Cary Esser‘s new series of intimate ceramic wall works, Minerality, explore the alchemy of glaze and the mystery of lacuna. Variations of form and the skin of surface on Esser’s book-sized structures are glazed with crystal, lusters of percious metal and vibrant color.

An ongoing connection between organic and geometric structures in my work has played a role in the creation and evolution of each new series. My early sensibilities as an artist were influenced by our built environments, and in particular by tiles and ornament with motifs of flora and fauna.

Esser is the Chair of Ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work is in the collections of Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT; John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI, and numerous others.

Patty Carroll continues her exploration of every-woman in Miss Adventures a series of photographic, primarily domestic, tableaus that her anonymous women inhabit. Bad judgement and overwhelming décor choices pave the road to happiness.

The photographs of Patty Carroll are held in the permanent collections of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Library of Congress, Washington, DC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and numerous others.

Inspired by the colors, shapes, lines and textures in nature, I enjoy developing layers of history within my work using paint and mark making. Each mark, scrape, and tear reveals the history and beauty underneath the surface. I enjoy finding hidden beauty in a landscape and employ abstraction to bring forth the essence of the scene. Using oil paint with cold wax medium in my paintings allows me to create many transparent and opaque layers which I can excavate into, thus revealing hidden treasures underneath.

It is my hope that the art I create brings the viewer into a closer looking experience and succeeds in expressing the beauty, intrigue and depth in the world around us. – Linda Nickell

Currently residing in Leawood, KS, Linda Nickell enjoys creating art in her home studio space.

13th Annual Visions of the Flint Hills Art Benefit and Sale is a juried exhibition featuring artwork of the remarkable ecosystem that is the Flint Hills. The Flint Hills region contains the largest tallgrass prairie in North America. The beautiful scenes of the prairie inspire artists locally and nationally.

All artworks in this exhibition will depict or be derived from the Flint Hills region of Kansas. This exhibit will run from October 1st – December 16, 2021 at Buttonwood Art Space, 3013 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64108.

Art sales benefit Friends of Konza Prairie (FOKP), a friends group of Kansas State University. FOKP promotes educational research and experiences in the Konza Prairie Biological Station, an area of the Flint Hills just south of Manhattan, Kansas. The 8,600 acre Konza Prairie and the surrounding Flint Hills region contain the largest remaining parcels of the Tallgrass Prairie that once covered 140 million acres in North America.

Derek Au, Eliza Au, Yewen Dong, Sin-ying Ho, Jing Huang, Nuokan Huang, Wanying Liang, Shiyuan Xu, ChengOu Yu

Belger Crane Yard Gallery presents Journeys opening Friday, October 1, 6 pm – 8 pm at 2011 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108. Artists’ remarks at 6:30 pm. The exhibition will remain on view through January 8, 2022.

Journeys features the ceramic works of nine artists who were either born in China or are of Chinese descent. The exhibition explores themes of identity in a multicultural world, examining both the juxtapositions and intersections between Eastern and Western cultures. Duality and the vacillation between two worlds is present within each artist’s body of work as well as throughout the exhibition.

The passage of time is captured in the crumbling facades of Yewen Dong’s two large-scale wall works. These unfired clay tiles explore the residual traces of touch and memory. Memory also plays a role in the floral porcelain pieces by Wanying Liang. Liang’s works give form to her memories of childhood in China, the questions she has for her mother, and personal struggles with her own body. The physical and mental distance between past and present drives the work of Jing Huang as she constructs ambiguous landscapes that are neither here nor there. Eliza Au utilizes computer-aided methods to reference historical architecture. Au’s wireframe-like pieces explore the limits of interior and exterior space, strength and fragility, and reference both mathematics and the patterns of religious ornamentation. In his series “Simulant,” Derek Au toys with concepts of authenticity and tradition with his use of alternative materials to mimic traditional Chinese porcelain and glaze. Fragility and strength, order and chaos, simplicity and complexity are all present in the amoeba-like forms of Shiyuan Xu. Xu’s porcelain structures reference cellular organisms and the rhythms of growth in response to internal and external forces. The relationship between position and perspective is central to the work of ChengOu Yu as he explores the way experience is distorted based on location. The tiny pottery landscapes of Nuokan Huang feel both contained and limitless – delicate scenes of personal space and boundless imagination. In contrast to the minuscule works of Nuokan Huang is the human-scale vessel of Sin-ying Ho. Ho’s work is covered in cultural, religious, and economic symbolism and touches on themes of dislocation, globalization, and identity. Journeys encompasses an intense blend of imagery combined with traditional and contemporary fabrication techniques and embodies a complex collision of cultures.