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2012 Baltimore Ave I Kansas City, MO 64108 I 816.474.1919 I Thurs-Sat, 11am-5pm
First Friday Opening
September 6, 2013
6pm-9pm
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Homage to the Mechanic, steel and cast glass, 36" x 20" x 26"
STRETCH
Mixed Thoughts and Daydreams
September 6 - October 26, 2013
Main Gallery
Artist Bio Excerpts (Full Bio: Click Here)
STRETCH's works have been on display in private and corporate collections throughout the world. The sculptures vary in scale from small approachable pieces to environmentally dominating. The choice of materials STRETCH uses in his pieces - glass & steel - work against each other, causing tension while maintaining a high level of dialogue.
STRETCH is a graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. He completed his masters at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, VA. Both Dale Eldred and Jim Leedy mentored STRETCH into the growing Kansas City art scene. STRETCH has since worked with many renowned artists including Mark di Suvero and John Henry. STRETCH has worked with numerous artists on public commissions - for airports, college campuses, and city sculpture parks around the world. Presented with an Urban Hero Award, STRETCH plays a major role in the community. He served as vice president of KC's oldest non-profit artist coalition (KCAC), has been a board member for Review Magazine and the Crossroads Community Association and the Board of Directors for the Inter-national Sculpture Center and accepted a nomination to the TIF Commission of Kansas City.
In the last few years, STRETCH has completed a two-story computerized LED wall installation for Davis Brown Tower, Des Moines, IA, a large-scale sculpture commission for the H&R Block World Headquarters in Kansas City, as well as four sculptures for the Woodsweather Bridge. STRETCH has been building large-scale sculpture for more than twenty five years.
Artist Statement
Utilizing the same materials as the surrounding architecture and urban environment, I focus on facilitating the natural flow between the art and its environment, manipulating these same natural materials into a different form. The end result is an integral piece designed to fit a project, complimenting the space in a balanced equilibrium.
The choice of materials I use in my pieces - glass, wood and steel - work against each other, causing tension while maintaining a high level of dialogue. The juxtaposition of the materials serves to create a conversation, drawing the viewer in, inviting them to participate, engaging them both mentally and physically regardless of race, creed or color. This allows the viewer's own past experiences to play a significant role in the present moment. The resulting dialogue can be used to inform and educate, serving as a gathering ground for communication easing cross-cultural boundaries. Amidst this interaction derives thought-provoking insight and one hopes, a better understanding of the concepts and ideals the work embodies.
Crude yet detailed structures transcend time, boldly manifesting enduring concepts. They float in and out of many moments. They are always in motion as much as glass itself is always in flux. It is within this context the pieces, as the concepts they represent, continue to breathe life...
As an artist I feel it is my obligation/duty to build ideas which inspire thought. I have chosen to live my life working to help instill these principles - communication through visuals - into others. I have made Kansas City my home, coming from the East Coast, starting galleries and studios for artists, promoting the arts wherever possible. This, I believe, is a vital part of a city's fabric. The combination of love of people, and the challenge of projects like this, lends inspiration, facilitating the creation of my ideas and supplying the energy to bring them to fruition.
For additional videos, articles, photos & info, please visit
www.stretchsculpture.com
www.youtube.com/stretchsculpture
www.grinderspizza.com
www.crossroadskc.com
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Ebb & Flow #14, 2011, black Prismacolor Ebb & Flow #15, 2011, black Prismacolor
pencil, graphite, and ink on mylar, 64" x 40" pencil, graphite, and ink on mylar, 64" x 40"
Doug Russell
Ruined
September 6 - October 26, 2013
Front Gallery
Artist Bio
Doug Russell is a visual artist who lives and works in Laramie, Wyoming. His work in drawing and painting explores two major creative directions: entangled natural forms and monumental architectural compositions. Both bodies of work ultimately are improvisational meditations upon structure/repetition/variation and germination/ growth/decay. He earned an MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of Iowa, lived and taught in Turkey for two years and in Kansas City for six. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor of Art at the University of Wyoming where is coordinator of the drawing program.
Ruined
...and after dismantling the city piece by piece,
he reconstructed it in other ways, substituting
components, shifting them, inverting them.
~ Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Colossal
Ponderous
Complicated
Monumental
( Babylon )
Obscure
Concrete
Buttressed
Towering
( Babel )
Invented
Imagined
Improvised
Impossible
( Istanbul )
Recalled
Renewed
Replaced
Reused
Rebuilt
( Rome )
Drawn
Erased
Revised
Residue
Relic
Ruin
( Ruined )
- Doug Russell, Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, 2013 -
www.russellfineart.com
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Ericius (Scarf Necklace), 2012, copper, enamel, glass, .75" x41" x 5"
Cheryl Eve Acosta Hidden in Nature II August 2 - September 28, 2013 Back Gallery
Artist Bio
Cheryl Eve was trained at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she received her MFA in Jewelry & Metals and a BFA in jewelry from New Mexico State University. She currently resides in Kansas City, MO where she actively creates jewelry in her studio, teaches private workshops and shows her new collections at fashion shows.
Cheryl Eve's work has been published in numerous publications including: "Dreaming Jewelry, Contemporary Jewelry" by MONSA Barcelona Publications, "Art Jewelry Today 3" by Jeffrey B. Snyder, Lark Book's "500 Earrings", "Stitched Jewels" by Marthe Le Van and has published her own book called "Hidden in Nature". Her work has been shown nationally and internationally such as the Georgia Museum in Atlanta, the International Expositions of Sculpture and Functional Art (SOFA) in Chicago, Cheongju International Craft Biennale, in SeoulKorea, in Florence, Munich among others. She is an Arts KC Grant recipient, has showed at the West 18th St. Fashion Show in 2010 and 2011 and at the Kansas City Fashion Week in 2012. She has recently been invited to participate at the Plaza Art Fair in September 2013.
Artist Statement
Born and raised in the island of Puerto Rico, Cheryl Eve Acosta's jewelry finds inspiration mainly from the ocean and aquatic life. She is known for making bold and distinctive pieces of body adornment where her sculptural jewelry treats the human body as a site of display while merging art and fashion. She highlights both the impermanence and fragility of natural forms with the delicateness of her designs by creating one of kind pieces of wearable art.
Cheryl Eve is interested in aquatic processes such as how corals adapt and respond to their environment, be it from changing water currents, fluctuating temperatures or the intensity of sunlight. She celebrates marine life with her jewelry and seeks to give awareness on the effects contemporary lifestyles has on aquatic life.
 | | Video - Hidden In Nature II |
Visit Cheryl Eve Acosta at the Plaza Art Fair
September 2013
Friday, 20th: 5pm - 10pm
Saturday, 21st: 10am - 10pm
Sunday, 22nd: 11am - 5pm
www.cheryleve.com
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Visage, 2013, oil on panel, 24" x 18" Bloom, 2013, oil on panel, 24" x 18"
The Opie Collection
Featuring David Slone
August 2 - September 28, 2013
Opie Gallery
David Slone Bio
I was born in 1985 in Chicago, IL and raised in Lincolnton, NC. In 2007, I graduated with honors from Anderson University in Anderson, SC, with concentrations in painting and graphic design. Soon after graduating, I was accepted into the Art Bomb Studios artist collective in Greenville, SC, where I maintained a consistent studio practice and participated in numerous shows. During this period, I worked full-time as a graphic designer at Erwin-Penland, an ad agency in Greenville. In the summer of 2012, my wife was offered a position teaching as a full-time art professor at Sterling College in Sterling, Kansas. We currently live in Sterling and I now focus on my painting full time.
David Slone Statement
Simply put, my work is the result of a shifting and evolving dialogue between my love of paint and my fascination with portraiture-a conversation between realism, abstraction, faces and identity. I am interested in how a shift in color or a few distinct brush marks can change the content of a portrait. I enjoy looking at the smallest details of the face and finding interesting ways to make it my own. Large pores, dark circles under the eyes, and the the complexity of skin color within shadows are all exciting features open to interpretation. I am especially intrigued by ears that appear transparent and luminous due to a strong light source behind them. I want to paint skin that I can get lost in.
www.david-slone.com
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