Take Only What You Can Give
by Diana Heise

The Studios Inc Exhibition Space is pleased to present Take Only What You Can Give, an exhibition by Diana Heise, on view from 3.11.11 to 4.22.11. This exhibition is made possible by the support of ArtsKC Fund and Kansas City Art Institute.
 
Take Only What You Can Give is the second solo exhibition by multi-disciplinary resident artist Diana Heise at The Studios Inc Exhibition Space.This show includes four new bodies of work from 2010 and 2011, including a series of videos, sculptural installations, photographs and a performance. Each work tackles ideas surrounding violence found in contemporary society, in order to highlight the fragile resilience of life. Through her work, Heise creates a visual language that engages the grotesque and the beautiful to address the effects of fear and domination. Her aim is to encourage catharsis, healing and sensations of freedom.
 
The title piece is a sculpture and participatory performance aimed at cultivating contemplation of the link between people and the environment. Three performers will lie on a reclaimed wood sculpture, covered by hundreds of pounds of local red clover seeds. The audience is invited to take handfuls of seeds, asked to take only what they can be responsible for cultivating.
 
Diana Heise’s work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum, the Film Anthology Archives, and Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY. She is a recipient of a Performance Art Fund Grant from the Franklin Furnace Inc as well as a Presidential Fellowship at the American University in Cairo. She has spoken about her work in venues such as the Parsons School of Art and Design, the H&R Block Artspace and the Kansas City Art Institute.

Take Only What You Can Give
by Diana Heise
3.11.11 – 4.22.11

Gallery Hours
Tues – Friday    10 - 4 PM
Saturday             12 - 4 PM

Location:
1708 Campbell Street
Kansas City, MO 64108

www.thestudiosinc.org

Many Happy Returns: A Conversation Between Henry Bloch, America’s Tax Man, and Tom Bloch
 
Atkins Auditorium/ Bloch Lobby
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak St. | Kansas City, MO 64111
 
6-8 p.m. Friday, March 25
6-7 p.m., Conversation, Atkins Auditorium
7-8 p.m., happy hour, book signing in Bloch Lobby
$5/$25 for ticket & signed copy of book
 
In his new book, Many Happy Returns, author Tom Bloch tells the story of his father, Henry, who rose from a tiny office to become the founder of a national industry–H&R Block. Join us as he interviews the Bloch building’s namesake whom he also calls Dad.
 
For tickets call 816-751-1ART or purchase online at www.nelson-atkins.org

Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project presents
OVER AGAIN: ALISON BRADY AND SARAH KNOBEL
OPENING FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 6-9PM
Urban Culture Project Space  | 21 E. 12th Street, Kansas City MO, 64105

A two person show by Alison Brady (New York) and Sarah Knobel (Washington, DC) featuring
a collaborative video installation and individual photographs by each artist that employ absurdity, wry humor, and surrealism as they explore issues of isolation, loneliness and anxiety

OVER AGAIN: ALISON BRADY AND SARAH KNOBEL
Opening reception: Friday, March 18, 6-9pm (artist remarks at 6:30pm)
Exhibition runs March 18-May 7, 2011
Gallery hours: 12-5pm Wed, Fri & Sat; 11-6pm Thurs.

PLUS Artist Talk (open to the public): Wednesday, March 16, 9:30am
University of Missouri-Kansas City, Fine Arts Building, Room 206A
Sponsored by the UMKC Art and Art History Department

Over Again presents the work of New York-based Alison Brady and Washington DC- based Sarah Knobel, two emerging artists quickly building international reputations  for photo- and video- based works that wrestle with cultural expectations, ideas of normality, and feelings of anxiety and isolation related to their experiences as women transitioning from carefree to more careful adulthood in the 21st century.
 
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a new, collaborative video installation, Over Again, which combines aspects of absurdity and wry humor with a low-tech sensibility to create a surreal, fraught space in which the anxious uncertainty of the everyday is explored.  Portraying the activities and imaginings of a housewife within her domestic environment, this work examines issues surrounding aging, work, marriage and motherhood in a manner both humorous and disturbing, mundane and cathartic. Visit www.overagain.info for more about Over Again, including a video teaser.
 
Also featured at Project Space will be a selection of large-format color photographs by each artist.  Alison Brady’s  photographs “deal rather explicitly and hilariously with the female predicament,”  as critic Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times about Brady’s 2008 solo show, “Sweet Affliction” at Massimo Audiello gallery in Chelsea. Her most recent photographs draw on classical portraiture formats while also invoking the work of other women photographers, from Diane Arbus to Cindy Sherman. Carefully staged and crafted, these portraits of women evince physical and psychic states in which control and excess, the beautiful and grotesque, and the erotic and the ridiculous coexist.

In her digital prints, Sarah Knobel constructs fantastic tableau populated by elements drawn from pop culture. As she describes it, this assemblage of referents “creates a stage that allows me to decipher individuality and the influence of the collective experience.” More specifically, these images, in which rainbows, clouds, cats, birds, modernist furniture, and self-portraits converge within carefully constructed interior environments suggest the disjunction between expectations and reality, youth and adulthood, constraint and freedom, and private and public selves.
 
Alison Brady earned her MFA in Photography Video and Related Media from The School of Visual Arts (NYC). Her work has been featured in publications such as New York Arts Magazine, Time Out NY and The New York Times; and has been made a part of Sir Elton John’s personal art collection.  Along with showing in solo exhibitions with Massimo Audiello, in NYC, she has participated in group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and internationally, including the Prague Biennale, Czech Republic; Fleetwing Gallery/Brooklyn Artillery, Brooklyn, NY; Detroit Museum of New Art, Detroit, MI; Kiosky Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand; Space 301, Mobil, AL; Woom Gallery, Birmingham, England; and Kopeikin Gallery, LA, CA. Visit www.alisonbrady.com for more.

Sarah Knobel is based in Washington, D.C., and has shown work internationally, including in SLICK 2009 Contemporary Art Fair in Paris, France and in the exhibition Gimme More at Elaine Levy Project, Brussels, Belgium, as well as in Playful Things at University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO. Her work has been presented in solo exhibits at venues including, Elaine Levy Project, Brussels; RagTag Cinema, Columbia, MO; Guillardia Gallery, San Marcos, TX; Hotcakes Gallery, Milwaukee, WI; Magic Lantern Film, Providence, RI; and Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH.  She has also participated in art festivals including Videonale 10, Kunst Museum, Bonn, Germany; 700 IS Film and Video Festival, Egilsstadir, Iceland; and 312 Online: Festival of Contemporary Video and Film, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College Art Gallery, Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada. Visit http://sarahknobel.com for more.

______________________________________________________

Charlotte Street Foundation is dedicated to making Kansas City a place where artists and art thrive. Through its Urban Culture Project initiative, Charlotte Street supports artists of all disciplines and contributes to city’s vitality by transforming previously vacant spaces into dynamic venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming. For more information, visit www.charlottestreet.org.

Upcoming Events at the Museum:
Saturday, March 5, 1 p.m.
Free movie: “Oh What a Lovely War”
After the successful run of the live theater production of “Oh What a Lovely War,” see a free showing of the 1969 movie.  The film, which was Richard Attenborough's feature film directorial debut, will be shown in the Museum’s J.C. Nichols Auditorium.

Tuesday, March 8, 6:30 p.m.
Free Lecture: “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” by Michael Lasser
Thanks to a misprint on his first song, 19-year-old Irving Baline became Irving Berlin. Four years later, he was a professional songwriter sufficiently established for the Friars Club to sponsor a testimonial in his honor. As his contribution to the celebration, he wrote what would become the song “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Peabody Award-winning lecturer Michael Lasser presents the life of “America’s Unlikeliest Genius” as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the famous song. This event will take place in the Museum’s J.C. Nichols Auditorium and is co-sponsored by the Kansas City Public Library.

Coming Soon
Special Ceremony: The Passing of a Generation
With the passing of Frank Buckles, the last known American veteran of the Great War, the Museum will honor this generation of Americans with a special ceremony in March. Details and updates will be posted at www.theworldwar.org.

Walk of Honor Deadline: March 15
Order your Walk of Honor brick by March 15 to include it in this year's Memorial Day dedication ceremony.  The granite bricks are available in three sizes and are installed at the entrance of the Museum. They can be inscribed with your name, the names of loved ones, or even with a personal message.

Your gift helps further the Museum’s mission and is partially tax deductible. Bricks ordered after the March 15 deadline will be dedicated at the Veterans Day ceremony in November. Order a Walk of Honor brick online today or call 816-784-1378 with questions.

Lovely Things | Group Exhibition |  Exhibition runs through March 26, 2011
Amy Abshier-Reyes, And Then She Watched It Fly Away, oil on panel, 10.75" x 9.25"
Click to view the exhibition
 
Sher Pierson | Intimate Talismans | Wearable New Works
Sher Pierson, Year of the Rabbit, vintage rhinestone pin, running rabbit focal, garnets, rutilated quartz nuggets, french seed beads, 15" L
Click to view more of Sher's work
 
Introducing New Artist
Susan Goldsmith
Susan Goldsmith, The Reservoir - Central Park, silver leaf with pigment print, oil pastel, oil paint and resin on panel, 25" x 50"
Susan Goldsmith is an impressionist in reverse. The French avant gardists who radicalized painting a century and a half ago sought to paint the world as the human eye sees it, in the optical grasp of a moment in time and space. Goldsmith upends that process, beginning with the moment and expanding the visual comprehension of that instant into an abstraction of atmosphere, a dissolution of perceived reality into generalized optical excitation. Where Monet painted fields of grain, Goldsmith paints fields of paint. And yet, the eye is no less persuaded, no less invited, no less caressed.
–Peter Frank

Represented by prestigious galleries in San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Boston, MA and Kansas City, MO, Susan Goldsmith received her BFA in 1977 and MFA in 1992 both from California College of the Arts, Oakland CA.  Susan's work can be found in private and corporate collections worldwide.
Click to view more of Susan's work
 
118 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64108 | 816.527.0823 | www.BlueGalleryOnline.com
gallery hours: tuesday - saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. and available by appointment

Take Whatever You Can Give
by Diana Heise

The Studios Inc Exhibition Space is pleased to present Take Only What You Can Give, an exhibition by Diana Heise, on view from 3.11.11 to 4.22.11, with a performance and opening reception, Friday 3.11.11, 6 - 9 PM. This exhibition is made possible by the support of ArtsKC Fund and Kansas City Art Institute.
 
Take Only What You Can Give is the second solo exhibition by multi-disciplinary resident artist Diana Heise at The Studios Inc Exhibition Space.This show includes four new bodies of work from 2010 and 2011, including a series of videos, sculptural installations, photographs and a performance. Each work tackles ideas surrounding violence found in contemporary society, in order to highlight the fragile resilience of life. Through her work, Heise creates a visual language that engages the grotesque and the beautiful to address the effects of fear and domination. Her aim is to encourage catharsis, healing and sensations of freedom.
 
The title piece is a sculpture and participatory performance aimed at cultivating contemplation of the link between people and the environment. Three performers will lie on a reclaimed wood sculpture, covered by hundreds of pounds of local red clover seeds. The audience is invited to take handfuls of seeds, asked to take only what they can be responsible for cultivating.
 
Diana Heise’s work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, including at the Brooklyn Museum, the Film Anthology Archives, and Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, New York, NY. She is a recipient of a Performance Art Fund Grant from the Franklin Furnace Inc as well as a Presidential Fellowship at the American University in Cairo. She has spoken about her work in venues such as the Parsons School of Art and Design, the H&R Block Artspace and the Kansas City Art Institute.

www.thestudiosinc.org

Artist Exhibition: Erica Mahinay presents Re:Describe
MARCH 4 to MARCH 26
 Opening: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, March 4, at the Arts Incubator's Cocoon Gallery.
Hello Art Lounge & Trolley run concurrently from 5:30 to 9 p.m.

The Arts Incubator in the Crossroads invites you to join us from 6 to 9 p.m. at our Cocoon Gallery during First Friday, March 4, for the opening of Erica Mahinay's new exhibit Re:Describe. The event is free and open to the public.
 
In addition, the Hello Art Lounge opens at 5:30 p.m. in the third-floor loft at the Arts Incubator, where more than 20 artists studios also are open for visits. The first Hello Art Trolley departs for other galleries at 6:15 p.m. Hello Art is free to members; a $10 donation is requested from visitors. All are welcome.
 
Erica Mahinay's selected works for Re:Describe are a culmination of a body of work that draws upon the language of painting, utilizes the familiarity of the home, and uses an unconventional use of materiality to create play between reality and illusion. These selected works were instigated and executed during Mahinay's recent residency experiences, which included a two-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center this past fall, granted in part by the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City's ArtsKC Fund, and during her year-long residency from 2009-2010 through the Charlotte Street Foundation's Urban Culture Project Studio Residency Program.
 
"As an artist, it is my ambition to amplify the scope of my work through compelling visual play, extensive dialogue and examining my relationship to the history of painting," Mahinay said. "My work highlights parallels between how memory and painting function, recognizing both as acts of fabrication, which have the ability to divulge or dismantle truth.
 
"Utilizing the familiarity of the home undermines the complexity of human experience, in a way that approaches the uncanny and intermingles myth, memory, dreams and imagination," she said.
   
ARTIST BIO
A native of Santa Fe, N.M., Mahinay now resides in Kansas City. She has a bachelor's of fine arts in painting and a bachelor's of fine arts in art history, both from the Kansas City Art Institute. Mahinay also studied abroad at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy.
 
MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA
To RSVP for complimentary entrance into Hello Art, or for more information about the Cocoon Gallery and/or a high-resolution jpeg of the work "Shifts in Forgetting" (above), contact Trisha Drape at tdrape@artsincubatorkc.org.

Cocoon Gallery at the Arts Incubator
115 West 18th Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64108
816-421-2292

The Byron  Cohen Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of our gallery on March 3rd, 2011 at 8 am. We can be found at www.byroncohengallery.com
 
Featuring artists Ricky Allman, Barry Anderson, Julie Farstad, The Gao Brothers, Hendrik Kerstens, Hung Liu, Grant Miller, Amy Myers, Donna Rosenthal, Peter Sarkisian, Roger Shimomura, Linnea Spransy and Craig Subler. The gallery will focus on emerging, mid-career and established talent working in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, video and mixed media. Artwork will be available for purchase and viewing online at www.byroncohengallery.com and locally by scheduled appointments (816.421.5665).
 
Additionally, Byron Cohen Gallery will present exhibitions, which will be emailed directly to our clients’ inboxes. Simply visit www.byroncohengallery.com & enter your information in the newsletter sign up box to begin receiving or shows and correspondence.
 
Join our mailing list for more information on this and other upcoming exhibitions.
 
--
Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art
2020 Baltimore, Suite 1N
Kansas City, MO  64108
(t) 816.421.5665  (f) 816.421.5775
http://byroncohengallery.com

You're Invited! Experience First Fridays with Hello Art and ArtsKC!

ArtsKC - The Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, is proud to sponsor Hello Art, for their Friday, March 4th Trolley Tour and Reception.  
 
Hello Art, a new membership organization created by the Arts Incubator of Kansas City, hosts fun monthly events to help people explore Kansas City's visual arts scene.  To learn more about Hello Art, please visit http://www.helloart.org/.

Event Details
Private Party & Trolley Tour • Friday, March 4th • 5:30 PM - 9:30 PM
 
5:30 PM: Drinks and Hors D'oeuvres
Hello Art Lounge
Arts Incubator Event Loft
115 W. 18th Street
Kansas City, MO 64108
 
6:15 PM: Private Trolley Tour
This tour makes multiple loops to local galleries, so you can tour at your own pace.
 
Please feel free to join us again after the tour in the Hello Art Lounge, or explore more galleries in the Crossroads Arts District!
 
This event is invitation only and we can only accommodate the first one hundred registered.
Please click here to register now!