Holidays at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery, at 2011 Tracy, Kansas City, MO, features an array of artworks that are available for purchase through January 4, 2021.

Holidays at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery is an annual tradition that includes textiles, ceramics, glass, and more, by artists from across the country. This year’s artists are: Rachel Akin, Nicole Aquillano, Debbie Barrett-Jones, Bekah Bliss, Jeremy Brooks, Josh Dickens, Nicole McLaughlin, Del Norte Studio, Melody Monroe, Dan Ohm, Paulina Otero, Chris Pickett, Joseph Pintz, Justin Rothshank, Melanie Sherman and other artists that you know and love, plus a few surprises!

Advanced registration for opening night on November 20 (5 – 8PM), is not required but is recommended, to ensure social distancing and to keep visitors and staff safe. Please visit the Holidays at the Belger Crane Yard Gallery page of our website to register.

Safety measures:
Belger Arts is committed to maintaining a safe place for our visitors, studio members, and staff. To ensure this, we require that six feet of social distancing be maintained and that visitors wear a mask, as space is limited. Disposable masks and hand sanitizer are available. For contact tracing purposes we also ask that visitors sign in upon arrival.

About Belger Arts:
Since 2000, the Belger Arts Center has encouraged viewers to explore, question, and deepen their understanding of art and the world around them. Drawing upon the extensive John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation collection, as well as a rich variety of local, national, and international artists, the Belger Arts Center has staged over 70 large-scale exhibitions that represent some of the best in contemporary art.

In 2013, Belger Arts expanded the Foundation’s commitment to the creative process by opening Belger Crane Yard Studios, an arts complex dedicated to providing studio and exhibition space for artists. A range of programming in ceramics education, in addition to the Red Star Residency program and Crane Yard Clay ceramics supply store, has made Belger a center for contemporary art.

Image credit: 1) Josh Dickens, Untitled, 2019, Glass, 5 x 10 in. (banner image); 2) Belger Crane Yard Gallery ; 3) Kathy Barnard, Japanese Maple Leaf with Cricket Pendant, 2020, Carved Glass, 4.5 x 3.5 in.; 4) Debbie Barret-Jones, Stripes of Blue handwoven scarf, 2019, Handwoven and tencel, 8.5 x 74 in.; 5) Nicole, McLaughlin, Bordado, 2020, Ceramic and embroidery floss, 12.5 x 8.5 x 2 in.

THE ANNIVERSARY SHOW: 35 Years of Art with Friends

WALK THROUGH OUR VIRTUAL TOUR

WALK THROUGH VIRTUAL TOUR

Slowed Growth takes place during the pandemic. Everything is slowed down during this time, from a country’s economy to individual’s daily activity. Yet, the natural world keeps going, slow and steady. Slowed Growth references the evolving motion of the living organisms, and it also references my making process, bit by bit, layer by layer, and one firing after another to complete a single object. It is time consuming but therapeutic.
– Shiyuan Xu

Shiyuan Xu’s fantastic sculptures, hand-built with porcelain paperclay, are inspired by scientific research into microscopic phenomena. These phenomena range from single-celled organisms in the ocean to diverse plant seeds on land, to cells that are the building blocks of all life. She sees the structure of these micro life forms as having been determined by growth and response to internal and external forces, leaving a record of movement in time and space.

Shiyuan’s forms are built by hand and glazed in an unconventional way. The materials she uses allow her to push the boundaries of fragility and strength, simplicity and complexity, order and chaos. She meticulously weaves thin skeletal lines into a harmonious volume. Shiyuan says of this process, “The regular and irregular structures and layers also contain the memory of my sensations. They are in many ways like living organisms, reflections of my own life path, and an abstraction of the complexity and delicacy of life itself.”

Shiyuan Xu is currently an Artist in Residence at the Lilstreet Art Center, Chicago, IL. She holds an MFA from Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ and a BA from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, P.R. China. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, MT; Korea Ceramic Foundation, Incheon, South Korea; San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX and The National Museum of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

“This is and always will be where my heart is. It is what I care about.” — William Christenberry

Over the course of many decades contemporary art icon William Christenberry made annual pilgrimages to Hale County, Alabama, documenting the landscape, its architecture and its transformation. Tracing Time offers an examination of Christenberry’s relationship to Hale County, where he spent his summers as a child, its influence on his conceptual approach and artistic vision, and the psychology of place and memory.

The exhibition includes photographs, drawings, paintings and sculptures from the Belger Collection, some never before seen in Kansas City. The evolution of Christenberry’s experimental, creative process is also presented in displays of source material pages from his sketchbooks, photographs that served as foundations for drawings and structures, and rare early constructions from the early 1960s. The artist’s father, a woodworker and a strong early influence on the artist, would create models of buildings that were important to him out of simple, sometimes unrefined materials. One of these buildings is included in the exhibition.

Christenberry’s deep affection for Hale County, his curiosity about the effects of mankind and nature on the landscape, reveal a poignant perspective on the passage of time and chronicle the life cycle of place. Although profoundly personal and geographically specific, the themes of William Christenberry’s work are universal and remain relevant.