Congratulations to the following Current Works 2022 artists:
Mark Appling Fisher | T.R. Barnard | Derrick Benitz | Derrick Burbul
Jackie Carioscia | Kirk Decker | Barrett Emke | Adam Finkelston
Morgan Ford Willingham | Shirley Harryman | Lisa Healey | Victoria Hernandez Velazquez
| Erin Hillery | Nate Hofer | Angie Jennings | Brandon Jessip Teresa Johnson |
Judith G. Levy | Mirka Leyva-Gaucin | Laura Lloyd Donald McKenna |
Lilly Marker | JoLynne Martinez | Paul Middleton Lea Murphy | Rebecca Ofiesh
| Jon Onstot | Susan Pfannmuller Nick Reiswig | Angela Shaffer |
Sharon Takade | Gwen Walstrand | Don Wolfe
This is Kansas City Society for Contemporary Photography’s annual juried exhibit. It is to showcase what photographic artists are doing today in Kansas City and the Midwest. Works will have been produced from 2020 – 2022 encompassing a broad range of photography styles and processes that represent the diversity of our region. Our juror, April Watson, has selected 26 pieces out of the 240 pieces that were submitted. It shows a vast array of ideas, concepts, and processes.
This year’s juror, April M. Watson, Senior Curator, Photography at The Nelson-Atkins of Art in Kansas City, MO. During her fourteen year-tenure at the Nelson-Atkins, she has curated numerous exhibitions from the museum’s renowned Hallmark Photographic Collection and organized several major loan exhibitions.
Each Painting is an invitation to join my journey. Deep down, there’s a boiling sea of ideas and emotions that generates constantly and need to be released and funneled into a medium that brings me peace of mind and calm- That’s what oil painting does to me!
The energy and drive can be felt through the boldness of colors, the intensity of the brushstrokes along with the heaviness of the palette knife layers and the emotions through the softness of the backgrounds and mysteriousness of the color composition.
No two days are alike so does my art! All of my paintings leave some of the background exposed showing where it begins on the wood panel and let rise to the surface a modern simplistic beauty through the layers.
A balancing act between choosing how much to reveal versus how much to hide creating the “perfect imperfect”.
The paintings are meant to evoke emotions and leave enough room for the new owner to complete their own story. I’m a generator of ideas, a generator of smiles through my art and there’s nothing that makes me happier than sharing it with you! — Genevieve Hamel
Artist Statement
My process is meditative. I find myself losing track of the world while adding strokes, like keeping time or taking a tally of moments lost. I’ve intentionally stripped away everything representational. Painting is a place for me to escape reality and face only the problems that are confined within the edge of the canvas. While I apply strokes of paint to a surface, the focus is on the formal elements of the piece as a whole. Though I seemingly keep it simple, responding to what’s there, still synapse sparks, thoughts race, and emotions run high. Ultimately, the truth is that I can’t escape. I don’t want to use color just to fill a canvas. Rather, I intend for the strokes of paint to occupy the frame like people gathered in a room at a party. Sometimes dancing, sometimes fighting, and on occasion recalling fond memories they’ve shared.
There’s something about the colors crashing into each other on the canvas as I push paint and scrape pigments over one another. Painting conjures memories, like a familiar smell. Maybe it’s the site of particular combinations of color, the shape or texture of a stroke that sends me hurling back to a childhood daydream or a day spent with an old lover that I’ve almost forgotten.
I wanted to make balanced fields of color with movement like static on the screen of an old tube TV. Over time they’ve become reflections of my life’s loves, losses, triumphs, and traumas. They carry baggage without claim to reality. It’s something I don’t understand, that I don’t know how to define. It’s why I paint.
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Artist Bio
Artist Jacob Schildtknecht began his artistic ventures with a high school teacher who encouraged him to further explore his interest in painting. After a summer program at the Kansas City Art Institute at 16, Jacob found it inspiring to be around like-minded individuals striving for similar goals to his own and compounded his goals to later attend the university. During his first year, through design, life drawing, and color theory, he always leaned toward painting as a primary focus. With a fascination for sculpture, his intentions in painting ended up adding many dimensional and sculptural elements. One particular professor, Jim Woodfill, was a particular influence on Jacob’s approach; questioning the reasoning and purpose behind using paint as a medium and how the materials used defined his intentions and purposes in his work.
After graduating, Jacob went on and created his first solo studio in the Crossroads area. To help sustain his material costs, he started working in the restaurant and bar industry and developed relationships with regulars around the city. During this time, he began to substitute teaching which led to a full-time position as a general art educator to middle school-aged students in Arkansas. During his five years of teaching, the knowledge that he was imparting to the students, in turn, influenced his own work, principles, and elements of design. With renewed inspiration, he decided to leave the teaching position and focus on creation full-time, which brought him back to Kansas City in 2014.
With a change in surroundings, Jacob immersed himself back in with the artists he had worked beside in the past. A friend saw a piece he had been working on, inquired about its value, and that interaction proved to be a pivotal point in artistry becoming a career. The same friend connected Jacob with a restaurant to show his work. Since then, the relationships he had created while working in the service industry opened doors with opportunities to show his work.
In recognition of the Women’s Center’s 50 years of service to the University of Missouri, Kansas City and the surrounding community, this art exhibition features local artists whose works convey gender empowerment and portrayals of activism, determination, and resilience in the lives of individuals seeking gender equity. In the fight for women’s and gender rights, “well-behaved women seldom make history!” (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard professor emerita)
When Professor Ulrich wrote the above sentence in one of her scholarly articles in the 1970s, little did she know the cultural phenomenon that it would become, appearing on bumper stickers, t‑shirts, coffee mugs, and later becoming the title of one of her books (Knopf, 2007). The phrase became a rally cry for some feminist activist as they’ve tried to reclaim the significance of women’s lives in history. Whether rooted in gender normative, domestic duties of housekeeping and childrearing or barrier-breaking (and rule-breaking) actions of abolitionists, suffragists, and human rights activist, women have played a significant role in modern civilization, though often not regarded, or recorded unless it was for behaviors that were extreme or uncharacteristic. Ulrich’s 2007 book addresses the slogan by illuminating the lives of three history-making women, Christine de Pizan, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Virginia Wolfe. Today we can also look at the lives of individuals like Malalah Youfsafzai, Dolores Huerta, Serena Williams, and Dr. Rachel Levine whose own extraordinary journeys defied gender norms and patriarchal systems.
Ms.behaving! is an exhibit that captures the lives of individuals making statements about gender equity. Whether lived extraordinarily or every day, these creative individuals are shaping society and defining humanity. Works in this show portray gender empowerment, strength, and survival. Today, women’s behaviors need not be defined as good or bad, but important, relevant, and valid.
The University of Missouri-Kansas City Women’s Center is one of the oldest campus-based women’s centers in the United States and the second oldest in the Midwest. Founded in 1971 as the Women’s Resource Service in the Division of Continuing Education, the Women’s Center has maintained a home at UMKC for over 50 years serving as a resource to our campus and beyond. Our mission is to educate, advocate, and provide support services to advance gender equity on campus and in the community at large. Through the Her Art Project, our mission is achieved via programs that examine the status of gender equity in the arts, remove barriers to access and participation, and celebrate the creativity of women and gender minorities.
FEATURED ARTISTS
Art by .E Lewis
Nedra Bonds
