Exhibition Statement

Scars to Stars is an exhibition of Dylan Mortimer’s work over the last several years. This body of work aims to stand in the tension between trauma and healing. Employing symbols that have been traumatic in his lived experience being born with a fatal respiratory disease and receiving two double lung transplants, he aims to transform and recontextualize those symbols. Scars, IV poles, cells, ambulances, and surgeries become beacons of hope and joy testifying both the darkness and the hope simultaneously. The aggressive joy rendered in layers of glitter evoke the absurd faith of hope in seemingly hopeless situations.

Artist Statement 

The symbols that collide in my work fuse anatomical, biological, and medical imagery with spiritual and religious themes. Shiny materials invoke the Baroque as a way of navigating a deadly diagnosis. My whole life has been an attempt to spread glitter over a seemingly hopeless situation. I aim to reference and navigate my own despair, transformation, and joy. It is my own leap of faith.

My work employs shiny, glowing, vibrant materials to evoke a transformation from a deadly disease I was diagnosed at birth. The transformation aims to provide a glimmer of hope in seeming hopelessness.

A variety of materials are used, from glitter suspended in resin, to lights, to colored glass. The aim is to collide a variety of discoveries into a contemporary manifestation of the baroque. Acknowledging pain and challenge, while simultaneously recognizing hope to overcome.

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. Free to the public.

I work in two series. The first reflects my life in Missouri. My mom’s family has been in the Kansas City area for generations. Although I grew up in Northern California, I spent at least part of each summer in the Midwest. Every time I left I had a deep longing for its intimate hedgerows and big skies. The eventual decision to permanently relocate was an obvious one. My roots here are deep and the landscape is the landscape of my heart. It is the wellspring for my current body of work.

Two figures continually appear in these images, that of myself and that of my dear friend, Lissa. We have known each other a long time, having met when we lived in the Bay Area. Each of us serendipitously moved to the Kansas City area at around the same time and reconnected. This body of work takes our likenesses to explore the complexity of life in Missouri, from draconian post-Roe trigger bans to the softness of a more earth-based lifestyle.

The second series is an affectionate parody of rock art. Each painting adapts a classically driven technique to likenesses of contemporary musicians and their song lyrics. These paintings explore the durability of fame and culture by removing pop icons from their proposed zeitgeists and re-contextualizing them in the unexpected quiet of the natural world.

I start each morning in the studio, sitting on a sofa looking out big glass doors to the southeast, overlooking a field of mixed grasses with a small spring fed pond in the center. The pond is a constant, but different every day. Sometimes the wind blows across, rippling the water. When it’s still, the water is reflective. It freezes, sparkles in the sun and thaws. Eagles fly over nearly every winter day. In March a cacophony of migrating blackbirds come in droves, migrating, looking for food, landing on the cattails that surround the pond. Ducks land in droves in the evenings. Many deer come across nearly always west to east, a hawk family hunts every day. The field greens up, frogs start singing, an occasional coyote passes by. In late summer the prairie grasses rise and begin to turn, sunflowers bloom, winds shift, migrations begin again.

In this way, all my work emerges from the pond in the field.

– Jane Booth

Jane Booth built her studio on the rural Kansas prairie sited to overlook the landscape and sky that inspire her. Booth paints from the inside out, from her meditation of life experiences then out, through the physical activity of pouring, pushing, and brushing paint. Her painting begins with raw canvas on the floor of her studio or outside on the concrete, where paint and water can be poured, pooled, and pushed with a broom. The atmosphere of the painting begins with color, vast and saturated or thinned and fog like. A calligraphy of gesture akin to dance informs the composition. Only later, once the canvas is up on the wall, do gestures and forms emerge evolving in conversation forming a visual language that is Booth’s alone. Large scale paintings are the norm for Booth often ranging upward of 15′.

Jane Booth’s paintings are in public collections throughout the country including: Kansas University Hospital, Kansas City, MO; Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cisco Systems, H& R Block World Headquarters and Hilton Hotels, as well as the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO.

Holidays at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery  is an annual exhibition that opens November 3 hosted at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery (2011 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO, 64108). Artists from across the country were invited to create artwork for the holiday season that make the perfect gifts for family and friends. Shoppers can choose from an array of unique artworks in a range of mediums: ceramic, glass, metal, textiles, wood, and more. Artworks will be available for purchase through December 30, 2023. This year’s artists include Rachel Akin, Miguel Alaniz, Nicole Aquillano, Ian Bassett, Chandra Beadleston, Bekah Bliss, Conner Burns, Megan Chalifoux, Kelly Clark, Kate Clements, Josh Dickens, Chris Dufala, Genevieve Flynn, Bianka Groves, Pierce Haley, Katie Hogan, Brian Horsch, Nell Hull, Steph Kates, Cecilia Labora, Huey Lee, Lynn Maggard, Caroline Meek, Jacob Meer, Didem Mert, Marie Anine Møller, Kelsey Nagy, Brent Pafford, Ronan Kyle Peterson, Will Preman (Yum Yum Ceramics), Justin Rothshank, Melanie Sherman, Karel Sigtenhorst, Wanda Tyner, and Desiree Warren. For the most current list of participating artists please visit the Holidays at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery web page.