SHORT LIKE THE WEEKEND

By Tracy Abeln August 5, 2008

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2008 Art / Work: Creativity from the Cube shines

Installation view of 2008 Art/Work: Creativity from the Cube at Union Station, Kansas City, Missouri, August 2, 2008

Cubicles can be boxes where employees feel penned in, blocked off visually from windows, colleagues, and creativity. Decorated only with a few family photos, favorite toys, or a small vase of flowers, perhaps, "cube farms" have a reputation for being the kind of place where the "duplicate gray standard faces" of Theodore Roethke's poem Dolor are made. For the second year in a row, however, the Kansas City Business Committee for the Arts has shown that bright artistic ideas are born in all types of office settings.

Twenty-one companies participated in this year's Art / Work: Creativity from the Cube exhibition, which was on display at Union Station from July 26 through August 2. "The Art / Work program is designed to promote and acknowelege the amazing talents of people who work for Kansas City metropolitan-area businesses," and the sculpture, paintings, furniture, jewelry, photography, and other works on display were indeed compelling overall.

It's a shame the work is up for such a brief time.

The 96 works of visual art — and 25 haiku poems — represented the first place or People's Choice winners from 20 corporate in-house shows held over the past year. There were more than 500 entries, from approximately 250 employees at companies such as Assurant Employee Benefits, Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, Garmin, and of course, the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City, where the Kansas City BCA was founded as one of its programs in 2001.

A selection of photos show the depth and diversity of artistic talent, and the number of jurors, sponsors, and others behind the scenes demonstrates how the Kansas City BCA is fulfilling its mission to forge alliances between the business and arts communities and develop awareness of the arts everywhere, not just within galleries, museums, and art schools.

A few photos of some of the work: