Kris Schmolze has been working as a full-time visual artist and musician since 2016. Drawing inspiration from science, technology, and nature. Kris’s recent work is investigating abstract painting through the exploration of color relationships derived from imagery found in the natural world.

_____

It has been quite a year for however long. So many things happened and yet nothing did. Distancing, dying, isolating, masking, vaccinating, and all the while I was creating. Initially, I was paralyzed as COVID-19 kicked off. Elective surgeries were canceled as a fistula festered in between my mouth and sinuses from a botched dental extraction. I was granted two life-saving procedures by a pair of surgeons. My partner, our pet, and I decided to flee Kansas City as mask holes moseyed about.

We found safe harbor with her parents in her hometown for a few weeks until a derecho decimated Cedar Rapids. I had started the architectural portrait in pencil of the A T Averill house prior and painted it post in Grandview for three weeks at her grandmother’s home until power and internet returned. A room in the Averill house became my studio for this artwork and sheltered us from the storm.

Spent the remainder of the summer, autumn, winter, and into the spring working with color and composition wishing to open up into exploring abstraction. Once the new studio space was set up I began building dozens of large canvases just before another surgery to repair my foot from a car wreck. This put me on my duff for several months so I began drawing with alcohol-based markers filling whole sheets of archival paper.

It is usually good to have an idea to explore with your work while searching for multiple answers to questions you find interesting. Looking at images from electron microscopes and images from deep space telescopes I found these tiny and gigantic worlds enveloping our lives while reaching far from the world we live on. I found the coloring choices scientists make of these black and white images fascinating by helping to define these pictures of creatures and landscapes more clearly.

I explored how colors relate to each other through designs and patterns. Warm colors versus cool colors. Positive space versus negative space. The paints I use are fluorescent at times; some glow under black light and most have an ultraviolet light resistance, which allows them to remain vivid for decades. Initially, I was working very tight on smaller canvasses. Eventually, I became more comfortable opening up to the space provided by larger surfaces. Finally, things began to integrate and overlap.

No matter how bad I thought a drawing or painting was going I forced myself to complete it and then move on. Every one of these artworks went through a period of time where I felt it was ugly or not working out. It can be as frustrating as it is rewarding to make art. Not everything you make will be great. As an artist, you do not know how people will respond. Pieces I feel are strongest for me may not be the same for anyone else. You never know until you put it out there. Stopping when things are difficult assures your work will never get better. So why quit if you are behind when you can just keep making art and see where you end up instead?

Join the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center for two complimentary Solo Art Exhibitions by brother and sister Troy and Holly Swangstu, June 4‑July 31, 2021 in the main gallery space. Both artists will be showcasing new bodies of work produced over the last two years paying tribute to Jim Leedy’s legacy of fostering creative experimentation, as well as the artists, own personal histories, educational backgrounds, and artistic evolutions that forged them into the innovators they are today.

Holly’s showcase, entitled, Elemental Intentions, will focus on her signature use of fiber as a painting and drawing material to create evocative colorscapes, coupled with new and exciting divergences in mixed media.

Troy’s exhibit, titled Blankety Blank, Blank, will explore his viscerally expressive and symbolically potent images inspired by the day-to-day rigors of farm life. Troy’s installation will also include a special collaboration featuring multi-disciplinary artist, writer, teacher, and Kansas City institution, Jose Faus.

Both Holly and Troy are heavily inspired by the natural world, but neither allows the objectively referential to dominate their work, instead transfiguring the commonplace through the lens of memory, feeling, and the process of art-making itself. Though bound by shared experience as siblings and the heady influence of early days in the then fledgling Crossroads Art District, these artists have nonetheless undertaken wildly divergent paths. As these two solo shows will make clear, these paths, while sometimes meandering, always circled back to an unwavering core focus, Art with a capital A.

Summer Invitational

Annie Herrero, Annie Helmericks-Louder, Barbara Rogers,

Cathy Logan, Emily Sall, Jane Booth,

John Ferry, John Louder, Ky Anderson,

Marcus Cain, Mary Ann Strandell, Nicole McLaughlin,

Norman Akers, Patty Carroll, Rhonda Gates,

Rosalyn Schwartz, Sun Smith-Foret, Tom Huck,

Tom Jones, Vera Mercer

{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 Crane Yard Gallery presents Reset, Belger Arts annual resident exhibition. Reset celebrates the work of the current Artists in Residence: Elaine Buss, Coleton Lunt, Lilly Powell, Kate Schroeder, Amy Young, and ChengOu Yu.

For the six artists, the past year has been one of reworking schedules, readjusting expectations, redefining “normal,” and reimagining the future, in a world that’s still reemerging. Reset is the culmination of a year in which existence was pulled inward – into the smaller spheres of our homes, our immediate surroundings, and often within our own minds.

Referencing architectural forms, the work of Elaine Buss is driven by intuition and a surrender to natural forces. Her instinctive making process becomes a playful flow between cause and effect. Coleton Lunt’s sculpture cluster explores the notion that ecosystems exist all around us, and how cycles of addition and loss create an ever-changing present state. The work of Lilly Powell directs attention to the often overlooked or discarded objects we routinely touch but take for granted. Kate Schroeder’s light installation draws the eye upward and into an enchanting array of tiny, illustrated worlds. Each ceramic light fixture offers a serene view of domestic life, surrounded by the familiar objects of home. ChengOu Yu’s distorted vessel forms demonstrate how perspective and location can alter an experience and influence understanding. The figurative work of Amy Young delves into the interior of a mind living with PTSD. Through detailed symbolism and intricately carved surfaces, Young gives shape to feelings of pain, struggle, and acceptance.

Belger Crane Yard Studios continues to host national and international artists through its Artists in Residence program. A residency provides ceramic artists the opportunity to expand their body of work or create a special project that may be outside of the scope of their routine studio practice.

For high-resolution images, click here. Artist bios and additional images are available on our website.