Come see our February Art Gallery Show!
The First Friday hours on February 6th. are from 10am till 8pm.
Regular Gallery hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Monday thru Saturday, closed Sunday.
Show runs thru March 5th..
All are welcome and always free to visit, thanks!
Jones Gallery 1717 Walnut, KCMO. 64108
816 – 421‑2111
https://jonesgallerykc.com/

Belger Arts is pleased to present Mathew McConnell: These Things Take Time, a survey exhibition bringing together a selection of ceramic objects produced over fifteen years of sustained inquiry into creative appropriation and artistic influence. Spanning the years 2010 to 2025, this exhibition unites pieces from multiple bodies of work that share the usage of dark (often charcoal-black), light-absorbing surfaces.

The exhibition includes works from significant moments in McConnell’s career: early raku-fired pieces produced while living in New Zealand; works from his widely praised installations from the mid-2010s that cemented his signature approach to mold-making and surface development; and recent explorations produced during his 2024 residency at Belger Crane Yard Studios in Kansas City. Despite their varied origins, these works are united by their insistence on a particular aesthetic — the negative, the substitute, the object that both reveals and withholds.

This exhibition is in partnership with Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, a nationwide Semiquincentennial initiative to showcase the enduring importance of the handmade throughout history and in contemporary life. Belger Arts is proud to participate in the year-long initiative that includes over 250 museums, art centers, organizations, educators, and makers to celebrate the diversity of the crafts that define America, bringing compelling stories and underrepresented art and artists into the spotlight.

As a member of the initiative, Belger Arts will celebrate handwork through a variety of programs that provide visitors opportunities to discover and experience craft. Stay tuned to BelgerArts.org for more information.

Belger Arts is pleased to present Second Skin: Exploring Adornment as an Extension of Self, an exhibition that invites viewers to discover how objects worn on the body express personal stories, cultural lineage, and intimate narratives.

Through an array of materials and technical approaches, artists in the exhibition bridge fine craft traditions with contemporary perspectives, revealing how adornment becomes a visual language that shapes identity. Each work serves as an invitation to reflect on the personal journey behind its creation, fostering a deeper connection between maker and viewer.

Second Skin features work by Cheryl Eve Acosta, Shae Bishop, Hadley Clark, Mona Cliff, Patrycja Grzesznik, Kit Paulson, and Rob Stern. In addition, work from the Belger Collection by artists including Kate Kretz, Ellen Greene, and Renée Stout, will be on view.

This exhibition is in partnership with Handwork: Celebrating American Craft 2026, a nationwide Semiquincentennial initiative to showcase the enduring importance of the handmade throughout history and in contemporary life. Belger Arts is proud to participate in the year-long initiative that includes over 250 museums, art centers, organizations, educators, and makers to celebrate the diversity of the crafts that define America, bringing compelling stories and underrepresented art and artists into the spotlight.

As a member of the initiative, Belger Arts will celebrate handwork through a variety of programs that provide visitors opportunities to discover and experience craft. Stay tuned to BelgerArts.org for more information.

Beyond the Void is a series of works that investigates the unknown, both cosmically and within the self. Drawing on the realms of quantum mechanics, cosmology and astrophysics, I explore the complexity of queer identity and the intricacies of human existence. This exploration allows me to contemplate humanity’s position within the vastness of the universe. This exhibition transformed the gallery into a site of temporal and spatial dislocation, inviting viewers to reorient their understanding of existence as it relates to deep time, approximately 13.8 billion years.

Bio: 
M. Willie Garcia, a California native now based in Kansas City, MO. Garcia’s work transcends traditional print media working in screen printing, mokuhanga, projection-mapping, animation, and large-scale installations. Inspired by a blend of science, science fiction, and their queer identity, Garcia explores these themes through color abstraction and nonrepresentational forms. Holding a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and an M.F.A. from the University of Kansas, Garcia has earned acclaim regionally, notably exhibiting at the Nerman Contemporary Museum of Art, Des Moines Art Center and internationally in Japan and Spain. Garcia and recently served as the 2024/2025 Grant Wood Fellow at the University of Iowa.

GET WILD presents the Kansas City debut of select paintings from Rachelle Gardner-Roe’s recent solo museum exhibition. Referring to “rewilding,” a form of ecological restoration, here the artist suggests that a rewilding of the human spirit is a vital step to reposition our sense of being of nature, rather than separate. Influenced by her meticulously-detailed fiber work, the paintings represent a rewilding of her own artistic practice, generating the freedom to explore color and form with gestural spontaneity and immediacy.

Artist Biography

Rachelle Gardner-Roe has been working as an artist in the Kansas City area since the mid-2000s. She grew up in the rural countryside outside of Adrian, MO, on the native land of the Osage, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia and Sioux tribes. She received a Bachelors in Interior Architecture from Kansas State University in 2004. This background in design allowed her to explore various media through a lifelong interest in the fine arts. Her emphasis in furniture design influenced her path in sculpture while her family’s fateful adoption of three sheep in the 1990s eventually led her down the road of fibers and a practice rooted in the land.

Gardner-Roe has been commissioned for private and public projects, notably for the Kansas City International Airport, St. Teresa’s Academy, Art in the Loop Foundation and A.I.R Gallery of New York. Her work is in collections such as The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, The City of Overland Park, KS, The City of Kansas City, MO, and American Century Investments as well as various private collections. She is a Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident Alumni and a multi-grant recipient from the ArtsKC Regional Arts Council. She has exhibited regionally and nationally, including The Mulvane Art Museum, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, The Bunker Center for the Arts, and The Chautauqua Institution, among others. Having spent many years living on the Kansas side of the state line, she now lives and works in Kansas City, MO, with a studio in the historic West Bottoms.