Eric Swangstu: A Boxer in Poet's Clothing
A Special Gallery Feature
Our eyes tear with the 35-mile-an-hour air buffeting across our faces. Hulking steel rumbles past. I stand inches from the track where Eric Swangstu has led me: nose-to-freight-train in Kansas City's West Bottoms warehouse district. It is 2 o'clock in the morning, the summer of 1996.
Joe Bussell
A Gallery Feature
These recent works engage in a conversation about pictorial, microbial, and astronomical space while inviting the viewer in a discussion regarding the poetic connections these types of space share.
Deanna Dikeman
A Gallery Feature
Deanna Dikeman photographs her family in Iowa and Nebraska. She has done a series of photographs of interior details of homes. Her Wardrobe project includes photographs of old clothes in a thrift store and the Stephens College Historical Costume Collection. Most recently, she has been photographing ballroom dancers and their clothing in movement.
Gallery Feature Directory
Who's Who In Kansas City Art
We passionately believe in supporting our creative community—its art, artists, and galleries. This directory contains all the artists who have been featured in PresentMagazine.com's Gallery.
Patrick Alexander
A Gallery Feature
Patrick Alexander is a self-taught visual artist from Kansas City who also consistently works as a curator and DJ. Alexander is a multi-disciplinary artist that primarily works in the mediums of collage, sound, and installation. He consistently exhibits nationally and collaborates with artists locally on community projects. Alexander operated the Locus Solus Gallery in the late 90’s and currently works as an art gallery and theatre director for the YWCA of Greater Kansas City.
Hannah Hurrle
A Gallery Feature
Hannah Hurrle is an artist and illustrator, currently living in Kansas City, MO. Both abstract and geometric, like a vampire bunny, her work is cute with razor sharp teeth. She attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, majoring in Illustration until 2006. Her work has been up at Ghettogloss Gallery in Los Angeles,The Mercy Seat Tattoo Parlor in Kansas City, and Skinless Productions Gallery in Kansas City. She is currently working on her second exhibition, showing at The Base Gallery in 2010.
Minerva Ortiz
A Gallery Feature
Minerva Ortiz was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and has lived in Texas and California. She considers herself a hybrid of Mexican and American cultures. She believes that the importance of creating diverse imagery, in her current work, stems from an appreciation of her mixed cultural background. Her dual heritage has made her aware that although differences create conflict, they can also work together to create possibility. She is currently finishing her MFA in painting at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Brent Seevers
A Gallery Feature
Originally from St. Joseph, Brent Seevers is a self-taught emerging artist in Kansas City. He practices his craft in the fine art of drawing, whether it's charcoal, graphite, Conte crayon, or the vibrant colours offered by pastels. Brent creates a sense of peacefulness and harmony in his work. His goal is finding beauty in the things in life. His subjects of focus are traditionally figurative, still-life, and landscapes.
Kaelin Cordis
A Gallery Feature
Using only quality materials, I attempt each time to fashion an item of adornment which combines my interest of the medium of metals with my love for abiding luxury. Thus, each item I create is a unique article of beauty, designed to enhance the unique beauty of the wearer. Even seemingly identical pieces may well have a different connection method, or incorporate a subtle change in nuance in the process of creation. ––Kaelin Cordis
Plus, an interview with Cordis about her process and techniques.
Joanne Schiller, Visual Essays and Pointed Observations
A Gallery Feature
I'm grappling with being human, aware and sane. The fact that individuals remain so in spite of the many pressures (actual and imagined) of daily life intrigues and astounds me. There is so much beauty and strength in that fact. That is why I must paint and draw people. It forces me to examine them, see them. In ways we rarely notice as we go about our own everyday concerns. Hence, I'm involved in portraiture. —Joanne Schiller
Caleb Taylor, Covered
A Gallery Feature
My work develops through the prolific production of paintings, prints, ceramics, and installations. Fragments from these mediums influence my paintings – the bulbous forms of pottery, the flat colors of printing ink, and the monumental scale of installation. In these searches, methods such as cutting stencils and forming clay tied my ideas to the body and its potential to be dissected and manipulated. I note similarities between the malleable qualities of clay and flesh and how paint “skins” over with time. These attributes alter considerations of my own body as I build a union between its physical capabilities and my anatomically-based abstractions. — Caleb Taylor
Shirley Luke Schnell, Subaqueous Notations
A Special Gallery Feature
Underlying the lateral elliptical image dominating an ongoing body of work entitled “Subaqueous Notations” is the idea of continuum; a stream, a canal, a river, a flume….The ‘canvas’ is a record of that which was seen and that which is ordered, a compendium of information accomplished through both incremental and sudden developments in the methodologies of painting with acrylic pigment on polystyrene. As I encounter the idea meditation begins…— Shirley Luke Schnell
Tom Styrkowicz, Intimate Story Portraits
A Special Gallery Feature
"What people say during a photo shoot affects me as much as their image… I began adding words to the photos, building on an earlier series called 'shards,' photo images with snippets of fictional (or sometimes vaguely autobiographical) stories written around and over the photographs. The large-sized canvasses of 'intimate story portraits' are descended from the earlier 'shards' series. In these new works the writing snippets enigmatically refer back to the subject in one way or another.” —Tom Styrkowicz
E. Spencer Schubert
A Gallery Feature
E. Spencer Schubert is sculptor who lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri. His work uses the figure to explore the strengths, weaknesses, tragedies, successes, and idiosyncrasies of people. He received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Kansas in 2000 and since then has been exploring human behavior through sculpture.
Amy Kligman
A Gallery Feature
Amy Kligman has shown her work across the country in places like L.A., Brooklyn, Miami, Detroit, Cleveland, and Portland. Locally she's shown in group shows at the Artists Coalition, Urban Culture Project, and is currently planning a solo show in the Leedy-Voulkos Backroom gallery for early 2010.
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by the Actor Training Studio.
Timmera Allred
A Gallery Feature
Winner of Harrah's Largest Canvas contest shares some of her other work in this Gallery feature.
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by the Actor Training Studio.
Derrick Breidenthal
A Gallery Feature
"My work begins with a natural experience that impacts me emotionally. The visual language of my work reflects the barren landscapes I have always lived within. I explore the vitality and beauty of the rural geography and the contrasting reality of the destruction, abandonment, and erosion of rural life. I am attracted to the immense power of natural activity as a means of reflecting these perspectives."
—Derrick Breidenthal
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by Actor Training Studio.
The Pribilof Islands
Landscapes From Afar
October 25
Heading off to the Pribilof Islands of St. Paul and St. George, Alaska. I am teaching digital photography to K-12 students there. It is part of the "Artist in Schools Program" in Alaska. Last year, I taught in White Mountain a village of 200 people about 70 miles east of Nome. It was an amazing experience to fly in a small bush plane, in minus 20 degree temperatures, to a village of people I had never met—what was I thinking?
Now, I am heading off to small Islands about 250 miles west of King Salmon in the middle of the Bering Sea—again, what am I thinking?
—Steve Curtis
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by Actor Training Studio.
Chickabiddy Arts: WHO AM I
A photographic project for our youth by Steve Curtis
The WHO AM I project was developed as a photographic exploration of the daily lives of young people. Students were given a disposable camera and instructed to photograph the people, places, and things that are important to them and then they were asked to select images to be exhibited. All of their images are compiled into a photo mosaic.
The exhibit opens February 13, 2009 at Kaw Valley Arts & Humanities, 756 Armstrong in Kansas City, Kansas.
Jorge Garcia Almodovar
A Gallery Feature
Jorge Garcia Almodovar studied at the School of Visual Arts, NYC, and at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. Formerly employed at Dennis Oppenheim Studios in New York, Garcia relocated to Kansas City in 2002, where he has exhibited consistently.
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by Actor Training Studio.
Aimee Myers Dolich
A Gallery Feature
Aimee Myers Dolich is a Lawrence-based illustrator whose colorful hand-lettered pieces are inspired by bits of everyday life.
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by Actor Training Studio.
Terri Wheeler, Gestures
A Gallery Feature
I start the process with drawings from live models. The gestural images are drawn and redrawn several times, moving farther and farther from the original figure. I have stepped away from the brighter colors to emphasize the line work. The initial drawings took only a few minutes. The somewhat Cubist look comes from the translation of the line and pursuit of the essence of the subject.
—Terri Wheeler
"Arts" is proudly sponsored by the Actor Training Studio.
James Jandt
A Gallery Feature
Jandt's artwork is largely non-representational. One prime goal of the works in general is to provide a window into the natural world. People usually see the surface. Most of this work affords a deeper look into nature and may even give a new perspective to the viewer.
Nerdbots: Nick and Angela Snyder
Gallery Feature
Oddly obsessed with all things robot, we decided on a whim one day to do nothing other than to build one ourselves. After piecing together parts found at our favorite antique and thrift stores, we created our first robot friend. Since that first day, we have added many fabulously geeky robots to our beloved robotic collection. —Nick and Angela Snyder
Joel Schlotterer
Gallery Special
A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, Schlotterer’s work abstracts illustrative portraits by weaving together photographic scenes with layers of etched and painted patterns. The Polaroid-like images are broken down with screens of light and color creating a flattened quilt of nostalgia and dematerialization.
—Peregrine Honig
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