May Art Exhibition & Artist Talks — All My Relations, featuring father and daughter, Phillip J. Pursel and Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel. Curated by Daniela Failla

We will be open First Friday, masks and social distancing required.

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Phillip J. Pursel

Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel

Explosive energy dominates the work of Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides. Krepp locates a powerful gesture in found materials, in blown-out shredded tires which are gathered from highway debris. Blow-outs force the wires, embedded in the rubber, into writhing gesticulations of accumulated stress. Petrides utilizes simple tools and the basic element of drawing – the line — to enact roiling abstractions of overwhelming natural forces into baroque masses. Both artists see aggressive marking as an emblematic carrier of immense forces within urban and natural environments. Petrides and Krepp achieve a linear complexity, referencing turbulent atmospheres and tangled social workings, thus posing questions about the relationship between human actions and nature’s limitations.

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My drawings are immersive large-scale abstractions based on travels to magnificent natural phenomena such as volcanoes, icebergs, glaciers, caves, and the aurora borealis. I am interested in how nostalgic evocations of the transcendent resonate with contemporary social pressures on the environment: What is awe and wonder when saturated with guilt and regret? Me images utilize dramatic Romantic suggestions of the infinite and the sublime, which then collapse into shifting tensions that mirror our current uncertain engagement with nature. — Olivia Petrides

With these visually complex, sometimes compacted, sometimes expansive works, I strive for a different kind of communication where a poetic dynamic is felt before the content is understood. It becomes twofold. In some works, the bending and almost lyrical tire forms I couple with needlepoint stitches in the shadows and interstices. With this I look to set up an interplay between the brute/power of the road and the delicate/vulnerability of domestic handicraft. Retread blown-out tires are representative of the all-American landscape. I seek to question our indulgent contemporary society as well as present an aesthetically dynamic experience. — Sarah Krepp

Spectrum is a collection of artworks produced nearly entirely in Kansas City, Missouri over the last decade. This exhibition is intended as an immersion, a memoir, and a thank you to this place.

I have habitually brought the past into a contemporary context as an opportunity to reflect, to heal, and more often than not, as an American, to beg forgiveness. This thrilling moment we inhabit in history provides an opportunity for reconciliation with our collective story in order to imagine a future that functions more fully for every one of us. The newest work explores these same interactions in a more personal way. The pandemic forced a quiet space for deep reflection, forgiveness, and gratitude, as well as illuminating the path to an ongoing conversation around personal responsibility. — Christel Highland

Over the last couple of years I have been driving my paintings in an innovative new direction. After exhaustive research and experimentation, I have found myself drawn to the age-old idea of portraiture, but with a twist. I am intrigued by the idea of obscuring the eyes of the subjects in my paintings, something I started in my early work and have continued to carry with me as I evolve. — Anna Kincaide

The works of artist Anna Kincaide are a gateway to a world that is at once fantastical and familiar, inspired by fashion, photography, as well as elements of the decorative arts. Juxtaposing control and spontaneous disruption, Kincaide emphasizes the hidden, internal landscape of the figures she portrays.

Kincaide’s references to history and fashion are clear. In her works we are reminded of the extravagant heights of Marie Antoinette’s famous coiffure, which reached greater and greater heights in 18th century France, the iconic headdress of Egyptian queen Nefertiti, the famous French Hood of Anne Boleyn, and the modest Spanish style one of Catherine of Aragon. These powerful women used fashion as a political tool as much as to make a statement.

While Kincaide incorporates this, and numerous other art historical and fashion references in her work such as fashion photography, illustration, as well as the idea of the portrait bust or silhouette, it is the defining separation between the body and mind that creates the central theme in her work. In short, the idea of the ambiguity between our physical bodies, personal identity and that private, internal space of our minds, which expands and unfurls like a flower in bloom. Kincaide presents a world where dreams can become reality, and even surpass it.