza in Fine Arts Building Room 108. Elijah Gowin and Davin Watne will talk about framing and documenting your work.
April 5, 2019, 11:59pm:Submission Deadline. All entries must be submitted via Google Drive by April 5, 2019 at 11:59pm
April 15, 2019: Notification of Acceptance All students will be notified whether or not their work has been accepted for participation
April 22 – Art Drop Off April 25, 2019: All work must be delivered to the UMKC Gallery of Art during by April 25, or else it will not be in the exhibition.
*The UMKC Gallery of Art reserves the right to reject any artwork not presented in a professional manner and/or not ready to hang. Framing is highly preferred, though professional mounting can also be accepted. For installation-based and video works, the Gallery must be notified in the applicant’s submission of each entry’s spatial requirements.
May 2, 2019, 5-7pm: Opening Reception and Awards. A public reception with awards announced will be held.
May 11, 2019: Exhibition Closes
May 13 – May 17, 2019: Pick Up Work. Students are required to pick up their work during Finals Week (May 13 – 17).
*The UMKC Gallery of Art and the UMKC Art and Art History Department are NOT responsible for storing or preserving any unretrieved artworks after May 17, 2019.
Please join UMKC’s IMP ensemble at the UMKC Gallery of Art, Thursday, March 7th, for our sonic interpretations of the current exhibition, Matter Matters. While the artists experiment with familiar materials, IMP ensemble will experiment with familiar sounds and melodies, recontextualizing them within the gallery. The ensemble will also respond in real-time to the artworks and the audience — mimicking the artist’s goals of capturing human connections to the materials within their works.
Under the direction of Michael Miller, UMKC’s IMP Ensemble explores improvisation in the broadest definition, where listening and responding become a way of real-time creation. IMP is a think-tank of people willing to risk and fail quickly, so a show can go on, using any new individual media to explore the boundaries of the medium and improvisation.
Exhibition Information: UMKC Gallery of Art presents Matter Matters, a powerful new exhibition exploring materiality in the work of four artists. Karolina Gnatowski, Dan Gunn, Alex Lockwood, Noël Morical use many variations of everyday materials from bottle caps to plywood to express rather than consume by shifting material conditions from utility to aesthetics and symbolic meaning. Materialism is a defining attribute of humanness. These four artists explore human connections to materials by using consumables to invent new forms celebrating and re-interpreting materiality in our daily lives.
Participating Musicians: Austin Engelhardt, Guitar; Jacob Frisbie, Electronics; Ronnie Lawrence, Bass Guitar; Jacob Mosher, Keyboard; Lanxinzi Pan, Guzheng; Felicity Freeling, Cello; Lorenzo Gatapia, Trumpet; Ben Heschmeyer, Electronics; Ryan Porcu, Euphonium; Miquel Silva-Leon, Guitar
Karolina Gnatowski, Dan Gunn, Alex
Lockwood, Noël Morical
January 31-March
9, 2019
Opening Reception:
Thursday, January 31st, 5-7 pm
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5
& 6
UMKC
Gallery of Art presents Matter Matters,
a powerful new exhibition exploring materiality in the work of four artists. Karolina Gnatowski, Dan Gunn, Alex Lockwood, Noël
Morical use many variations of everyday materials from bottle caps to plywood to
express rather than consume by shifting material conditions from utility to aesthetics and symbolic
meaning. Materialism is a defining attribute of humanness. These four artists explore
human connections to materials by using consumables to invent new forms celebrating
and re-interpreting materiality in our daily lives.
Each of
these artists is united by their individual explorations that stem from a
fascination and an experimentation with familiar materials. Each artist chooses their commodities
differently, whether its personal objects, recycled material or military grade
fibers, seeking to achieve various effects. These effects manifest in the mimicry of other
materials (Gunn), they create meaning (Gnatowski), build narratives (Lockwood) or
manipulate scale (Morical), thus transcending the accepted role of materiality
in contemporary life.
Artist
Bios
Karolina Gnatowski
(Poland, b.1980 ) lives and works in Chicago. They have attended Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture (2017), received an MFA 2007 Fiber and
Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BFA 2002
Fiber and Material Studies from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. They
have had recent solo exhibitions, DePaul Art Museum. Chicago, IL, Free Range.
Chicago, IL, Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL. Group and two-person exhibitions
include University of Missouri, Kansas City, MO, Sputnik Press, Chicago, IL, Compound
Yellow. Oak Park, IL, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, IL, Fiber Workshop,
Cleveland, OH. They have received the following awards, Roselyn Borowski Award
for Fibers, SAIC Faculty Enrichment Grant 2011.
Dan Gunn
(American, b. 1980) is an artist, writer and educator living and working in
Chicago. He received an MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago in 2007. Recent exhibitions include A Sag, Harbored, Western Exhibitions,
Chicago (2017); The Dangerous Professors, Triumph Gallery, Chicago (2017);
Midwest Mindset, curated by Austin
Radcliffe, University of Toledo, Center for Visual Art, Toledo, OH (2016); LUMA
at 10: Greatest Hits, Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago (2015); New
American Paintings, Midwest Edition, Elmhurt Art Museum (2015); Impromptu
Airs, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago
(solo, 2014); 12×12 New Artists New Work , Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
(2011). In 2012 he was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and
Sculpture and an artist in residence at Anderson Ranch in 2018. In 2013, Gunn
received the Artadia Award at EXPO Chicago. His work has been reviewed in
Frieze, Art in America, Artforum.com, Artslant.com, Newcity Magazine, New American
Paintings, TimeOut Chicago and the Chicago Tribune. His work is in the
collection of Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles; Fideltiy Corporate Art
Collection, Chicago; TD Bank, New York; and The Joyce Foundation, Chicago. Gunn
is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.
Alex Lockwood
(b.1974) is a sculptor and the director of Elephant Gallery in Nashville, TN.
He began making art from the detritus he collected on city streets: losing
lottery tickets, glasses lenses, dead lighters and plastic bottle caps, to name
a few, which he would fold, wire or glue together into abstract forms. While
the shapes and content of Lockwood’s work have evolved over time (most recently
dealing with fatherhood, divorce and the evolution of a community of plastic
beings in the distant future), his process remains essentially the same:
Lockwood always begins by collecting huge numbers of worthless, usually plastic
objects from the world around him.
Noël Morical
(American, b. 1989) lives and works in Chicago IL. She received her B.F.A. from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. She has had recent solo
exhibition High Swoon At Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago 57W57 Arts, New York,
and at the Fiberspace Gallery, Stockholm. Group and two-person exhibitions
include Weinburg-Newton Gallery, Chicago; 99¢ Plus Gallery, Brooklyn; Athen B.
Gallery, Oakland, Chicago Artist Coalition, Chicago, Slow Gallery, Chicago,
LVL3; Chicago.
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 29, 2018 5-7 pm
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5 & 6
The Fall of New Zion is an exploration of the power of regional lore. Featuring paintings, drawings, videos and sound installations, Caleb Harman seeks to emulate the observed qualities of lurid storytelling. The Fall of New Zion uses the suspenseful qualities of oral narrative, to build a larger story that uses regional history and locale to secure the fantasy within a known reality. Using elements of reality in fantasy, the story takes on a sense of believability, which draws into question our understanding of the places that we inhabit.
Harman states that “In late fall of 2006, a sighting of a mysterious animal near Holy Hill, Wisconsin, made national news for 15 minutes. Upon watching the CNN report the incident quickly rustled up fantastic and macabre stories from my friends about cannibals, serial killers, haunted buildings, and werewolves in the Wisconsin countryside. I began researching accounts of haunted locations in Milwaukee and other places I had lived.” Researching wasn’t enough as Harman continued to explore these places while seeking to add his own experience to the accounts he was investigating. Inspired by these stories, Harman invents a new tale through a wide range of mediums that creates a space in which the viewer can experience the power of folklore to permanently alter our emotional relationships with our surroundings.
Opening Reception: Thursday, November 1, 2018 7-8:30 pm
Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, levels 5 & 6
TypeTalk with James Walker, November 1, 6-6:30 pm at UMKC Miller-Nichols Library, rm 325
The University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Kansas City Art Institute are excited to present TypeHike, a collaborative, non-profit, design project that supports America’s National Park system, through the use of expressive typography and graphic design. Using the traditional format and bold imagery of poster design, TypeHike was born from the belief that designers are obligated to use their talent and ability to make the world a more beautiful place. Creators David Rygiol and James Walker expanded upon this belief to include, and thereby support, natural beauty, when they began their project in August 2016 in celebration of the National Park Service Centennial.
Currently, many naturally occurring national monuments and designated reserves are under scrutiny with the possibility of having their protections removed. TypeHike serves to remind us to get outside, explore, and appreciate the sublime beauty of our home planet. To support the threatened park system, Rygiol and Walker created four unique series of prints focusing on shorelines, recreation, endangered animals, and Mars. All profits are donated to protect and preserve wildlife environments and its inhabitants, and support scholarships for environmental research.
