Join us for a neighborhood block party! We’re welcoming our neighborhood to the Downtown Campus on Friday, October 1, for food trucks, games, live music, tours of the space, and the Four Chapter Gallery’s First Friday art exhibit. There will be something for everyone – young and young at heart.

As a part of our celebration, please bring a toy to donate to Crossroads Academy for the Christmas toy drive! This drive provides Christmas gifts for school families needing support. We want to ensure scholars receive gifts during the holiday season. You can find item suggestions HERE:

https://cckc.church/event/new-kids-on-the-block-neighborhood-block-party/

We can’t wait to see you on October 1!

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.

Belger Arts Center presents {not} Quiet on the Western Front, opening Friday, June 4, 6 pm – 9 pm at 2100 Walnut Street, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through January 8, 2022.

{not} Quiet on the Western Front includes work by west coast artists from the Belger Collection who helped define the Funk Art movement. Funk came onto the art scene like a car wreck with its anti-formalist aesthetic, tongue-in-cheek commentary, irreverent character, and humor. Invoking a sense of cathartic release to the violent times of the 1960s, it was an alternative to mainstream art that made political commentary on war, gender, racial tension, and other social threats palatable. While its point of origin can be traced to 1950s northern California, the attitudes and approaches of Funk artists spread to other parts of the country and lives on in work by contemporary artists today.

Artists in the exhibition include Robert Arneson, Clayton Bailey, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Robert Hudson, Ed Kienholz, Ed Massey, Ron Nagle, H.C. Westermann, and William T. Wiley.

This exhibition is dedicated to William T. Wiley, a founder of the Funk Art movement, and a core artist of the Belger Collection. After a long and successful career, which included teaching at the University of California – Davis, he died on April 25, 2021, at the age of 83. He will be missed.Belger Arts Center presents {not} Quiet on the Western Front, opening Friday, June 4, 6 pm – 9 pm at 2100 Walnut Street, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through January 8, 2022.

{not} Quiet on the Western Front includes work by west coast artists from the Belger Collection who helped define the Funk Art movement. Funk came onto the art scene like a car wreck with its anti-formalist aesthetic, tongue-in-cheek commentary, irreverent character, and humor. Invoking a sense of cathartic release to the violent times of the 1960s, it was an alternative to mainstream art that made political commentary on war, gender, racial tension, and other social threats palatable. While its point of origin can be traced to 1950s northern California, the attitudes and approaches of Funk artists spread to other parts of the country and lives on in work by contemporary artists today.

Artists in the exhibition include Robert Arneson, Clayton Bailey, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Robert Hudson, Ed Kienholz, Ed Massey, Ron Nagle, H.C. Westermann, and William T. Wiley.

This exhibition is dedicated to William T. Wiley, a founder of the Funk Art movement, and a core artist of the Belger Collection. After a long and successful career, which included teaching at the University of California – Davis, he died on April 25, 2021, at the age of 83. He will be missed.

In this exhibition, Kelly Porter introduces more than 25 large-scale oil on canvas paintings and nearly 20 monotypes and mixed media works on paper. The work is organic, transcendent and presciently timely, born out of Porter’s decades-long fascination with the basic, essential forms of pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses, their shapes imbued with an inherent beauty that reveals itself under a microscope. That some of the most deadly pathogens look like beautiful flowers at the microscopic level has long intrigued Porter, and inspired her to translate them into ‘atomic flowers.’ The energy of these living forms radiate a powerful vibrancy that is simultaneously constrained and explosive. In Porter’s body of work, atomic flowers are abundant, vivacious and powerful subjects that are brought forward through the medium of art.

Inspired by German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that it is our faculty of judgement that enables us to experience beauty and we grasp those experiences as part of an ordered, natural world with purpose, Porter, too, finds the physical world to be unified, functional, compatible and purposeful. But she delves deeper into unseen worlds, unavailable to the naked eye, and through her exploration offers viewers perspective and appreciation for these natural forms that, indeed, are beautiful.

Porter’s immersion in her fine art deeply influences her commercial work as co-founder of Porter Teleo, a line of hand printed, hand painted wallcovering and fabric that is highly sought after by many of the world’s leading interior designers. The very focused approach she takes to her studio work often leads to new discoveries for her design work, resulting in wallpaper and textile patterns that are entirely new – the intersection where art meets design.

Porter is from Dallas, TX. She received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO in 1997, where she studied printmaking and philosophy. Upon receiving a full scholarship, she continued her education at the State University of New York in Buffalo, NY, where she received an MFA in 1999. Porter returned to Kansas City for a teaching position at the Kansas City Art Institute and began showing her work in galleries across the country. Kelly Porter’s work has been described by critics as “unique, composed and calming, with layered and labor intensive surfaces.”

Her honors include being named as one of the “21 Under 30 Top Artists to Watch” in 2004 by Southwest-Art Magazine, “Top Visual Artist” in 2006 by Kansas City Magazine, a “Merit Award for Best Product Design” from Interior Design Magazine, 2008, and a number of editorials in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Vogue, Town and Country, Women’s Wear Daily, Veranda, Metropolitan Home, House Beautiful, Spaces Kansas City and IN Kansas City Magazine for her surface design work for Porter Teleo.

Help us celebrate First Friday in October as we head into cooler months! Artistry KC Apartments will host an outdoor sip and shop pop-up event with a live DJ, food truck (Sugar Skull Grill), drinks, and plenty of vendors to shop from, just in time to start holiday shopping!

We hope you stop by to support our local KC small business owners and artists!