Belger Arts Center presents La Gruta/The Grotto: Joann Quiñones, opening Friday, September 3, at 2100 Walnut Street, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through February 5, 2022.

Joann Quiñones’ exhibition is based on the concept of the grotto, an artificial or natural cavern used for both sanctuary and devotion. Rich in iconography and symbolism, La Gruta/The Grotto holds figurative sculptures, including “relics,” that explore the intricacies of race, class, gender, sexuality and religion — concepts that are highly ritualized. The work in the exhibition is an invitation to contemplate narratives of the domestic, family, and womanhood and how they are complicated by a history of slavery, stolen labor, and racism, particularly in the U.S. and the Caribbean.

In addition to these concepts, the materials selected by the artist have historical and personal significance. According to Quiñones, “I work with all materials, but consider ceramics and fibers to be foundational to my process and thinking because of their long history and aesthetic traditions in places like West Africa, Spain and the Americas.”

Joann Quiñones (they/them) is a mixed media artist who creates figurative work in order to explore Afro-Latinx identity. They were selected as an Emerging Artist of 2020 by Ceramics Monthly, were a Manifest Gallery Annual Prize Finalist, and received an Honorable Mention for the James Renwick Alliance Chrysalis Award. Their work has been shown nationally, including in the 2020 NCECA Annual Exhibition, The Burdens of History. Quiñones has an MFA in Studio Art from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa. They are currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Alfred University, NY.

For high-resolution images, click here. Artist bio and additional images are available on our website. For a PDF of the press release, click here.

“My pastel drawings are based on direct observation and seek to tell a visual story about the beauty and depth of life around me, made precious by the truth of its transitory nature. I am interested in what is discovered and revealed during the process of slow looking over a long period of time, as the drawing evolves, creating itself, slowly, mark-by-mark.”

- Sherry Leedy

Sherry Leedy is best known for her day job as Director and Curator of Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art. Few know that she works the night shift drawing in her studio with soft pastels on paper.

Her drawings are connected to the long and rich tradition of Vanitas and the symbolic meaning of objects. Often loaded with personal meaning, the visual power of Leedy’s drawings resides in form, pattern, color, light, rhythm and line. Over the 30 years that Leedy has owned her gallery, this is her first one- person exhibition in the space she calls her own.

Leedy holds a BFA degree from the Kansas City Art Institute and a MFA from the University of Kansas. Her work is in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; the Los Angeles County Museum, LA, CA; University of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff; First National Bank, Columbia, MO; AT&T, Kansas City, MO and others.

Every unit depends on every other unit. I have so much to say and an inadequate relationship with language. My work is an outlet for me to ask questions or hold ideas that I have no other place for.

The repeated circular units and repetitive processes that I build with are symbols of these repeated thoughts and unanswered questions. Eventually, these units come together to create other forms, define interior and exterior spaces, or create patterns and imagery. Adapted and adopted from other historical craft disciplines, the techniques of linking and looping or weaving units together are physical reminders of the power of many and the agency of one. Even with thousands of units, one broken link or one frayed thread reshapes the whole.

Unlike the mantras or the slogans we shout and post to align ourselves with social groups or ideologies, the questions that consume me are full of contradictions and confusion. They are powerful, present, quiet, persistent. In a Whisper, With a Word brings together works that embody seemingly dichotomous physical and emotional truths – that we can be both strong and fragile, simple and complicated, long-lasting and fleeting, vague and specific, concise and discursive.

In Arthurian legend, the Questing Beast was a monster born of a cursed woman. In the story, the woman strikes a deal with the devil to make someone fall in love with her, and thus ultimately brings a curse upon herself. Once born, her child becomes the Questing Beast, a fearsome, snake-headed chimera and the hunting target of many a knight. The beast, through the curse laid on its mother, is born into a world in which its role is cemented and its fate sealed.

I think often in my work about roles which are set out for us by others. As a young woman, I could not help but notice gendered expectations of how I should look and behave, and what skills and career paths I ought to be interested in. Frequently I felt that I did not quite fit in. I often turned to fantasy tales for solace, but there were gendered expectations there too. Female power was often depicted as entirely evil, as with powerful witches, or entirely good, as with angelic princesses. Cursed women, and figures such as the Questing Beast, tugged at my sympathy because of their tragic origins and seemingly incontrovertible fates. Generally, these women sinned by desiring things they should not. At times I wondered what the author was trying to say by including female characters with such unflattering, ill-conceived and petty motivations. What if these cursed women were allowed to step out of these roles? If they wrote their own stories, what would be the purpose of their quests?

In this show, I’ve included a number of works featuring young women and their animal companions on their own individual quests. I invite the viewer to consider what roles each might be playing and what is happening in each story.