A native New Yorker, Terry Winters graduated from Pratt Institute in 1971, focusing on painting. Through the 1970s, while studying nature, especially molecular level life forms, Winters honed his craft as a drawer and a painter until he was ready for his inaugural exhibition in 1982 at the prestigious Sonnabend Gallery. Later that same year he began his first foray into printmaking at Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) on Long Island. Winters became one of the leading printmakers in the U.S. At first, he was leaving his Manhattan studio one day a week to work with the master printers at ULAE, and that later escalated to up to four days a week. As art historian Richard Axsom wrote in “The Philosophers’ Stone: The Prints of Terry Winters:”

Printmaking is a forum whose procedures and collaborative protocols have allowed Winters to explore the expressive nature of his drawings. For an artist whose cardinal subject is protean form, printmaking encourages a changing image through the various proofing phases that lead to an editioned print. A print reflects a progressive history of alterations. It is a record of mutation, an accumulation of discrete changes that has no exact counterpoint in drawing or painting.

Over the years, Winters’ paintings, drawings, and prints have been featured in major retrospectives at the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Belger Crane Yard Gallery presents Ways to Train Songbirds opening Friday, September 1, 2023, at 2011 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108. The public is invited to the exhibition’s opening reception to view the work from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition includes work by five artists who are members of the Sticky Gold Collective: Ben Galaday, Padyn Humble, Matt Mitros, Danni O’Brien, and Matthew Wicks.

“There are numerous ways to train birds of prey, yet songbirds are incredibly challenging. Many ornithologists consider songbirds to be exceptionally intelligent but not always the most trainable . . . the same could be said about artists.” —  Sticky Gold Collective, August 2023”

The Collective, formed by Matt Mitros in 2018, includes artists from a range of backgrounds who share an irreverent appreciation for the intersection of craft and art. While the artists do not align to a common theme or subject, they share a quasi-humorous tone and campy bravado regarding material usage and illusion.

Padyn Humble is a sculptor from Montana whose work investigates social norms and the way they influence identity. He utilizes Western iconography and his inspiration stems from influences like cartoons, truck stop souvenirs, and queer pop culture. Matt Mitros uses a visual language of botanical pastiche to depict the emotional relationship between plants and machines. Themes of survival, growth, and metamorphosis are prevalent in his work through visual displays of conflict and celebration. Danni O’Brien’s work is rooted in play, collecting, and constructing and is informed by an education in assemblage sculpture, fiber arts, and ceramics. Her fantastical cast-offs from upcycled materials marry construction and wood working with traditionally feminized and domesticated systems such as stitching, beading, and rug making to compose dually hard and soft objects. Danni O’Brien and Ben Galaday wield nuanced abstraction to engage the viewer with blurred dreamlike compositions. Galaday’s work, however, is a dark counterpart to O’Brien’s flamboyancy. Oscillating between demoralizing and seducing, Galaday taps into the truths of the human condition creating kaleidoscopic approximations of life, death, decay, rejuvenation, and apathy. Matthew Wicks uses kitschy, everyday symbols such as suits of playing cards or domestic objects to subvert ideas of hypermasculinity in Western culture.

Altogether, Sticky Gold Collective questions various aspects of gender, orientation, and societal expectations through a mixed media approach to ceramics, while relieving the viewer of certain preconceived notions that come with “traditional” craftsmanship and material expectations embedded within the canon of ceramic art. This exhibition will remain on view through December 30, 2023.

Time is a Circle: Generational Craft Practices, includes the work of Mona Cliff, Wansoo Kim, Hùng Lê, Jada Patterson, Jason Wang, and Aleah Washington.

The public is invited to the exhibition’s opening reception from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition includes work by Mona Cliff, Wansoo Kim, Hùng Lê, Jada Patterson, Jason Wang, and Aleah Washington, and runs through February 3, 2024.

For centuries craft practices have been passed from generation to generation keeping traditions alive and preserving history, while building communities through the making process. These shared practices are a testament to the resilience and perseverance of many cultures throughout the world.

The six artists in the exhibition use craft traditions to carry on generational practices while unearthing aspects of their own histories within a broader historical and artistic context.

Mona Cliff is an Aniiih, Nakota, and Eastern European artist whose beadwork and fabric applique are the foundation of her practice and heavily based in generational knowledge. Hung Le combines textile traditions with photography to examine his family history in the backdrop of the Việt Nam War and their immigration to the United States. Material culture and personal histories are at the center of Jada Patterson’s work. Using braided sweetgrass, Patterson references ritualistic healing and imparts power onto the mundane object. Wansoo Kim uses traditional ceramic Korean vessel forms and unorthodox ornamentation, to invite viewers to consider the revealed and the hidden, the internal versus the external. By embellishing the inside of his vessels, he reminds us to examine what is beyond outward appearances. Jason Wang draws on his Chinese heritage to create functional ceramic vessels that revolve around experiencing community. His textured teapots, cups and saucers, are intended to create a sensory experience that invokes a strong emotional response to further dialogue about identity, mental health, and mindfulness. Aleah Washington explores identity, environment, and community through her abstract wall hangings and functional ceramic work. She shares personal memories and reflects on shared histories using bold color on her quilted wall hangings and stitched pattern designs on her ceramics.

The artists in the exhibition demonstrate a command of craft and a deep understanding of their role in safeguarding craft traditions and histories.

Robert O. Beach (1923 – 2005) was an incredibly gifted painter. He was, by trade, a medical illustrator who headed up the medical illustration department at the J. Hillis Miller Health Center in Gainesville Florida. He received his masters of fine art painting at the University of Florida in 1972 studying under Hiram Williams.

We have 8 of his large scale works in our inventory and they will remain available on public display from October through December.

Why would Native Americans believe in the Gospel of the invaders, the so-called “white man’s religion”? This is the internal struggle that this exhibition chooses to address. Told within the context of a history of deeply ingrained Christian practice among generations of Native peoples, artists Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee Creek), Erin Shaw (Chickasaw-Chocktaw), and Tony Tiger (Sac & Fox, Muscogee, Seminole) face the tensions created in their lives by the faith they practice. In Altars of Reconciliation, viewers experience contemporary, Native-themed altarpieces of sacred art, personal in their stories but universal in their struggle with eternal questions.

On February 2, we’ll be hosting an artist talk at our First Friday reception, where Bobby, Erin, and Tony will be sharing more in depth about their creative processes and the personal stories that led to these pieces.

FIRST FRIDAY RECEPTIONS
November 3 & December 1
5:30 – 9:00pm

ARTIST PANEL DISCUSSION & RECEPTION
February 2, 2024
5:30 – 9:00pm

EXHIBIT OPEN HOURS
Select Saturdays, 2 – 4pm
November 4, 11, 18, 25
December 2, 9, 16
January 6, 13, 20, 27