Deante “Deecor” Howard is a faith-driven artist born and raised in Kansas City, whose work blends bold storytelling with deep emotional resonance. Voted Kansas City’s Best Visual Artist in 2024, the US Times calls him “The Artist to the Stars,” due to his paintings have been collected by celebrities, pro athletes, and fans in over 17 countries. Through powerful, hand-painted portraits — especially of athletes — Deecor captures the spirit of perseverance, legacy, and the beauty of overcoming. His work is more than art — it’s a movement rooted in purpose, identity, and glorifying God through creativity and reflecting God’s greatness by performing his craft with excellent.

My childhood was divided between two passions: sports and art. However, at the tender age of 14, a spinal illness abruptly ended my athletic aspirations! God made a pivot, which I didn’t know at the time, steering my focus towards the world of art, and I honed my drawing skills during recovery. I never planned to be an artist because I was raised in an environment where success as an artist, especially for someone like me … a young black boy from the hood of Kansas City, seemed like an unattainable dream. So, art, while I loved it …was just a hobby. Yet, a chance encounter in 2020 with a successful artist who shared my background reignited that dormant passion. In 2021, I decided to give art a real shot and began selling his artwork on the side, while continuing my corporate job . To my delight, my artwork resonated with audiences, leading to commissions, media features, and recognition across borders. But beyond the accolades, my true motivation lies in spreading joy, inspiration, encourage and hope through my paintings. Every stroke is infused with a message of resilience and optimism. This is why I continues to create art today. Howard

You can learn more and see Howard’s work at his website www.deecor.design and follow him on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howard.d.artist

Belger Arts is pleased to present Shifting Perspective: Belger Arts’ Twelfth Annual Resident Exhibition. The exhibition opens Friday, June 6, at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery (2011 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108) and continues through September 6, 2025. An opening night reception will be held from 6 to 8 PM, where artists will give remarks at 6:30 PM.

Shifting Perspective features work by Allyson George, Lucky Moe, Joel Pisowicz, Logan Reynolds, Hannah Schelb, and Warren Van Ryzin. The exhibition includes work the artists have completed during their year-long residency at Belger Crane Yard Studios. Exploring themes of memory, culture, and narrative, the six artists invite viewers to reimagine the familiar, explore existing perceptions, and shift perspectives.

Inspired by cartoons and animation, Allyson George creates ceramic figures, placing them in humorous scenes that portray what it’s like to be a potter and the challenges inherent to the creative process. Drawing from her childhood in Myanmar, the imagery in Lucky Moe’s work depicts memories, narratives, and artifacts from Burmese culture. Using materials like wood, clay, and fiber, Joel Pisowicz explores themes of memory and memorials. His large-scale ceramic sculptures stand like altar sentinels and invite contemplation. Logan Reynolds finds inspiration in popular culture, media, and romanticized tropes of middle-class America. His distorted yet representational forms stir feelings of nostalgia and collective memories. Hannah Schelb’s brightly colored caricature forms entice viewers to delve into the darker side of interpersonal relationships. Drawing from contemporary internet content and his indigenous heritage, Warren Van Ryzin creates sculptures that reference meme culture while appearing as historical artifacts.

Belger Crane Yard Studios continues to host national and international artists through its Artists in Residence program. A residency provides ceramic artists with the opportunity to expand their body of work or create a special project that may be outside of the scope of their existing studio practice.

Hot weather means cool art!

This year’s Summer Invitational brings together a fresh mix of gallery artists and invited contributors, featuring new work that’s bold, bright, and full of personality.

Participating Artists Include:

Ky Anderson
Marcus Cain
Celina Curry
Jackson Daughety
John Ferry
Elise Gagliardi
Annie Helmericks-Louder

John Louder
Michael McCaffrey
Judy Onofrio
Mark Pack
Andy Ryan
Mary Ann Strandell
Maura Wright

Double Whammy! features new works from Patty Carroll’s ongoing series Anonymous Women: Demise, where domestic scenes teeter between beauty and absurdity. In these meticulously constructed photographs, layers of fabric, pattern, and household objects build toward a visual crescendo, blurring the line between comfort and chaos. With her signature wit and theatrical precision, Carroll invites us to revel in the tension, humor, and artifice embedded in the everyday.

In Patty Carroll’s ongoing photographic series, Anonymous Women, each densely patterned image focuses on a lone woman that is practically invisible. Each is merged, concealed, overwhelmed, and seemingly taken over by her excessive household trappings, careening toward the absurd. Her domestic demise looms large as she is inevitably done in by her own possessions and obsessions. Her home becomes the site of claustrophobic perfectionism leading to tragedy and danger, with scenes of mishap and horror, inspired by many sources including the game of Clue.

To create these darkly humorous and poignant narratives, Carroll builds life size installations, literally stage sets, in her studio using the figure and household objects as subject matter. Worlds are created and the women in them use their objects and décor as armor to shore themselves up against a dark and scary world.

Carroll credits, or blames, growing up in the suburbs of Chicago as the source for her work. In Domestic Dramas and Disasters, she continues her exploration of myths of perfection and happiness, consumer culture, social status and meaning. Her photographs debunk, critique, and satirize the expectation of domestic perfection and fulfillment. Their truthfulness not only hurts, its’ absurdity makes us laugh.

The photographs of Patty Carroll are held in the permanent collections of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and numerous others.

Boydston’s Midwest suburban upbringing has given her a unique perspective within this American subculture that provides a wide range of topics to explore including environment, architecture, conformity, spirituality, ideas of home, cultural diversity and time. Scenes of children at play, water, and everyday suburban life provide inspiration for her to capture little redeeming moments in an otherwise mundane environment. Drawn to the simplistic, formal architectural elements and the facades that shield us from the underlying stories, the artist shares with us three galleries of mixed media two-dimensional works.

Lorrie Boydston is a painter and Art Educator based in Kansas City, Missouri. Boydston’s diverse body of work is inspired by Suburban life and architecture. including representational suburban landscapes, architectural references, and a range of abstract, mixed-media paintings and works on paper. Boydston’s work has been shown in numerous local, regional, national exhibitions and publications. She has been an active member of the Kansas City Artist Coalition throughout her career where she was astudio resident from 2019 – 2022. She is also part of the Arts KC’s NowShowing corporate exhibit program and a former delegate of Artist Inc KC in 2019.

Boydston maintains an active studio practice and art teaching career in Northland Kansas City, MO.

www.lorrieboydston.com