First Fridays at Border Brewing Company
Located in the heart of the Crossroads Arts District, Border Brewing Company is your go-to stop on First Fridays. With our prime location just steps from the Art Alley and some of the best galleries in KC, we’re pouring fresh craft beer and welcoming everyone — whether you’re just starting your First Friday crawl or winding it down with friends. Our spacious patio is open and buzzing every month, offering a relaxed, family-friendly vibe with big yard games and plenty of seating to kick back and enjoy the night.

This First Friday, we partner with Brit Boy Street Food, bringing bold, UK-inspired eats right to our doorstep — from loaded fries to curry-soaked deliciousness that pairs perfectly with a cold pint. Inside, our taproom is packed with approachable options for beer drinkers of all kinds (and even some options for those avoiding alcohol). Whether you’re here for the art, the food, or just the energy of the Crossroads, Border is a must-visit stop that brings people together in the best way possible.

The Belger Glass Annex is excited to announce that the warm shop and cold shop are now open! What is a warm shop? What is a cold shop? Great questions!

Up to this point, you may be most familiar with the Belger Glass Annex’s “hot shop.” The hot shop is where we teach glassblowing glasses, offer glassblowing private parties, and host monthly free First Friday demonstrations.

The hot shop is called the “hot shop” because the glass stays hot the entire time the artist is working with it. Hot shop artists start with molten glass that needs constant reheating, and the finished piece is still around 1000 degrees when it gets loaded into an annealing oven to cool.

In the “warm shop,” the glass starts out cold, gets warmed up, then cools back down. Warm shop artists start by cutting and arranging pieces of room temperature glass before loading a kiln to heat and melt the glass.

In the “cold shop” the glass stays cold the entire time. Through processes of cutting, grinding, and polishing, cold shop artists can change the shape and texture of glass while never needing to heat it up.

Belger Arts is pleased to present Materialize: Visualizing Climate Change. This exhibit brings together the work of six contemporary artists who explore multiple aspects of one of the world’s most challenging topics.

The artists’ innovative use of materials and digital processes invite viewers to examine the impact of climate change on natural and human-made systems. Caroline Landau utilizes clear glass to memorialize a Bristlecone pine tree, a species threatened by climate change. Marie McInerney’s laser-etched graphite drawings illustrate data related to habitat disturbances such as landslides and fires. Lauren Shapiro combines ceramics and technology to depict fragile and endangered coral ecosystems. Steve Gurysh employs 3D scanning to recreate ash trees devastated by emerald ash borers. Tali Weinberg incorporates images of fire-scarred trees into weavings using petrochemical-derived materials. Anne Yoncha sonifies and materializes soil data from post-extraction peatlands in her installation titled, Peat Quilt 1.

Each artist asks viewers to consider how digital technologies transform disembodied data into experiences that engage our senses and emotions. In doing so, they raise critical questions to inspire change and cultivate environmental stewardship.

Encased in mounds of wool and moss, And So She Sees You is a reclamation of the female form. Exploring themes of identity and ecofeminism, Sybl’s sculptural works uproot pre existing definitions of female autonomy. 

Within the art world, the nude female is often presented to elicit voyeuristic pleasure from a male audience, and these nudes often exist without a gaze to confront their viewer. And So She Sees You is a response to this lack of identity, existing as an antithesis to this patriarchal practice. These sculptures’ implied bodies are shielded from objectification as they peer out from the soft safety of their woolen mounds. Instead this series of sculptures reveal their full facial identity, confronting the audience with their gaze, emotions, and histories. 

Artist Statement:

I am a Kansas City-based artist pursuing a BFA degree as a double major in Sculpture and Art History at the Kansas City Art Institute. My studio practice is rooted in the tenderness of empathy toward people, animals, and nature, through which I explore the human experience and beyond.

Placing my attention on the cyclical element of nature, I also explore the natural world and reflect on my position within that cycle. My practice investigates the intersections of identity, ecology, feminism, and connection, exploring my personal experiences and position as a queer woman within the crossroads of these greater experiences. As a multidisciplinary artist, my work engages a variety of materials, including glass, ceramics, fibers, and discarded ephemera, and in doing so, I extend care toward the overlooked and the underappreciated; remembering that which would otherwise be forgotten. 

Through this act of remembering, I transform the ephemeral into the eternal, celebrating the inherent beauty and life present in small elements of the everyday and the within the greater cycle of nature. In my series of works, which I call my Immortal Works, I create pieces of ceramic food that will not rot, glass flowers that will not wilt, and undying cast metal memories that are monuments to the transient essence of memory. I invite tender care toward the neglected present moment while also reflecting on the forgotten past. I view my art as a way to reflect upon our impact on the world and each other, inviting understanding and care.

Artist Bio:

Hailey Sybl Slaughter is a Kansas City-based artist with a double major BFA in Sculpture and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute. Through a multidisciplinary sculptural practice spanning ceramics, wool, glass, and more, Sybl explores the intersections of feminism, queerness, and ecology. Rooted in the tenderness of empathy and drawing from nature as both material and metaphor, Sybl’s work invites reflection on how we relate to the world and each other. Investigating how patriarchal structures have disconnected humanity from nature, she explores themes of transformation, memory, and care — recognizing both the overlooked and the ephemeral. Her work has been exhibited at The Instituto Allende, in San Miguel de Allende, as well as at the Kansas City Art Institute’s Volker Gallery Group Exhibition. Her artwork was published in literary arts magazines Bear Review, and Elementia, and is included in private collections.

You Can Have It All is an exhibition of recent works by Kansas City Art Institute graduating senior, Cameron Sinclair. Named after the 1974 song by George McCrae and its successive cover by Yo La Tengo, this collection compares the generative nature of a cover song to the role of appropriated song lyrics in Sinclair’s practice. The title also serves to describe the interplay of media present in the exhibited work, which combines painting, printmaking, and sculptural techniques. With direct references to art historical moments and pop culture, the artist affectionately employs a form of pastiche born from admiration. Additionally, the work seeks to reclaim the characteristics of traditionally male dominated disciplines, such as Minimalism and Pop Art. The latest series of these paintings and objects are steeped in nostalgia and are deeply referential of both the self and the past. Through the exploration of text and image, the artist considers reinterpretation as an act of tribute. By and large, You Can Have It All is a celebration of cultural dialogue and the confluence of music and art.

Artist Statement:

Through the use of language and cultural allusions, I intend to ask questions like “What do pop songs mean?” and “What constitutes a demonstration?”. The objects in my studio combine sculptural and painterly processes. They behave as props in the enactment of a situation, often through performance or their relativity in space. I am currently exploring the idea of subcultural movements and their aesthetic impact by drawing influence from band flyers, clothes, and lyrics. Through the use of pastiche and hand-lettered text that often mimics the vernacular of advertisement, I challenge the conventions of comedy and narrative. Guided by art historical research, my work is heavily referential. I aim to connect pop to a larger social framework by cataloging the experiences of those who identify within a collective.

To be a pop figure is to be a caricature of yourself. I am interested in how an object can function in this same way. In addition to painting and sculpture, songwriting is integrated into my practice through symbolic continuity. I credit my natural inclination towards storytelling to my love of country and folk music– growing up in North Carolina taught me the value of songs as oral history. I credit my art’s rudimentary quality to the defiant spirit endowed to me by punk rock. I am devoted to using visual methods to document generational identity and radical, collective action. 

Artist Bio:

Cameron Sinclair is an artist currently living in Kansas City, Missouri. She will graduate with a BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2025. Born and raised in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, Sinclair is heavily inspired by her Southern upbringing and the unique character of the small coastal community she calls home. Growing up, she spent Thursday nights every summer on the end of an old fishing pier, watching bands play over the ocean at her parents’ tiki bar. After graduating high school from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2020, she spent a year working both as a server at the family business and part time at a local record store where she contributed to the shop’s brand design through handmade promotional materials. These experiences informed her love for regional culture and broadened her taste in music, soon becoming central themes in her work. 

In 2021, Sinclair moved to Kansas City where she began to explore the transient spaces of music subculture present in the Midwestern D.I.Y. scene. A documentative element exists in her recent projects, as the artist seeks to archive and demonstrate the ephemeral nature of these overlooked, often clandestine histories. Placing the facets of locality and pop culture in a broader social context, Sinclair has produced a body of work that is at once humorous, referential, and nostalgic.