This exhibition hosts a sample of the breadth and diversity of KCAI’s Black students and their various modes of expression. As a student union, our primary goal is to create space, connection, and cultural ties for students of African descent to uplift themselves and each other and, by extension, our school and cultural community. This exhibition features work by BSU members ranging from first-year students to alumni within the community. This is done as a means to reveal the vast web of narratives that encompass Blackness within our time. Grasping the extraordinary time of previous isolation and rest as a guide to self-reflection, we claim a new reality that embraces discovery and representation as the inherent need for creativity. Viewers will be allowed to witness the artist’s experiences, not as spectators peering into their lives, but as listeners to their testimonies. This exhibition will introduce the current members of the collective by exploring the self-portrait. The work in the exhibition examines how identity is portrayed through anecdotes, vocabulary, and exploration of material.
Aaron Scarbrough | Ada Koch | Adrianne Clayton | Anita Easterwood
Anna Goodwin | Anson DeOrnery | Art Miller | Avrion Jackson | BJ McBride
Brittany NoriegaChico Sierra | Clarissa Knighten | Claude Harris III | Crissi Rice
Crystal Major | Dean Kube | Debbie Scott Williams | Debra Smith | Derrick Schmidt
Garry Noland | Hubbard Savage | Isaac Tapia | James Schiller | Jamie James
Jamie Platt | Jeff Tamblyn | JoAnna Termini | John C. Sutton III
Juanita Maxine | Harris Gibson | Julie Denesha | Katherine Looney | Kelli Hearn
Kevin Hopkins | Kwanza Humphrey | JT Daniels | Leonard Le’Doux, Jr.
Mark Cook | Michael Brantley | Nano Nore | Nikita Vonee | Onnissia Harries
Peregrine Honig | Pierre Owens | Raffaela Malazarte | Rodrigo Alvarez
Ryan Wilks | Sue Moreno | Taylar Sanders | Theo Davis | Tj Templeton | Toni Gates
Trey Loomis | Valentine Poindexter Orozco | Vivian Bluett | Wolfe Brack
From the work of under-the-radar, self-taught artists who have survived the unsurvivable to college-educated artists who found recognition early and often and have immortalized themselves into the city’s creative consciousness, We Are Enough presents and explores answers to the age-old question of “What does it mean to be human?”
As a curator, it is my hope that viewers will leave energized, invigorated, and with a newfound respect for this amazing artistic community that we live in.
As a resident, it is my hope that this exhibition will remind us that Kansas City is a significant arts destination with creatives that explore the issues, push boundaries, and are dedicated to their craft.
As an artist, it is my honor to work with all of these amazing individuals.
As all of the above and a Kansas City native, I say “We Are Enough”!
Thank you to Stephanie Leedy, Erin Woodworth, Debbie Barrett-Jones, Darren Doss, and Shari Hartbauer for this amazing opportunity.
And thank you to the art community of Kansas City for opening your arms to me.
Harold Smith
December 12, 2023
Bio
Harold Smith is a retired teacher and self taught artist who also writes for KC Studio magazine, curates exhibitions occasionally, mentors other artists, and likes to watch sci-fi and horror movies. Prior curatorial endeavors have included Call and Response I and Troost Gardens (2023) and Call and Response II at Smalter Art Gallery (2023).
Harold has attended artist residencies at both MacDowell (2022) and Art Omi (2023). His work has been exhibited at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, and other venues in Kansas City.
He is represented locally by Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art. He has earned an A.A. from Kansas City Kansas Community College, B.S. from Union College, M.A.T. from Webster University.
He is a father and grandfather. He plans to adopt a senior dog in the near future.
Resonance signifies that the RE:Generation collective members energize one another as a sound that is deep and reverberating. Showing together has caused us to reflect on a decade of serving as each others’s sounding boards. Our common history shared as artists. art educators and women of a certain age encourages relationships in our art as in our lives. The work we produce, however, is very distinct and unique to each individual in media, dimension, scale and content including photography; painting; printmaking and digital archival pigment transfer; drawing; collage and fiber.
The ability to evoke or suggest, ideas, memories and emotions gives resonance to our work. Both because of, and in spite of, recent tumultuous years of uncertainty — a pandemic, social and political unrest, we are committed more than ever to expressing ourselves through our art.
More important than ever is optimism that can come from creating with mind, heart and hands, making ripples that become waves, making things that will last beyond us as our time marches on. We still have much to say.
RE: Generation formed organically in 2014 as a loose-knit group drawn by common history and generational and gender experiences. While working in a wide range of media, content, styles, and techniques RE: GEN nourishes a collegial spirit that supports and challenges individual studio practices through cross-fertilization and dialogue. This juncture in our individual lives — as well as the unparalleled moment in our nation’s and planet’s stories — pervades each artist’s work, directly or obliquely, and emerges in themes of family, environment, and culture.
RE: GEN exhibited at the Albrecht-Kemper, St. Joseph MO in 2016 and in 2020 at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia MO. Other showings have been at Avila University’s Thornhill Art Gallery and HJ’s Community Center, both in Kansas City MO.
POLYCHROME RIFT is a solo exhibition featuring artist Barry Anderson. These newest works are an off shoot of his ongoing series Fragments of Space. Anderson uses 3D rendering and animation to create pictorial images of “fabricated, non-utilitarian architectural space that exist in a balance of openness and claustrophobia”. Please join us for the opening February 2, 6 – 8 pm here at SLCA gallery.
