Most of our members have been long-time print collectors and will be sharing some of their most treasured pieces from their personal collections. Several of these will be on sale.

In addition, we are premiering our first-ever commissioned print suite. This combines 4 etchings of the West Bottoms that hang as a set from artist Doug Osa. 

For over 30 years, Doug has chronicled the changing scene of the West Bottoms district in etchings. He first started this suite with a gift print to the Print Society in 2011, adding the second print the next year. The final 2 images were created this year and complete the suite. It is now available for members at a reduced price. Individual prints can be purchased separately for those who already own the first and second image.

New members signing up at the show will, for the low membership fee, get the member’s discounted price! For more information, please click on this link. 

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.

Influenzers explores the familiar and yet forgettable of social media. I don’t like social media, yet I’m addicted, just like everyone else. The paintings are inspired by the jumble of images that appear in the algorithm of mindless scrolling, each vying for your attention.

I’m not interested in fashion or flowers, but too often, the same type of styled poses and cookie-cutter images continue to fill my screen day after day. I wanted to address this and pull inspiration from the same subject matter that typically doesn’t interest me, and connect the two together to introduce a new aesthetic and bring interest to the ordinary.

Artist Bio

Jared is a self-taught artist and graphic designer living and working in Kansas City. He has exhibited both paintings and drawings in various group and solo shows throughout the Kansas City area. You can view more of Jared’s work on Instagram @jaredisgreen

WHO WILL HEAR MY PLEA?

The artist continues to explore the roles of women in her latest installation, “Hear My Plea,” as she works with images of saints, martyrs, and goddesses. Using the figure she delightfully calls BAH!, which first came to her in a dream, she explores the limitations, bravery, passion, zeal, and compassion of figures related to the Catholic church, paganism, and other cultures.

Using imagery from the Renaissance and Middle Ages as a reference, a time when the general population could not read nor write, and utilized this imagery as their “lesson,” the artist observed only small differences between a woman’s life then and now.

Whom might women call today?

What messages might these images from the past offer to women today?

Who might possibly hear today’s women in their plea for help?

Bio

Linda Jurkiewicz lives in Kansas City and began working with fiber in 2005. She credits her upbringing as a first-generation Ukrainian-Croatian for her “make-do” attitude and her delight in upcycling repurposed materials, especially “woman’s work” such as dish towels, household items, and clothing. Her consequential fiber work incorporates soft sculpture, wordplay, idiom, embroidery, wall hangings, plush form, sequential dioramas, and installations which delve into the cultural roles of women in America over the last century, roles that are changing and roles that she pushes viewers to reexamine, to trade nostalgia for empowerment.

Jurkiewicz’s work has been shown in two solo shows in Kansas City galleries in 2022. Her work has been juried into numerous exhibitions locally. Nationally, her work has been included in Woman Made Gallery 24th International Exhibit, Chicago, Illinois (2023), Intersect Art Center Blue Hour, St. Louis, MO (2023), Amarillo Museum of Art Biennial-600: Textile/Fiber, Amarillo, Texas (2019), Raw – The Exhibition at Indiana University (2018), Sacred Threads in Herndon, VA (2017 and 2019), The Blue Show at the Core New Art Space (2017) and The Engaged Object at the Foothills Art Center (2016), both in Denver, Colorado, and Welcome to My World: Mental Health Awareness through Art at the MIRI Gallery (2016). Salt Lake City, Utah. Jurkiewicz is a member of the Kansas City Artists Coalitio