Exhibit Events:

First Friday Opening Reception: Friday, March 3, 5:30 – 9pm

Art + Faith Workshop: Saturday, March 18, 1 – 4pm (registration required)

Artist Talk + Closing Reception: Saturday, April 23, 2 – 4pm

Exhibit Open Hours:

Saturdays 2 – 4pm: 3/11, 3/25, 3/30, 4/1, 4/22, 4/29
Thursdays 6 – 8pm: 3/23, 4/20, 4/27

About the exhibit:

In Healing Sanctuary, Kammy Downs blends drawing, natural dye, fiber, and needlecraft to create beautiful installations. 

She uses her work to explore the connections between God and nature and the particular ways that the mysterious life cycle of plants reveals aspects of the hidden spiritual world. She creates and uses many natural dyes herself, and through this process she considers the role of plants as a God-given remedy for the healing of our bodies. 

As one member of a multigenerational line of artists and seamstresses in her family, Kammy’s work also uses many familiar domestic materials and practices that have been passed down between women in families and communities throughout history.

About the artist:

Raised in rural South-Central Kansas, Kammy Downs enjoyed a supportive childhood that allowed exploration of creative pursuits and nature. Downs attended Emporia State University where she was inspired to teach art. Her love of the art-making process has deepened through the experience of teaching for 35+ years in a variety of institutions from Montessori to public schools in California, Kansas, and Missouri. She has had the privilege of creating several murals with students and has written public art grants, two of which included work with internationally known Kansas artists, Stan Herd and Shin-hee Chin.

Recent highlights of her work include participation in the 2020 Salina Biennial Exhibition, a Social Practice project called ‘Seeds4HOPE,’ which brings attention to resources for creating resilience in the midst of depression. Downs completed her Master of Fine Arts program at Fort Hays State University in 2022. 

Downs and her husband, Gary, live in Kansas City and have five grown daughters and four grandchildren.

Gimme Ten, celebrates ten years of The Hand Magazine. The show features a dozen artists from the United States and Mexico. Their work spans a range of subject matter, topics, techniques, and visual styles. 

Raul Pineda Arce will be showing work in the United States for the first time. His expertly crafted mezzotint prints address violence and loss through beautifully rendered, haunting narratives. Haley Younce creates delicate intaglio prints on tissue paper that are, “inspired by the investigation of coping mechanisms throughout [her] mental health journey.” Jeanne Arenz, Andy Holiday and Lijun Chao, Locus Chen, and Patty deGrandpre use printmaking techniques to create abstract works that bubble and twist with color and energy. Steven Mastroianni’s large scale cyanotype prints combine drawing and cameraless photographic process to create “dream-inspired micro/macrocosms”. Stephanie Kolpy, Maureen Mulhern-White, and Matel Rokke use various combinations of print and photography in their works, all of which combine animal imagery with vibrant color, architectural forms, and hallucinatory landscapes. William Hays’ multi-colored relief prints are inspired by his memories and impressions of landscapes. Catherine Kramer is the youngest artist in the show. Kramer is an MFA student at the University of Miami. Her stunning intaglio prints are inspired by botanical illustration and her visits to botanical gardens.

Bio

Founded in April 2013, The Hand Magazine is based in Prairie Village, Kansas, USA. It is owned, published and co-edited by Adam Finkelston. James Meara is lead designer and co-editor. Together, Finkelston and Meara curate each quarterly issue from submitted images from around the world. The Hand Magazine is dedicated to the support and exhibition of hand-made artworks using mechanical or reproduction-based processes. The goal is to present the most innovative and unique contemporary photography, printmaking, and collage artwork in the world. “The Hand” is about connecting artists, serving as a resource for artists and enthusiasts, and building bridges across creative communities. Let’s join hands. More information is available on the magazine website: http://www.thehandmagazine.space…

ʻŌLELO NOʻEAU #230

ʻAʻole noi ʻike ke kanaka i na nani o kona wahi i hānau ʻia ai.

A person doesn’t see all the beauties of his birthplace.

You don’t realize how beautiful your home is until you go away.

-Mary Kawena Pukui, Ōlelo Noʻeau: Hawaiian Proverbs & Poetical Sayings

Though it can be interpreted in various ways, “kuʻu ēwe, kuʻu piko” can be translated to mean “my umbilical, my navel” in Hawaiian. I use these words to refer to my connection to my Native Hawaiian ancestry and to emphasize that this connection is still intact.

It is to acknowledge the ancestral ties that I have recognized have been strained, or in some instances, completely lost within my family. 

Thus, this body of work showcases my ongoing journey to reacquaint myself with my multicultural background and utilizes aspects of the land, the various cultures, and the histories present within Hawai’i to foster a stronger connection and understanding to my home and how my relationship to it will change. 

Artist Bio

Tiana Nanayo Kuuleialoha Honda was born and raised on the island of Hawaiʻi in the small town of Hilo. Though her cultural background consists of several mixed ethnicities, she primarily identifies as Native Hawaiian (from her mother) and Japanese (from her father). Tiana received her B.A. in Art with a minor in Japanese Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in 2019 and will receive her MFA in Visual Art from the University of Kansas in 2023.

Lineages explores multi-directional histories through weaving and its site-specific environments, structures, associations, and temporal rhythms. Through a series of installations, weavings, sound, and video, sister artists Debbie Barrett-Jones and Kristine Barrett present kinship and cultural identity as a fluid process rather than a given: connecting, dissolving, and reconstituting through memory, practice, and relationship. This (re)membering relates to the act of weaving and textile practice itself: weaving disparate threads (or bodies, sounds, images, narratives, geographies, and names) into relationship with one another: sewing-severing-suturing. Other ‘genealogies’ emerge through this process that intersects, intervenes, disrupts, and further entangles.

Both Barrett sisters received their BFA’s at the Kansas City Art Institute, Kristine in ’01, and Debbie in ’07. Currently, each is in their thesis year of graduate school, as Debbie is pursuing a Master of Fine Art in textiles at the University of Kansas and Kristine is currently working on her second Master’s degree in Folklore at the University of California, Berkeley.

Textiles artist, Debbie Barrett-Jones left her small town in Iowa so she could pursue an education at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) and since graduation, has exhibited her work throughout the United States, including the Kansas City area locations, such as; Children’s Mercy Hospital in North Kansas City, Truman Medical Center, Community Christian Church, Lead Bank in the Crossroads of Kansas City, and The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. And in late 2016, she collaborated with the Kansas City Ballet for an art installation and performance called Unspoken. Barrett-Jones is currently working on her Master of Fine Art at the University of Kansas focusing on textiles along with teaching weaving courses to KU undergraduates.

In 2016, she began to envision the “Healing with Weaving” initiative, to highlight the importance of how art, specifically weaving, can be a therapeutic tool for healing. The first Healing with Weaving Community Outreach Program’s pilot project at Children’s Mercy Hospital Adele Hall Campus in Kansas City, MO. The project provides 200 Healing with Weaving Frame Loom Kits with instructions to be used by patients, family members, and staff to explore the meditative and therapeutic benefits of weaving during the summer and fall of 2021. Currently, Barrett-Jones was one of nineteen Kansas City artists to be commissioned to make permanent public artwork for the new KCI Airport that will open in the spring of 2023.

Kristine Barrett is an American artist, composer, academic, and vocalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. After completing a double BFA in Studio Art and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute, Barrett went on to study music composition with the legendary Fred Frith at Mills College, where she received an MFA in Electronic Music Composition and Recording Media in 2006. A storyteller at heart, Barrett’s work has been performed, exhibited, and featured in various galleries and media festivals throughout North America and Europe, and was recently featured on the NPR show The Thistle and Shamrock. In addition to her solo work, Kristine has performed professionally with several renowned musicians and ensembles, including the acclaimed Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble, Svetlana Spajić, and Trio Kavkasia, among many others. She has directed several community choirs throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Temple of Light Georgian Community Choir, Headlands Community Folk Ensemble, and Sound Orchard’s West Marin Choir. Connecting folklore, textiles, and women’s vocal arts, Kristine is currently working on her second Master’s degree in Folklore at UC Berkeley. An avid hiker, bibliophile, lover of ancient literature and art; Kristine loves being in the non-human world, wooden boats, needlework, and sailing schooners. She currently resides on a houseboat with a myriad of plants, shrines, and animals with her husband in Sausalito, California.