First Friday Opening Reception: Troy Swangstu solo exhibition.

Join us on May’s First Friday for the opening reception of one of the region’s epic talents: Troy Swangstu.

Paola, Kansas-based painter, Swangstu is bringing us fresh work inspired by his daily observations: In the words of the artist.

“I believe that a good painting always begins with an experience or an accumulation of experiences. When my life became focused on farming in my early thirties, I was desperate to reconnect with art, and the stuff of my everyday life was the most obvious resource for subject matter. Working with cattle, bulls became a symbol for the fertility of the entire herd, and so it became in my work. The bulls became increasingly stylized, increasingly remote from the source of inspiration, not an animal observed, but a symbol projected. Dogs, another constant fixture of farm living, became the bull’s nemesis, eventually transforming from domestic animals to wolf-like symbols of predation. My color palettes range from the earthen to the hyper-saturated, and the choices I make in this regard are as intuitive and emotionally charged as my relationships with my subjects. ”

Hung Liu is primarily known as a painter of Chinese subjects, typically from the 19th and 20th centuries, whose paintings are based on historical Chinese photographs. Given the historical, often tragic subject matter she represents, her style is a kind of weeping realism. Liu’s newest paintings, however, are based upon the Dustbowl and Depression era photographs of American documentary photographer Dorothea Lange, whom Liu has long admired.

Shifting focus from Chinese to American subjects may seem a surprise to Liu’s audience, at first. But by training her attention on the displaced individuals and wandering families of the American Dustbowl, Liu finds a landscape of overarching struggle and underlying humanity that for her is familiar terrain, having been raised in China during an era (Mao’s) of epic revolution, tumult, and displacement. The 1930s Oakies and Bindle-stiff’s wandering like ghosts through Liu’s new paintings are American peasants on their way to California, the promised land.

In her paintings for the Byron Cohen and Sherry Leedy Galleries, Liu – who is known for a fluid style in which drips and washes of linseed oil dissolve the photo-based images the way time erodes memory – has developed a kind of topographic realism in which the paint coagulates around a webbing of colored lines, together enmeshed in a rich surface that belies the poverty of her subjects. In this, the new paintings are more factually woven to Lange’s photographs while also releasing the energy of color like a radiant of hope from beneath the grey-tones of history.

This approach first emerged from an accident in which Liu, who was sketching figures from an image projected on a blank canvas, ran out of charcoal and, to finish the drawing, resorted to colored chalk. Reminded of her Chinese academic training in which orange lines are often used beneath neo-classical and realist propaganda painting, she began experimenting with colored lines, soon in oil paint. The paradoxical result has been a softening of the ground and a hardening – a kind of mapping – of the figures, whose edges and outlines and details are sharpened by the colorful lines and squiggles that both stiffen and liberate them. In short, looking hard at Lange’s photographs has changed Liu’s painting, allowing her empathic sense of touch, and her deeply intuitive knowledge of color as a liberating force, to make contact with the stories underlying their surfaces – stories which, whether Chinese or American, continue emerging like hope for all who still seek a place in history.

Artists Andy Newcom and Marn Jensen have been friends and creative co-workers for over 35 years and share a love for older people. As Hallmark Barbara Marshall Award co-winners in 2018, they were given the opportunity to work on a passion-led project. Together they chose to interview over 200 elders across the country — to gather their wishes for themselves, their families and for the world. Based on those wishes to the world, Newcom and Jensen created artwork in a poignant and memorable way. The event was met with great enthusiasm and success, so they continued their mission to give voice to those who are not always heard.

This exhibit comprises a range of mediums — from photographic to sculptural, textile to encaustic, mixed media to painting — allowing the “wish” to inspire the direction of each art piece. The artists were intentional about the materials used, often incorporating repurposed, found objects that had once been discarded and tossed aside. “Breathing new life into these objects is a perfect metaphor for appreciating the potential and beauty in old things,” they explained.

Experienced in both writing and visual art, Newcom and Jensen bring both aspects to this exhibit. “We have a love for story-telling as well as the visual work. It was important for us both to give each piece a slice of context to set the stage,” Newcom says. The artists’ wish is that this body of work inspires people to reach out and have a conversation with an elder. They promise, “it will not only make their day, but it will make your day, too.”

Art of the Wish Story

Common Thread brings together the work of five ceramic artists who are inspired by textiles and textile processes. While the artists’ inspirations and representations vary, each incorporates fibers or fiber techniques in their process.

Shae Bishop explores the relationship between ceramics and textiles by making connections between each medium’s cultural history, pattern-making systems, and interactions with the human body. His work includes wearable garment sculptures made of interlaced ceramic tiles. Jeremy Brooks crochets, knits, and weaves strands of elastic clay to create forms that are inspired by traditional vessel making, mundane objects, and the queer experience. April Felipe’s collaged works blend ceramics, fiber, and wood and reference her childhood home, themes of identity, and the desire to belong. Inspired by ancient Italian and Lithuanian techniques, Anna Valenti’s woven and pinched clay vessels highlight shared traditions, human interaction, connectivity, and empathy. Casey Whittier’s work examines the systems of construction adopted from historical craft disciplines. Linking forms such as ceramic coils and beads she creates ceramic quilts, flowers, and other objects used in daily life.

The artists in Common Thread demonstrate a mastery of craft, a profound understanding of human connection, and share a playful and experimental approach to clay materials and processes.

Each year, the Four Chapter Gallery partners with the Kansas City Art Institute Fiber Department to present the work of an outstanding graduating senior.

This year, we are excited to invite you to view the work of Hùng Lê, a Vietnamese-American artist. In his exhibit, Bảo Ơi, the artist considers the liminal space he occupies as an inheritor of two counties. Utilizing fabric, photographs, and found objects in combination with laser engraving and woodworking, Lê excavates memory and history to better understand himself and provide a methodology to help him navigate through larger cultural ideas and established structures such as society or family.