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Upcoming Exhibition
Past Exhibition
April 2012 John Folsom How to Disappear Completely Patricia Kochaver Planetary Influence opening reception First Friday April 6, 6-9 pm exhibition runs through April 30, 2012 Click to see complete exhibition |
John Folsom How to Disappear Completely IV direct pigment print on acrylic sheet with oil on board 35" x 61" fr $6800 John Folsom (b. 1967) is a mixed media artist born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky. In 1990 he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University. His work deals primarily with the way in which images of landscape are used or fictionalized to present a personal sense of place.
The title for this exhibition "How to Disappear Completely" is largely inspired by the Italian film L'Avventura by Michelangelo Antonioni. This film has been favorite of mine for the past 20 years. I am interested in its strong visual composition and become fascinated with the idea of altering or subverting the narrative in some way.
The materials comprising this work are acrylic sheet, mixed media, oil paint, scored backing, presented within a unique frame. I was introduced recently to the process of "direct to substrate" printing and have been fascinated with the quality of depth achieved when it’s applied directly to acrylic sheet/plexiglass. The plexi is sandwiched between a layer of non glare glass and a scored backing which has been treated with oil paint. The result is a subtly hued image that seems to carry on an almost 3 dimensional quality.
Through the use of transparency and layering this series seeks to show the nature of conditioned reality in a constant state of flux. The forms of landscape and the figure lead us into a charged stage of impermanence which hints at the deeper reality of energy and information.
Represented by Blue Gallery since 2000, Folsom’s photographic paintings have been widely exhibited for the past 10 years and can be found in private, corporate, and museum collections worldwide. |
Patricia Kochaver Sunspots, clay 13" x 15.5" $850
This body of work speaks to my love and fascination of form and surface. The large scale spherical forms seek to evoke a sense of fullness and potential, they seem to inhale. They also create an ideal canvas for the flames in the firing. Each piece has been fired several times, and some of the remnants of initial firings show through to the final firing, creating complex surfaces a single firing couldn't achieve. With multiple firings new marks are discovered and this is the impetus to keep experimenting. Each challenge brings new potential and the desire to keep going. My hope is that the continuing study and understanding of process and materials allows these forms to transcend method and evolve into that idea or concept that I see in my minds eye.
Represented by Blue Gallery since 2003, Patricia Kochaver received her BFA at Graceland University, Lamoni, IA in 1981. She was also awarded an apprenticeship at Old Town Studio, Peuget Sound, WA.
Patricia's work can be found in private and corporate collections nationwide. |
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February 2012 Joe Ramiro Garcia But Seriously… opening reception: First Friday, February 3, 2012 6–9 pm artist will be in attendance artist's talk: Saturday, February 4, 1–3 pm refreshments by Moxie exhibition runs through March 31, 2012 
Garden, oil and alkyd on canvas over panel, 60" x 60"
Click to view Joe's entire exhibition Joe Ramiro Garcia (American, 1966) Born in Houston, Texas, Joe Ramiro Garcia attended Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts before studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Garcia's education includes color training with Julian Robles, as well as workshops with David Pagel, Thomas Nozkowski, Roland Reis and Squeak Carnwath.
Some people believe that paintings have meanings. Although I employ images from cartoons, animals, and objects in my work, I do not believe in creating a specific narrative.
Instead I am sensitive to the charge or implication imagery lends to the painting’s surface. My interest in using familiar and even commercial imagery is in our ability to reanimate and project our own story onto them.
I begin most paintings by troweling on thick layers of oil paint, and then slowly reworking the surface as the layer dries to a texture similar to clay. I utilize various mark making techniques learned from printmaking in my painting process. One in particular is a pressless lithography method I use to create a photographic or printed look. Regardless of what the painting appears there are no other media used in the work besides oil paint.
Paintings are like walls. They remind me of the places I’ve lived around. Their surfaces recall kitchens, bedrooms, backyards and tool sheds.
If there is a message in my painting, it’s that I’m not sure of anything and I’m okay with it.
In 2005, Joe Ramiro Garcia was honored with a Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Exhibited in museums, prominent galleries and private collections internationally, Joe Ramiro Garcia works and resides in Santa Fe, NM and has exhibited with Blue Gallery, Kansas City, MO since 2000. |
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Wonder Wall
(works of art $500 or less) 
including works by:
Amy Abshier-Reyes
Rich Bowman
Shannon Gaines Bowman
Carson Catlin
Jamie Chase
Maura Cluthe
Lori Raye Erickson
Joe Gregory
Bernal Koehrsen
Lisa Lala
Lacey Lewis William Rainey Tuesday Schmidt
Doug Schwietert
Rachel Stuart-Haas Bernadette Esperanza Torres Brad Williams
Opens First Friday, December 2, 2011 6–9 pm
exhibition runs through January 28, 2012 Click to see entire Wonder Wall exhibition |
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November 2011
Maura Cluthe
Sketchbook: Chapter Two preview + artist's talk: Thursday, November 3, 6-8 pm
opening reception: First Friday, November 4, 6-9 pm artist will be in attendance exhibition runs through November 26, 2011
Click to view Maura Cluthe's exhibition
Maura Cluthe Again and Again, REPEAT REPEAT, Over and Over, mixed media on board, 6 x 8 inches (each), 2011
"An impressive collection of striped socks, funky watches, bottle caps and vintage robots are just a few things that make up the world of Maura Cluthe. Talented and introspective, mixed media artist Maura Cluthe integrates text, drawing, photography, painting, and other “stuff” she has collected into her art. These collected fragments take on new meaning and live on within her paintings."
-Christopher Leitch, Review Magazine, April 2001
Back in 1996, I had what I consider to be one of my first real solo shows. It was at the Kansas City Artists Coalition, in the Underground Gallery. That show was titled Sketchbook: Chapter One. It was, in many ways, an experiment for me, a beginning; it was my Chapter One. It was an experiment in mixed media, an experiment in how to hang the work, and an experiment to see if this was something that I could actually do.
Now, fifteen years later, I feel like I am entering my Chapter Two. I am still experimenting, and I love that. Although one could argue that they see a theme within most of these pieces, Sketchbook: Chapter Two is meant to be a look into what I am currently thinking and how I am attempting to represent those thoughts visually.
Most noticeable within this small body of work would probably be the patterns, and the repetition of those patterns. Since I was a little girl, my eye has been drawn to pattern. As an adult, I am still drawn to visual pattern, but I am also drawn to understanding the patterns within our selves. Why do we do the things we do? How do they shape who we are and how we see the world? I am not attempting to answer these questions in these pieces; I am trying to understand.
-Maura Cluthe
Since graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1993 with a BFA in Illustration, Cluthe has shown her mixed media works across the country including Kansas City, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Atlanta. |
ALSO SHOWING: Select works from gallery artists 
Elizabeth Allen-Cannon Escapist Menagerie No. V, Escapist Menagerie No. III, Escapist Menagerie No. IX ball-point pen, ink on paper, 15" x 15" fr. (each) Click to view more of Elizabeth's work |
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William Rainey (American, 1943)
William Rainey's canvases are like maps of human experience or thought process, where all of the input and reactions are mixed and meshed, then organized and synthesized into bite-size chunks. It is wonderful to see an artist who shows such strength in abstraction and takes such original joy in the act of painting – Dustin Johnson, REVIEW Magazine, Dec. 2005
Rainey's acrylic on canvas paintings grasp the imagination and transforms it to every day life, emotions, and beliefs. The paintings move into the subconscious much like improvisational jazz; melding reality and fiction with a fascinating journey of color, movement, and shapes. “I can't imagine painting something exactly as it is. That's what a camera is for.” Says Rainey. “I require nothing special of the observer. Each viewer may see and feel what they see and feel, and play their own themes and improvisations. That way we can both be surprised.” Rainey received he first art award 44 years ago and since has attended Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO and the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts, Masters Program. With collectors spanning the world, Rainey works in his Kansas City studio and can be seen at Blue Gallery in the Crossroads Arts District.
View from the Cat Bird Seat, acrylic on canvas, 66" x 60" fr., $6500
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August 2011
Summer Group Exhibition
June 2011
Nature as Muse
featuring:
Stephanie Chubbuck Susan Goldsmith and
Bernadette Esperanza Torres
Opening Reception, First Friday, June 3, 2011 6-9 pm
Artists' Talk, Saturday, June 4, 2011 2-4 pm
Exhibition runs through July 30, 2011 ____________________________________________________________________________ Stephanie Chubbuck
Untitled - 5 peaches, blown and cold worked glass with hand forged copper and mixed media, 3" x 3" x 3" (each)
“The series of Glass Fruit is a continuation of my tradition of surrealist figurative sculpture. The pieces are saucy, humorous, and sometimes slightly erotic.” Says artist, Stephanie Chubbuck.
Graduating from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA., with a double degree in Sculptural Glass and Fine Metalsmithing, '94, Chubbuck continues to bring innovative work with depth written about in Sculpture Magazine and experienced in countless exhibitions across the nation. Chubbuck holds numerous awards and can be seen in corporate and personal collections throughout.
“By visually combining the organic with the imposed, the soft and the hard, the natural with the commercial a conceptual transformation takes place. My objective is to elicit recognition of corporeal and emotional conditions that are affective, unsettling, erotic, humorous, or a combination of these things.”
Click to see more of Stephanie's work ____________________________________________________________________________ Susan Goldsmith
Hachiya Persimmons - V, gold leaf with pigment print, oil pastel, oil and acrylic paint and resin on panel, 36" x 24"
"Susan Goldsmith is an impressionist in reverse." Writes Peter Frank
With a BFA in printmaking & drawing and a MFA in painting & drawing from California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA., Susan Goldsmith has worked at Industrial Light & Magic in the optical and computer graphics departments. She began her ILM career doing digital plate restoration and worked as a 2D paint and rotoscope artist at both the San Rafael facility and from 2005 - 2009 at the Lucas Digital Arts Facility at the Presidio in San Francisco, Ca. From her experience in the film industry combined with her education, Goldsmith transforms ordinary mediums into special effects, and back again to the simplicity only found in nature.
Frank continues, "The French avant gard'ist 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." Click to see more of Susan's work ____________________________________________________________________________ Bernadette Esperanza Torres
She Felt Upside Down, porcelain, glaze, high fire wire, 17.5" x 17.5" x 5"
"Telling a great story is what I do." Says artist, Bernadette Esperanza Torres. "My stories are downright funny and some times even very sorrowful. I communicate by using my hands and translating these stories into clay. My artwork focuses on the concepts of communication and miscommunications. I build female figures, birds, and fish by hand in porcelain clay as a response to the joys, frustrations, and desires I experience when dealing with humanity. Handbuilding clay allows a personal connection with my materials and forms; that intimacy is imperative when processing emotions. My work, especially my animals, helps me bring a humorous light to the serious matters in my life."
Bernadette Esperanza Torres earned a scholarship to Kansas City Art Institute from the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High in St. Petersburg Florida. She then received a full tuition scholarship to earn her MFA from the University of Miami in Coral Gables Florida. She has taught ceramics, sculpture and drawing at many different venues including the University of Miami, Gulliver Academy, and The Westport School of Art. In 2004 Bernadette created the now famous front gates on Miami Florida's South Beach for clothing designer Versace before his death. She has also worked at the Kansas City Art Institute in the Admissions Office as a recruiter for the 2000/2001 KCAI student body.
"Using my hands to create meaning with images and materials empowers me in all aspects of my life. Manipulating clay not only creates sculptures, but also builds me up as an artist, an educator, and a woman."
Click to see more of Bernadette's work |