In an age of unpredictable weather patterns, fluctuating temperatures and rising water one cannot escape uncertainty. I Am Daughter, Marie Bannerot McInerney’s first solo show in Kansas City since 2015, considers the unknowingness of today through abstracted recordings and translations of celestial and terrestrial phenomena in the form of sculpture and installation. The large-scale works are made from materials ranging from handmade paper to cement, ceramic, brass and hand-dyed silks and are inspired by fourth century Orphic totempässes. These totempässes (passports for the dead) attributed to cultic burial practices, are tiny gold foil tablets that provide the deceased instructions for how to negotiate the landscape of the dead.

As our planet faces challenging times, McInerney longs for instructions on how to negotiate the unknown. She states, “While certainty is not in our future, I can recognize the beauty that surrounds me, I can collaborate with the movement of the sun and seek moments of contemplation and wonder.” The works in I Am Daughter consider our position during this moment of anxiety and present meditations on time, reverence and contingency.

Exhibition hours: Wednesday through Friday from 10 – 4pm and Saturday from 12 – 4pm

You’ve seen her work in municipal displays such as the Art-in-the-Loop and Parade of Hearts programs, at Hotel Indigo, Deines Cultural Center, and numerous other galleries.

Shelly Pinto is bringing us a beautiful selection of sacred geometric abstractions to fill the ‘Balt Schaffer Gallery and the front lobby.

From the Artist:

My mixed media kaleidoscopes are a fusion my love of painting and digital art. 
In this body of work I am inspired by sacred geometry. I have applied this study of pattern and its overlapping circles and spirals to connect me to the world. 

I usually begin by finding the center of my circle, then mix colors, cut shapes and merge overlapping patterns. The process of layering and mixing reveals an inner calm. 

My studio has become my place of solitude and meditation. As the world spins with all her chaos, my studio space is where I find a sense of joy that translates to my art. For the finish, I cover the pieces with a clear hard coating of resin which intensifies the colors and protects the art. 

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.

__________________

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.

Tomorrow I’ll Know More is composed of images that I shot on the streets of Paris and Kansas City.

Visual narration intrigues me and I use the streets as a backdrop to create an implied drama in my imagery. I use the emotional impact of color and black and white to create mood and tension regardless of the subject. I’m always looking to tell a story, to write a novel with every photograph.

Artist Statement

This work is the world I inhabit. I document what is around me, I react to and interact with my immediate environment and it’s that immediacy that is captured in my work. 

Artist Bio

Jim Robinson is an artist-photographer living in the Crossroads Arts District in Kansas City. He studied Fine arts at the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit and began his career there as an Art Director before relocating to Kansas City. Jim began taking pictures in 2014 and has shot in Europe and the U.S.

His process begins with always carrying his camera and ends with photographing whatever he sees of interest. No intention other than observation.

Jim began exhibiting in solo shows in 2020.