Please join us for an artists’ reception for “In The Waiting: the practice of waiting in beauty and waiting for beauty to come.” 

Please join us for an artist talk at 7:30pm on March 4.

This exhibit brings together the work of two local artists, Emily Cramer and Lauren Stevens. Though Emily and Lauren are both visual artists, their practices are very different, in that Emily primarily works in oil with surrealistic imagery and Lauren creates elaborately detailed works through printmaking. Both of them create richly detailed figurative work, and both are continually exploring themes of beauty and faith in their life and work.

We hope you will be encouraged and provoked as the artists explore themes of waiting while co-creating with the triune God and longing for Christ to return and make all things new. This work calls us to slow down and enter into an awareness of the intricate beauty of creation, both in the grandeur of the world and in the intimacy of the artist’s studio. 

In addition to First Friday, this exhibit is open for the following dates and times:

Saturdays:

• March 12, 2 – 4pm
• March 19, 2 – 4pm
• March 26, 2 – 4pm
• April 9, 2 – 4pm
• April 16, 2 – 4pm
• April 23, 2 – 4pm
• April 30, 2 – 4pm

Thursdays:

• March 17, 6 – 8pm
• April 7, 6 – 8pm
• April 21, 6 – 8pm

Come visit our March Group First Friday Art Show.

Jones Gallery, 1717 Walnut, KCMO 64108
816 – 421-2111
https://jonesgallerykc.com/

Featured Artists

Afton Shumate

Bowie Ma

Catherine Lynott

Diane Sung

Esther Lee

Frank Thong

Hùng Lê

Ki Sowell

Lucinda Hodges

Exhibition Statement

“I, like many, sometimes forget why people make art: a drive to educate, a means of survival, a need to build camaraderie, a cheaper form of therapy, etc. And in losing sight of the reasons behind intention, we become not unlike those who simplify us into labels: as immigrants, as Vietnamese, as other, as working-class feminist hemophiliacs. But in spite of these obstacles, we continue to seek an audience that accepts us without the need for justification.” 

– Danny Nguyen, As Is

Being Asian-American is the perpetual questioning of self-identity. We try to accept the culture we were born with and also become part of those who surround us, which creates a complex conflict of identity. The balancing act of inheriting and assimilating with a multitude of intersectional identities as a group and as individuals is what causes us to live as the In-Between. As artists, we are influenced by the East and West. Images created provokes the audience to stare, listen, and to understand. The In-Between is not a process, but an existence.

Rose Apple Dreams

Memories of rose apples, with their fragrant fruits. Sitting under their pink and red canopies. Petals made pink carpet that covers the earth.

Sitting enjoying the peace among a world of bustle

Rose-flavored fruit that works like a time machine with its flavor that brings back lost memories, for living every day

Trees in their flourishing season that become sanctuaries or time shuttles, carrying and creating thousands of memories of childhood and old age like an urban diary.

This exhibition titled: Linkage consists of two distinct but related bodies of work. The flat works were made pre-pandemic and are concerned with how digital spaces and platforms, such as social media, have affected society. The paintings are a personal reaction to what I felt were troubling signals simmering within our communities. It seemed that people were finding digital hives which suited their narrative politically and otherwise, constantly occupying and reinforcing their pack while shutting off other possibilities — leading to powerful divisions and fissures within the society that persist today. Although the paintings are abstract, the visual tension between disparate energies (hives) is evident throughout.

The sculptures are very recent works. I began building them in August of 2021, with one exception, “Blue Beacon,” which was completed just before the pandemic arrived in the United States. The sculptures in this show are a personal response to profound personal loss, the effects of a global pandemic, and a divided, unhealthy society. As an artist, the question was simple, is it even worth making art in these conditions? I struggled with the value of attempting to build work when everything seemed to be breaking down around me and inside of me. Finally, I decided I had to try. I wanted to make sculptures that evoked an inner balance and strength despite the difficult and uncertain times we live in. As they began to evolve, I felt buoyed by their presence. Day by day, I could see them develop. I began to feel hopeful that I could deal with my feelings about the world within my studio practice again. The sculptures are about finding inner strength and the paintings are about making sense of a world beyond my control. The basis of this exhibition is The Linkage between these energies.

Broader thoughts on the relationship between the sculptures and the flat works:
The sculptures are totemic, figurative, and architectural. I used various construction strategies to overcome forces of gravity while the clay was soft and avoided issues of pyro-plasticity that can cause failure. When building with clay, gravity is always a dominating force. On the other hand, painting is not constrained by gravity; it provides an opportunity to explore form, line, and color entirely differently. According to their own nature, visual relationships develop in the paintings, which stick in my consciousness. Although initially, I began painting as an extension of my sculpture, it provided a liberating vehicle to explore structures that could not be built but could be experienced through two-dimensional abstraction.

Although the flat work and the sculptures have a symbiotic relationship in my creative process, they are not trying to mimic one another so much as they attempt to reach a broader understanding of structural abstraction. They help each other but do not necessarily look like one another. When building with clay, you start from the ground up, allowing lower areas to dry some before adding to what’s above. Generally, the lower part of a large sculpture cannot be wholly reworked and become something else after hundreds of pounds of material have been added above it. But with painting, any part can be changed at any moment with no constraint. Some of the paintings in the exhibition have dozens of images below what the viewer sees. The physical limits of building with clay and the utter freedom to manipulate paint can each be maddening at times but can also be revelatory. Painting has helped me find new relationships in physical forms in my sculpture. Likewise, my sculpture has helped me find structural resolution in the paintings.