Jones Gallery March Group Art Show!
First Friday opening, March 3rd..
Artist reception is from 5 till 9pm. All welcome and always free.
With 150 pieces on display, both Local and National Artists
Show runs thru March 23rd.
Also open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Closed Sunday
Jones Gallery 1717 Walnut, KCMO. 64108
816 – 421-2111
https://jonesgallerykc.com/

Join us for First Friday on the wild side!

Featuring live tarot card readings (space limited), Whiskey + Bone handcrafted jewelry, assorted local art and music, and locally crafted ales!

Visit our website for a full tap list including non-beer options.

Lineages explores multi-directional histories through weaving and its site-specific environments, structures, associations, and temporal rhythms. Through a series of installations, weavings, sound, and video, sister artists Debbie Barrett-Jones and Kristine Barrett present kinship and cultural identity as a fluid process rather than a given: connecting, dissolving, and reconstituting through memory, practice, and relationship. This (re)membering relates to the act of weaving and textile practice itself: weaving disparate threads (or bodies, sounds, images, narratives, geographies, and names) into relationship with one another: sewing-severing-suturing. Other ‘genealogies’ emerge through this process that intersects, intervenes, disrupts, and further entangles.

Both Barrett sisters received their BFA’s at the Kansas City Art Institute, Kristine in ’01, and Debbie in ’07. Currently, each is in their thesis year of graduate school, as Debbie is pursuing a Master of Fine Art in textiles at the University of Kansas and Kristine is currently working on her second Master’s degree in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley.

Textiles artist, Debbie Barrett-Jones left her small town in Iowa so she could pursue an education at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) and since graduation, has exhibited her work throughout the United States, including the Kansas City area locations, such as; Children’s Mercy Hospital in North Kansas City, Truman Medical Center, Community Christian Church, Lead Bank in the Crossroads of Kansas City, and The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. And in late 2016, she collaborated with the Kansas City Ballet for an art installation and performance called Unspoken. Barrett-Jones is currently working on her Master of Fine Art at the University of Kansas focusing on textiles along with teaching weaving courses to KU undergraduates.

In 2016, she began to envision the “Healing with Weaving” initiative, to highlight the importance of how art, specifically weaving, can be a therapeutic tool for healing. The first Healing with Weaving Community Outreach Program’s pilot project at Children’s Mercy Hospital Adele Hall Campus in Kansas City, MO. The project provides 200 Healing with Weaving Frame Loom Kits with instructions to be used by patients, family members, and staff to explore the meditative and therapeutic benefits of weaving during the summer and fall of 2021. Currently, Barrett-Jones was one of nineteen Kansas City artists to be commissioned to make permanent public artwork for the new KCI Airport that will open in the spring of 2023.

Kristine Barrett is an American artist, composer, academic, and vocalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After completing a double BFA in Studio Art and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute, Barrett went on to study music composition with the legendary Fred Frith at Mills College, where she received an MFA in Electronic Music Composition and Recording Media in 2006. A storyteller at heart, Barrett’s work has been performed, exhibited, and featured in various galleries and media festivals throughout North America and Europe, and was recently featured on the NPR show The Thistle and Shamrock. In addition to her solo work, Kristine has performed professionally with several renowned musicians and ensembles, including the acclaimed Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, Svetlana Spajić, and Trio Kavkasia, among many others. She has directed several community choirs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Temple of Light Georgian Community Choir, Headlands Community Folk Ensemble, and Sound Orchard’s West Marin Choir. Connecting folklore, textiles, and women’s vocal arts, Kristine is currently working on her second Master’s degree in Folklore at UC Berkeley. An avid hiker, bibliophile, lover of ancient literature and art; Kristine loves being in the non-human world, wooden boats, needlework, and sailing schooners. She currently resides on a houseboat with a myriad of plants, shrines, and animals with her husband in Sausalito, California.

Celebrating Women Artists Series Lexitas March First Friday – March 3, 2023

Featuring words & images from Jeran Avery, Jenna Brack, Gregory Kolsto, Sandee Finley, Dylan Mortimer, Kelli Sallman, David Oakes, and Fredric Sims.

No human being experiences life without enduring grief and loss. Because grieving is universal, there is a particular kind of power to these shared experiences, shaping communities in profound ways. Loss can unite, bending us outward as we tend to one another’s wounds with care. It can also divide, turning us inward as we struggle to survive.

For all of human history, the arts have been an integral part of the rituals that aid us in metabolizing grief into something that has the power to nourish communities. In his beautiful book on grief, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, psychoanalyst Francis Weller explains grieving as a fundamentally creative process; “We are remade in times of grief, broken apart and reassembled.” Artists physically break apart and reassemble their materials into new creations, and when they turn toward subjects of personal or communal loss, the work of their hands can create spaces of authentic mourning, hope, and transformation.

In the midst of our grief, it is natural to wonder where God is and what his purposes are. Many might feel closer to God as they are broken apart and remade through loss. It is telling that the first two beatitudes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount address spiritual poverty and mourning:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted…”

This proclamation that such people are blessed in the kingdom of God is an incredibly powerful promise that harmonizes beautifully with many other passages of promise and hope from the Scriptures. The exhibit title, Those who dream in the midst of sorrow, is inspired by Psalm 126. In times of grief, we must use creativity as we hope for healing – this is how we imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist. This transformation of tears into a nourishing harvest helps us believe the promise and hope in Jesus is not just a dream.

This exhibit opens during the longing of Advent, the retelling of the anticipation of God’s promised Deliverer. His one and only son Jesus came to earth in a human body and experienced the fullness of grief and loss. The exhibit will close during Lent when we groan together in anticipation of Jesus’ resurrection.

In Those who dream in the midst of sorrow, I have curated work from four visual artists and four poets to create a space to experience grief and glory together. These artists grapple with themes of illness, anxiety and depression, spiritual crisis and trauma, broken relationships, loneliness, deferred dreams, loss, and disappointment. Though these themes are heavy, the work of these artists shines with the glory of transformation, resilience, miracles, joy, and hope. Their acts of creation in the midst of loss remind us that we serve a God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that do not exist (Romans 4:17). It is this truth that allows us to dream in the midst of our sorrows.