Join us for First Fridays at Cézanne as we welcome renowned artist Jim Sajovic with his newest exhibition: Energy, Passion, Ecstasy — a vivid exploration of color, space, and emotion.

Jim Sajovic was born in Chicago and studied painting at the University of Illinois and the University of Florida. He is a recipient of a Mid-America Arts Alliance/NEA Fellowship Award in Painting and is Professor Emeritus at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he influenced generations of artists.

Sajovic’s works are held in public and private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. His paintings have been exhibited widely — in cities including New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Edinburgh, Paris, Milan, Rome, and Venice. His art has been featured in Art in America, Flash Art, New American Paintings, Kansas City Studio Magazine, and the book Notes for a Young Painter (Prentice-Hall), among other publications.

His recent paintings present shifting fields, optical phenomena, color interaction, and spatial ambiguity — all working together to suggest energy fields, passion, and transcendent states.

🖼 Energy, Passion, Ecstasy

📍 Cézanne – 2016 Main St, KCMO

🗓 Friday, June 7 | ⏰ 6 – 10PM

Experience a night of movement, emotion, and visual intensity in the heart of the Crossroads.

Through a series of deconstructed portraits that I call Non-portraits, I explore different manifestations of “the self” as a means of probing Identity and the Human experience. Some of the larger themes I’m grappling with in these works are notions of death and rebirth, the boundaries between mortality and Eternity, the self and otherness, portraiture and iconoclasm. 

I combine drawing, painting, digital mark-making, sewing, and image transfers from select source material that I manipulate in a layered process that is cyclic. My interest in multiplicity and deconstruction drives me to take my own images apart, to reassemble, rearrange, and recycle them to use as a foundation to build new images. This enables me to explore different iterations of the aforementioned themes, while also reinforcing the cyclic nature of making and the dialogue between and within the works themselves. 

Artist Statement:
I use artwork as a tool to search for meaning — to make sense of myself, the world and the Human Experience. I weave together representational and abstract elements with a range of literary, historical and philosophical references to create narratives with overlapping meanings. This is embodied in my work through a motif called the Non-portrait. The Non-portraits started as a response to two competing impulses I felt to simultaneously reject and participate in portraiture. The Non-portrait is a way of drawing on aspects of my own lived experiences that are contradictory (for example feeling invisible and hypervisible at the same time), while also serving as an archetype with which to explore larger themes that connect to the broader Human Experience. 

Artist Bio:
Askia is a Missouri-based artist who was born in Queens, New York. Working between representation and abstraction, he employs a mixed media approach that combines acrylic, oil paint, dry media, digital media and collage elements to tell stories about the Human Experience. He graduated from Columbia College (Missouri) with a BFA and he received his MFA from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Askia exhibits his artwork regionally and nationally. He also holds a Master’s in English and teaches at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Created in the solitude of the early morning, The Verdant Hours is a collection of contemporary mixed media works that explore the intersection of nature and urban expression. Each piece is a fusion of raw graffiti energy and the delicate beauty of botanical forms — where the resilience of nature meets the grit of the streets.

Built in layers, these works combine acrylic, pigment inks, oil sticks, pastel and hand-cut Japanese KOZO paper to create richly textured surfaces. Using an alternative printmaking process, pigment inks and the artist’s own photography are burnished into the surface by hand, embedding imagery into the composition like a memory pressed into time. This tactile process allows each layer to reveal something new — subtle remnants of previous marks, traces of botanical forms, and echoes of urban landscapes.

Through abstract interpretations and floral shapes, The Verdant Hours reimagines the essence of botanicals, capturing their forms in unexpected ways. The rhythmic layering of materials reflects the harmony and tension between the organic and the industrial, the ephemeral and the enduring.

This exhibition celebrates the coexistence of two seemingly opposing forces — urban culture and the natural world — revealing the beauty that emerges from their convergence. The Verdant Hours invites viewers to pause, look closer, and to find wonder in the places where nature persists, even in the most unlikely environments.

Artist Statement:

My work is a fusion of photography, printmaking, and painting — an ongoing exploration of the unexpected relationship between street art and nature. At first glance, graffiti and botanicals seem like opposites, but both are acts of mark-making, subject to time, decay, and renewal. 

Graffiti layers over itself as new artists leave their mark, much like a garden where plants grow, fade, and regenerate. Both evolve, transforming walls and landscapes into living, ever-changing compositions.

I am inspired by graffiti’s raw energy and the ephemeral beauty of botanicals. A single gesture — a faded tag, a bold stroke of color, a vine creeping over a wall — feeds my creative process. 

Using an alternative printmaking technique, I merge elements from photographs of graffiti, botanicals, and insects, burnishing pigment inks onto layered surfaces of paint and mixed media. Through this tactile process, the vibrancy of street art intertwines with the organic flow of nature, creating immersive, dreamlike compositions.

I see my work ever changing — where the urban and the organic coexist, fade, and begin anew.

Artist Bio:

Katrina Revenaugh is a photographer, printmaker and painter. She combines those disciplines to transform the grit and chaos of street art into her own visual language.

Over the years, she has traveled to 24 cities across 11 countries to photograph graffiti in the world’s most dynamic street art environments. She sees graffiti as the purest form of “mark making” — a raw, expressive connection between artist and city, a visual language that tells the story of a place and people.

Drawing from her travels, she fuses the energy of urban art with the delicate beauty of nature. Using an alternative printmaking process, she layers her own photographs of graffiti, botanicals, and insects, burnishing pigment inks onto painted surfaces.

Gestures intertwine with flowers, vines, and textures, combining the organic and the industrial in unexpected ways. Each piece is a layered narrative, a fusion of marks and memories that blur the lines between past and present, nature and city.

Originally from the Midwest, Katrina spent her teen years in rural Southern Illinois, where her love for nature and flowers grew. Later, living near Venice Beach and attending Otis College of Art & Design, she developed a fascination with graffiti and street art. This dual passion fuels her ever-growing archive of images, gathered from alleys and gardens alike, forming the foundation of her work. She currently resides in Kansas City. 

🎉 Join us at VIA KC Apartments for our exciting Open House event! As newcomers to the neighborhood, we can’t wait to welcome you to our stunning luxury community nestled in the vibrant Crossroads District. Explore our modern amenities designed for comfort and style, including spacious floor plans perfect for your lifestyle.

At VIA KC, we’re more than just apartments; we’re a community hub with exclusive perks like our Preferred Employer Program, ensuring you receive the best value and convenience. Discover why VIA KC is the perfect home for you, from our sleek finishes to our pet-friendly amenities.

Mark your calendars and join us for an unforgettable tour of VIA KC. Visit viakc.com to learn more about our unique offerings and how we’re redefining urban living in Kansas City. See you at the Open House – where luxury meets community! 🏢✨

Studios Inc and Misha Kligman present “Seen/Unseen: Survey of Misha Kligman’s Work”, an exhibition open June 6th First Friday from 5 – 8 pm.

“Seen/Unseen: Survey of Misha Kligman’s Work” reaches into different periods and bodies of work spanning the last 18 years of the artist’s evolving creative practice. The show examines the origins and continued engagement with ideas such as landscape and figure contaminated by history, absence/presence of spirit in the world, model of artist as a mystic, as well as journeys both physical and emotional. The show includes several of most recent paintings where histories fracture and collapse, and private lives unfold amidst conflict both internal and external.

Launched to serve mid-career artists, Studios Inc is Kansas City’s only nonprofit arts organization offering pivotal three-year residencies to mid-career artists who are poised to significantly expand their careers. Studios Inc offers a unique immersion experience for resident artists, who use their studio and exhibition space to produce and exhibit work, network and learn from one another, and attract and cultivate relationships with art patrons, collectors, and arts professionals.

“Seen/Unseen: Survey of Misha Kligman’s Work” will be on view in studios.gallery through June 14th, 2025. Exhibition hours are Wednesday thru Friday 10am-4pm and Saturday 12 – 4pm.

Featured image: “The Stranger” Misha Kligman, Oil on linen, 2023