The CURATOR’S CHOICE exhibition features multiple curators selections from the Studios Inc Collection. The participating curators will share what and why they chose a specific piece to showcase from the collection. Similar to the previous exhibition, THROUGH THE EYES OF A COLLECTOR, this exhibition will highlight different perspectives and reactions to artworks in the Studios Inc Collection.

Two weekends, two opportunities to enjoy a relaxing holiday shopping experience at Belger Crane Yard Studios! Functional and decorative ceramics and jewelry by Studio members and resident artists will be on display and available for purchase. Choose from a variety of styles and prices and meet the artists. There’s something for everyone on your gift list!

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Dan Altnether, Summer Brooks +, Elaine Buss *, Kelly Daniels, Jackie Denning *, Eleanor Foy *, Lindsey Johnson, Elina Jurado, Paul Mallory, Paul Maloney, Carolyn Mimbs, Ken Moberg +, Katherine Moes +, Helen Moore, Sarah Jewell Olsen +, Sunyoung Park *, Michael Perrine, Lilly Powell, Adams Puryear *, Jamie Reynolds, Cydney Ross, Meredeth Viker, Nicole Rene Woodard, Angela Varga * , and Manda Wylde. Please stay tuned for additional artists.

+ — participating in first sale only

* — participating in second sale only

Belger Crane Yard Studios is also one of the tour locations included in the Kansas City Clay Guild’s Holiday Sale and Pottery Tour on December 3 and 4.

Belger Arts is committed to maintaining a safe place for our visitors, studio members, and staff. Following the City of Kansas City, Missouri City Council vote of November 4, 2021, masks are not required.

For more information, please contact Studio Manager Paul Maloney at 816 – 474-7316 or email at pmaloney@belgerartscenter.org.

Ruthell’s Beauty Salon, formerly the place of business for Mrs. Ruthell Winkfield, is the place that Adam Jones has chosen to resurrect. (seen here in about 1978 — photo by Bernard “Step Buddy” Anderson)

It will be known as Ruthell’s Cafe and Club. In the heart of the Jazz District at 18th and Vine, Ruthelle’s is a project that brings together community members, artists, vernacular architecture, smart design, historic preservation, music and great food to another valued city block of Kansas City. This is a carefully considered project that fuses fine art with social priorities and most importantly foregrounds KC’s modern jazz enduring legacy.

As a visual artist who cut his teeth in KC playing jazz and world music with BCR, I am so proud to be a part of this project. In digging deep into the history of the 18 artists in the paintings, my connection with the music has led me down a rich path that keeps on calling. The neighborhood offers up a motherload of jazz history and Black Life in the Midwest. For myself, the city is still so familiar in its myriad ways from my memories of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. The East Side opens up in a way I never really fully understood before.

As a young student I was familiar with Milton’s and I played in a few of the bars that no longer exist. The industrial grit of KC was something that burned into my psyche. Dumpster diving was a necessary activity to further my art. I hung with a group that thrived on repurposed industrial waste. We wallpapered our apartments with overprints, plastered our cars with self-adhesive silkscreens, reused rolls of blueprint paper that was normally refuse. Salvage was our salvation. Knowledge of downtown’s manufacturers, postcard printers, silk screeners and paper suppliers provided my art supplies. The soundtrack and the food were from Milton’s, Ruby’s, Sanderson’s and Bryant’s of course.

So when I was asked if I would paint portraits of these pioneers I simply — could — not — wait — to start the process. It is with this entirely local spirit of adventure that this restoration project moves ahead. We hear the sax solos, we breathe with the vocalists, the piano riffs, the bass lines and the rhythms egg us on. Barbecue for lunch is the reward and the city is an instrument we can hear and play. The artists who came before us gave us some real stuff to think about. The new kids are all around us with their own takes on jazz all over again. The Kansas City Jazz Hall of Fame will be for them one day — we hope.

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Adam Jones and Cliff Baldwin have been collaborating for over 40 years. In 1980 while students at the Kansas City Art Institute they formed an avant-garde minimalist vocal quartet and performed a set of text-songs, Winds Against Us along with Fluxus pioneer Davi Det Hompson. Later projects centered around renovating neglected structures in New York and Missouri. In 1995 they salvaged materials from multiple midwestern locations to restore the J. V. Wilson Barn, now a Long Island landmark.

in 2004 Baldwin and Jones teamed up again on the historic Frederick Hotel, a 19th century gem located on the banks of the river in Boonville, Missouri. In 2008 they formed the In-Site Group to pitch their solution for artists studios on Governor’s Island in New York City as the island was reopening. Finally in 2021 Ruthell’s Cafe and Club brings the team together again to produce the Kansas City Jazz Hall of Fame.

Ada Koch’s preoccupation with war began with her childhood in Oak Ridge, TN where both parents worked at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, a production site for the Manhattan Project where researchers developed the atomic bomb. She was persistently reminded of WAR: the Cold War, the Vietnam War, anti-war songs, local bomb shelters, and bomb drills in school. Now, decades later, Ada revisits anti-war protest songs from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s in her quest to understand the repetition of violent cycles. Sadly, the songs of the past are currently relevant in the context of local and international violence.

Collectively, the pieces in this show touch on causes of war (power, fear, confusion, misinformation) which lead to violence, hate, and death. Yet Ada promotes a REMIX, taking what we have learned from a violent history and hoping for a more positive outcome with an emphasis on love and individuals.