This collection of artwork by Jim Leedy will be on display in correspondence to his

celebration of life which will be held at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center on Saturday, July 23, 2022.

We invite you to share your condolences and memories you have of Jim Leedy that will be

used for a slide show celebrating and commemorating his life and legacy.

Please click here to share condolences & memories.

Make sure to follow this FB Event and go to our website for event updates, as July 23rd approaches.

Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries Hardback Book by Matthew Kangas will be available to purchase,

with 100% of proceeds going towards The Leedy Foundation in honor of Jim Leedy.

Artist Statement

Jim Leedy is an international artist in terms of his interests and achievements. He is an artist who crosses boundaries between materials and genres, representation and abstraction, art and music, creativity, and scholarship. His diverse and unique talents have led him to a lifetime of accomplishment in clay, painting, public art, works-on-paper, prints, assemblages, installations, and performance.

Eyewitness to the birth of the New York School, Leedy’s paintings emerge from Abstract Impressionism, with a sense of materiality, surface, structure, and veiled figuration. With a graduate study of Asian art history at Columbia University, he created a hybrid of Abstract Expressionism and Oriental pottery which is central to his oeuvre in clay. Chinese tripod bronzes and Japanese folk pottery were reinterpreted with an informal American twist that established him s an early leader in the American Clay Revolution.

Never satisfied with the status quo, his career has been a lifetime of exploration and chance-taking that has occasionally put him on the outside of major art movements, while often anticipating them. He continues to break ground in processes, materials, and subject matter that is unique to his times and personal like.

“I try to forget everything I have learned, and attempt to flow with nature.”

Adapted from Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries, by Matthew Kangas, University of Washington Press, 2000.

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Biography

Jim Leedy was an artist who crossed boundaries between materials and genres, representation and abstraction, art and music, creativity and scholarship. He began making art as a very young child. While still in high school, Leedy began working with the Bluefield (WV) Telegraph newspaper as an artist and photographer. After two years as a military photographer, he entered the Richmond Professional Institute of the College of William and Mary in Richmond, VA as an art major of the G.I. Bill.

Leedy was an international artist in both interest and achievement. His diverse and unique talents have led him to a lifetime of accomplishment in clay, painting, public art, works-on-paper, prints, assemblages, installations, and performance. Jim has shown his work, lectures, and does workshops at home and abroad and his works are held in numerous museums and private collections around the world. Noted art critic Matthew Kangas recently wrote a book on Leedy’s career entitled Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries.

A longtime professor of sculpture at the Kansas City Art Institute, Leedy was a devoted teacher. He has degrees from The College of William and Mary, Michigan State University, and Southern Illinois University, with post-graduate work at Columbia and Ohio State Universities. Among his many honors, Jim has received grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Carnegie-Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also received the Kansas City Art Institue’s Distinguished Achievement Award and the Governor’s award for teaching excellence, as well as being named an Honorary Member of the Council of the National Council of Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA).

Jim Leedy has worked tirelessly for decades as a passionate champion of the arts in Kansas City. The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, founded in 1985 and still directed by Jim, is currently home to 6 different galleries. In 2000, the Kansas City Star recognized Jim as one of the 150 most influential living Kansas Citians for his role as the founder of Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District and the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. In 2001, the Governor and the Historic Kansas City Foundation both recognized his efforts with awards for historical preservation and for his role in founding the Crossroads Arts District.

Never satisfied with the status quo, Jim’s career has been a lifetime of exploration and chance-taking that has occasionally put him on the outside of major art movements, while often anticipating them. He continues to break ground in processes, materials, subjects matter and community development in a way that is unique to his times and personal life.

Partially adapted from Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries, by Matthew Kangas, University of Washington Press, 2000.

This collection of work reappropriates found material and gleans preloaded symbols through a process of cutting, collaging, and casting. The resulting pieces become artifacts left behind through this process of deconstructing consumer detritus and existing ubiquitous objects – transposing their original appearance into a new form of material cartography. The exhibition expands on Robb’s ongoing investigation into the reciprocal relationship of human, object and landscape — what society and culture hold to be sacred, what is considered commodity, and the impact of time.

The Tarp paintings in this body of work are created through acts of collaging found material into assemblage casting matrices. Acrylic and spray paint, highway safety glass and other mediums are cast in various combinations into the matrix repeatedly over several weeks. Once the medium reaches a substantial thickness and solidity the cast tarp is meticulously removed from the casting bed and applied to a new host – canvas, panel, or artist-made rigid box frames. The found materials used to create these matrices include cast-off debris, standardized construction items, consumer-grade packaging, asphalt shingles, aluminum cans and common everyday symbols such as road construction markings or the American flag.

The exhibition title references the wartime practice of shifting typical material manufacturing processes and techniques in order to conserve those materials viewed as precious, sacred, or valuable — i.e., the 1943 US cent manufactured in steel to conserve copper.

Artist Statement

Levi Robb is a multidisciplinary artist and architect. Robb’s work explores the role of material perception and identity within social, environmental and cultural contexts. His practice investigates how we attach memory to object, landscape and architecture – how we search for joy and fulfillment within the confines of these day-to-day items – and how their applied labels shift and evolve over time, in turn creating an implied material hierarchy through the embedded human histories left behind. The formal qualities of his work visually break down, abstract and reconstruct discarded forms – often transposing cast objects and material found on the landscape by reassembling the castings as archetypal sculpture. This process yields a unique body of work the artist refers to as, “Deconstructed Americana”.

Artist Bio

Robb holds a B.Arch from Iowa State University and has spent periods of time studying and practicing in Rome, Italy and the American Southwest. In 2018 Robb completed artist residencies at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Strong City, Kansas and at the Association of Icelandic Artists — Seljavegur in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 2020/2021 he was named an Iowa Arts Fellow. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in both public and private collections.

Join us and our buds at Red Sash Brewing for a party in the alley between our breweries.

For the seekers who no longer fit the status quo, it’s time to come home. We’ve repurposed a massive, vintage military tent, equipped with our HI-FI sound system and set up camp in the middle of the Crossroads.

MISSION: After checking in at the front desk, make your way through the 14ft gates and prepare to be transported to a sonic paradise. Life in the NOW. All together under one roof, the dance will set us free. Experience a unique rotation of the finest, local music selectors and international talent. Everyone entering the space is an active contributor. Together we become the fabric of what is possible. Find your rhythm at BARRACA.

FRIDAY JUNE 3

DIEGO, APOTHECARY & MAC MYSTIC

Warming the engines as Barraca prepares for another First Friday departure. These 3 selectors will each chart their course via our Danley Sound Labs HIFI System. Fasten your seatbelts and return your jaw to it’s upright and locked position as Flight 49 may experience some deep, sonic turbulance. A heavy night of house is on the horizon.

*All tickets include entry. Guests must be 21+ after 6PM to attend. All ticket sales are final.

Barraca 49 sound camp by Nomada aims to be the metro’s most inspired nightlife event