In 2022, Americans are acknowledging mental health more widely — especially surrounding trauma. Many may know what it feels like to be disconnected from one’s self due to a traumatic experience that left us feeling unsafe, unworthy, and even unloved.

Reconnection explores paths to wholeness of individuals from varying walks of life and traumatic experiences, such as abandonment, domestic violence, and war. Through ceramic portraiture and animal symbolism, the work communicates each person’s reconnection to a state of authenticity. In addition, exploring how the vessel and mindful ritual can be offered as a tool towards reconnection; anchoring one’s attention to the present moment, and cultivating healing.

Artist Statement

My ceramic vessels and figurative sculptures are vehicles to investigate our human emotions and psyche. I view my role as an artist as an act of service and wonder how my work can best serve others. In contemporary America, I see many people disconnected from their emotional and physical well-being due to the many prevalent consequences of chronic stress and trauma. My work’s intention is to encourage emotional healing by sharing the lived experiences of others and through meditative interactions.

I make sculptural relief portraits to tell stories of those on the path to liberate themselves from mental prisons of childhood and adult traumas. Life-size portraits are paired with an animal (either real or mythological) establishing a duality. This creates a face-to-face conversation between the viewer and portraits as well as a symbolic relationship with the creatures — representing a reconnection to a transformed and authentic self.

My drinking and pouring forms, such as teapots and cups, help establish a relationship with my audience through sensory experience. In a guided class or alone, participants in my tea rituals are asked to notice little things about their cup, which most of the time are overlooked, such as surface, texture, weight, and temperature change as the beverage is being poured and sipped, smelled, and appr­­eciated. This gives participants the opportunity to cultivate an awareness of the vessel, thus elevating tactile, visual, and olfactory perceptions.

My vessels and sculptures evoke raw emotions through their colorful yet earthy surfaces and a sense of motion, flow, energy, and torsion through fluid mark-making. With my pottery, I apply abstract textural marks with liquid clay to the forms. However, I carve into my sculptures resulting in recessed gestural lines.

Clay offers me an opportunity to share my truth and concern for my fellow humans. It is my desire through my ceramics to share the inspiring and healing journeys of others and educate people about introspective mindful rituals.

Artist Bio

Jason Wang is a ceramic artist who is currently a resident artist at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN. He intends his vessels and sculptures to invoke a strong emotional response in order to further the dialogue about identity, mental health, and healing in contemporary America. Jason earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO. He was awarded a scholarship to partake in a workshop at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO and has exhibited in group exhibitions at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, MO.

Friends and Family Scavenger Hunt, join us at 19th & Oak St to start the Scavenger hunt which ends at ArtsTech. The first three groups to bring back all five landmark pictures will receive a door prize. Snacks available for all. Free Event.

Fun for all ages.

Free off-street parking.

Passages includes more than 30 sculptures, prints, paintings, and drawings all from the Belger Collection. Stackhouse was born in Bronxville, NY, in 1942, and moved to Florida as a teenager. He was one of the first students enrolled at the University of South Florida and graduated with a degree in studio art in 1965. He later earned an MFA from the University of Maryland. His two-dimensional artwork often documents large-scale outdoor sculptures that were created with his students and volunteers. Many of them were of a scale where visitors could enter and pass through the installations. Often A‑frame wooden structures, the sculptures were literal passageways through art. Frequent imagery in Stackhouse’s output includes boats and ships (reflecting earthly and spiritual passages) and snakes (symbolic of regeneration and death). He was also especially intrigued with the process of a snake shedding its skin and slithering away afresh.

Early in his career Stackhouse maintained an active studio in New York City, while commuting to Washington, D.C., to teach at the Corcoran School of Art, and working on outdoor sculpture events throughout the country. In the mid-1990s he moved to Kansas City, teaching at the Kansas City Art Institute, continuing to create outdoor installations locally. Stackhouse and his wife and collaborator, Carol Mickett, have resided in the Tampa area for two decades. They continue to work on national public installation projects involving volunteers during the fabrication and installation process.

Kim Cole’s talent in art was recognized at the early age of 5 years old when she and her classmates were instructed to draw the apple on the table. Kim’s apple was exactly like the display which took everyone by surprise. Her parents encouraged her gift with colored pencils, crayons and paint sets.

Kim eventually began to build a portfolio and went on to become a professional artist, selling her work all over the country.

Her career did not end there as she took a position as the art teacher for 3 year at an area private school teaching grades K‑12.

Now Kim paints in her home studio. Her favorite medium is oil on canvas. Kim’s style is realism however, she has taken a recent liking to acrylic pours. You will find Kim’s art pieces on display at foodlove café, 2101 Broadway Blvd in Kansas City.

Hours:

Ultra steamy, super sultry, high-energy hoochi coo, the ultimate tease, satirical strut and much, much more come to life in this late night, sexy, flirty fun show!