January First Friday

2017

2012 Baltimore Ave.   I  Kansas City, MO 64108  I  816.474.1919   Thurs-Sat. 11 am-5 pm
 
January 6, 2017
6 pm 9 pm

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
DECADE
Selected Works from 2006-2016

Misty Gamble

January 6 - April 1, 2017
Main Gallery




Spanning a decade, this collection was brought together to showcase the ceramic sculpture of Misty Gamble. The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center hosts this three-month retrospective. The exhibition will highlight several bodies of work and their development. Sculptures from Sweet Terror, Explorations in Multiplicity, Abject Reverie, and Studio Nong over the years will be in this exhibition of specifically selected works. Recent works, Blue Sunday and Forevermore will also be included in the exhibition. 

 
STATEMENT

Issues surrounding femininity and set standards of normalcy, propriety and the abject inform my work. Through my ceramic sculptures, I confront and challenge conventional standards of womanhood, beauty, and power. My work is meant to upset the status quo so that one may re-examine their own notions of womanhood. I a m interested in examining how women conform themselves to fit standards. I explore the themes of excess, materialism, and waste for a voracious consumer society. As a social satirist making feminist commentaries, I confront the most material aspects of cultural traditions forcing the viewer to rethink concepts of body, adornment, social status, personal worth, and the roles of both sexes. The sculpted figure , multiple figural fragments, installation and theatricality provide a perfect vehicle for communicating ideas about beauty, excess and the abject. The work exposes stereotypes while simultaneously, confronting the viewer with seeing oneself in familiar meaningless pursuits. The work is influenced by my continued interest in figuration, as well as fashion, textile pattern, contemporary fetish objects, and hair. Combining formal elements of art and design to depict familiar objects of adornment such as wigs, handbags, accessories and shoes contributes to the figures' lifelike, yet grotesque feminine image. A residue or absence of the body produces an opportunity to explore new motifs, multiplicity and fragmentation of the body.
 
BIOGRAPHY

Misty Gamble is the recipient of a number of honors including awards from the Martin Wong Foundation, National Conference for the Education of Ceramic Arts and the Ellice T. Johnston Foundation. In 2008, she received an artist grant from the Ruth Chenven Foundation and was honored as a Ceramics Monthly Emerging Artist. Misty has been awarded long-term residencies at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, where she earned the Howard Kottler Fellowship, and the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. Additionally, Gamble was invited to lead an Artist-Invite Artist Residency at Watershed and was an invited artist at Project Art in Cummington, Massachusetts. In 2014, Gamble was an invited artist at C.R.E.T.A Rome and has continued to study or teach in Italy since 2013. Gamble is the co-founder of Studio Nong: International Sculpture collective and residency program. Studio Nong travels to China (2013, 2016), the US and Europe to accomplish residencies that focus on clay figurative sculpture. Gamble is an Assistant Professor in the School of Foundation at the Kansas City Art Institute. Before receiving her MFA from San Francisco State University in the visual arts, she worked as an agent, publicist, and event producer in music and the performing arts. She has been widely published and her work is exhibited both nationally and internationally.
 
 
STEP INTO SKY
John Sandbach

Curated by Elisabeth Kirsch

January 6 - February 25, 2017
Back Gallery


Natural Laboratory, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 40" x 40"


John Sandbach's 2016 Spagyric Series, which is the basis for the exhibition  Step Into Sky, ushers us into very provocative places. The spagyric arts were developed centuries ago as natural systems of healing developed from plants, based on the alchemical concept of transformation. Sandbach's art suggests root systems, stems, foliage, earth, wind, and fire and his paintings are at once celestial and subterranean.

These works are Sandbach's salvific antidote to the forces of entropy, his resistance to the notion that closed systems, which result in decay, are inevitable. Life inevitably has problems but, as Sandbach's energetic abstract works suggest, we can figure out how to solve these dilemmas by remaining open to life and flowing with the currents, no matter how chaotic they seem. Nature and the spiritual can help us whenever "things fall apart."

The Spagyric Series is also reminiscent of Sandbach's internationally published Haiku poetry - dreamy, surreal and witty. Sandbach works in an entirely intuitive manner, and the end results are as uplifting as they are mysterious. There are galaxies outside us and inside us, his paintings intimate, and how fascinating to spend lifetimes exploring them.

John Sandbach is an artist, poet, novelist, blogger, and astrologer who lives in Kansas City.

Elisabeth Kirsch, Curator
 
 
Where the Spirit Meets the Bone

Diane Henk

Curated by Elisabeth Kirsch


December 2, 2016 - January 28, 2017
Front Gallery

Photograph by EG Schempf


STATEMENT

 

This exhibit consists of selections from several different bodies of work I created throughout a 25 year period, dating from approximately 1990 to the present. My BFA degree was earned in painting, but through the creative process the canvas's two-dimensional surface intuitively evolved into three-dimensional sculpture and installations, usually with the figure as form. It has only been within recent years that the work has returned to a wall-mounted format incorporating everyday objects and materials.

 

Although each series has been created individually, most of them possess similar elements -- the layering of materials, repetition of form, absence of color, and an unfinished or incomplete look. As an artist I will always be concerned with the problem-solving aspect of art, as this generates new ideas that unfold and present still new challenges to be addressed. I hope some of the work will be as equally challenging and fulfilling for its viewers. 

 


BIO

Diane Henk received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and has been a full-time practicing artist for approximately 30 years. She predominantly exhibits in university galleries, nonprofit spaces and small museums. Within the past few years her work has been included in the Flatfile Exhibit at H&R Block Artspace, a group show of works on paper at the Moberg Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa and a solo-exhibition at Upper Iowa University in Fayette, Iowa. Her work has been collected by the Sioux City Art Center, Barkley Advertising, The Kansas City Collection and private individuals. She is represented by the Moberg Gallery and locally by Douglas Drake Fine Arts.
 
 

Benjamin Parks
Tim Pott
Bernadette Esperanza Torres
 
Secret Salon

P&M Artworks

January 12 - February 25, 2017
Opie Gallery


Benjamin Parks |  portraitist, oil on canvas

Tim Pott | p hotographer

Bernadette Esperanza Torres | ceramicist


This small show is a collection of some of our favorite artists from the past year.
We want to share these seductive and exciting artworks for your enjoyment. P&M Artworks, LLC


Opening Reception
Thursday, January 12th
5:30pm - 7:30pm