Annie Herrero, Annie Helmericks-Louder, Barbara Rogers,
Cathy Logan, Emily Sall, Jane Booth,
John Ferry, John Louder, Ky Anderson,
Marcus Cain, Mary Ann Strandell, Nicole McLaughlin,
Norman Akers, Patty Carroll, Rhonda Gates,
Rosalyn Schwartz, Sun Smith-Foret, Tom Huck,
Tom Jones, Vera Mercer
Belger Arts Center presents {not} Quiet on the Western Front, opening Friday, June 4, 6 pm – 9 pm at 2100 Walnut Street, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through January 8, 2022.
{not} Quiet on the Western Front includes work by west coast artists from the Belger Collection who helped define the Funk Art movement. Funk came onto the art scene like a car wreck with its anti-formalist aesthetic, tongue-in-cheek commentary, irreverent character, and humor. Invoking a sense of cathartic release to the violent times of the 1960s, it was an alternative to mainstream art that made political commentary on war, gender, racial tension, and other social threats palatable. While its point of origin can be traced to 1950s northern California, the attitudes and approaches of Funk artists spread to other parts of the country and lives on in work by contemporary artists today.
Artists in the exhibition include Robert Arneson, Clayton Bailey, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Robert Hudson, Ed Kienholz, Ed Massey, Ron Nagle, H.C. Westermann, and William T. Wiley.
This exhibition is dedicated to William T. Wiley, a founder of the Funk Art movement, and a core artist of the Belger Collection. After a long and successful career, which included teaching at the University of California — Davis, he died on April 25, 2021, at the age of 83. He will be missed.
Belger Crane Yard Gallery presents Reset, Belger Arts annual resident exhibition. Reset celebrates the work of the current Artists in Residence: Elaine Buss, Coleton Lunt, Lilly Powell, Kate Schroeder, Amy Young, and ChengOu Yu.
For the six artists, the past year has been one of reworking schedules, readjusting expectations, redefining “normal,” and reimagining the future, in a world that’s still reemerging. Reset is the culmination of a year in which existence was pulled inward – into the smaller spheres of our homes, our immediate surroundings, and often within our own minds.
Referencing architectural forms, the work of Elaine Buss is driven by intuition and a surrender to natural forces. Her instinctive making process becomes a playful flow between cause and effect. Coleton Lunt’s sculpture cluster explores the notion that ecosystems exist all around us, and how cycles of addition and loss create an ever-changing present state. The work of Lilly Powell directs attention to the often overlooked or discarded objects we routinely touch but take for granted. Kate Schroeder’s light installation draws the eye upward and into an enchanting array of tiny, illustrated worlds. Each ceramic light fixture offers a serene view of domestic life, surrounded by the familiar objects of home. ChengOu Yu’s distorted vessel forms demonstrate how perspective and location can alter an experience and influence understanding. The figurative work of Amy Young delves into the interior of a mind living with PTSD. Through detailed symbolism and intricately carved surfaces, Young gives shape to feelings of pain, struggle, and acceptance.
Belger Crane Yard Studios continues to host national and international artists through its Artists in Residence program. A residency provides ceramic artists the opportunity to expand their body of work or create a special project that may be outside of the scope of their routine studio practice.
For high-resolution images, click here. Artist bios and additional images are available on our website.
Art exists within a diverse range of human activities that expresses and produces a visual, auditory, or performed artifacts— artworks. These works depict the artists imaginative and technical skill, and are intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. Art has been traditionally defined as the expression or application of human creative skills and imagination, typically in a visual form, producing works that express the artists inner emotions, desires, and message. A completed work of contemporary art can be used to describe any work regarded as art in the widest sense in respect to the physical form of visual art. When it comes to arts identification, there are no distinct set of values or aesthetic traits. Art is not perfection; art realistically is something that continues to progressively develop as it is seen, meaning to eagerly open all human capacities, thoughts and emotions. Art represents a unique creation that lets the observer interpret the art and the artists to portray it in whatever way they want whether the work is viewed with same perspective as the observer or not. A creation that allows for interpretation of any kind is art and can take on many various forms, but no matter the form it is a form of communication of the artist’s ideas or emotions.
Participating Artists
Marisa Bernotti
Ann Huang
Cindy Chinn
Lisa Gordillo
Meriel Stern
Ed Whitmore
Julie Corcoran
Jose D. Trejo-Maya
Nell Breyer
Alyssa Grey
Guinotte Wise
Maudegrasse
Kylen Guilbeaux
Philip Julo
Shelly Pinto
Denise Presnell
Derrick Hickman
Karen Poulsen
Joshua Heimsoth
Kailan Counahan
Karen Smith
Tanis Meyers
Patrick Luber
Gallery Hours : Tues & Sat 12 – 4, Wed-Fri 1 – 6 or by appointment
The Gallery and Kansas City are still requiring the wearing of Face Masks within businesses. We are providing sanitize stations as well and if necessary limiting entry in order to maintain social distancing measures.
Artist Statement
I am inspired by questions that do not have clear answers. My search for self has been my most challenging inquiry. Being raised between two military career households presented both flux and constancy throughout my childhood. Traumas that I have endured have shaped and haunted me, from losing a sibling to emotional manipulation. There was much inconsistency in living between my parents’ households. Traveling between contrasting lifestyles and psychologies left me feeling like an outsider, from self as well as family. My practice explores the vulnerabilities that I carry from, without embellishment or apology.
The dark side of my personal truth is unsettling, awkward, difficult to look at. Through drawing and sculpture, I make human representations that reveal human resilience. Textures imitate, oppose, and support each other, such as in my recent work Hesitant, where a body of smooth plaster connects a modeled clay head and hands. Juxtaposing different materials represents how human experience is not singular, rather, it is a spectrum of varying modes of being, perspectives, identities, and memories.
My practice is interdisciplinary; I work with clay, plaster, and mixed media. Material transformation, as well as layering two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms, allows the work to extend and contract in space. By drawing on form, I create illusion to conflate what is tangible and intangible. This relationship of illustrating mass and volume on a form depicts how overlapping states of being may manifest.
