Review

"Disturbing the Peace", Mixed Media on Cotton.

Mary Elmusa

11 a.m-4 p.m.

Open Studio
5611 Cherokee Circle
Fairway, KS
913.722.5345

Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. today and Sunday.
This weekend only.

Artist's site: http://www.maryelmusa.com
Kansas City Artists Coalition site: http://www.kansascityartistscoalition.org

April, according to T.S. Eliot, is the cruelest month. October? Around here, it's the artiest.

Besides all the usual weekly openings (a number that continues to grow), the last two full weekends of October are set aside for the Kansas City Artists Coalition's open studio events.

Last weekend was Crossroads- and West Bottoms-heavy. This weekend, you can find artists in their creative spaces all over the metropolitan area -- including Fairway, where Mary Elmusa has her studio.

Elmusa, who teaches (in the Blue Valley district) as well as makes art, hasn't hosted an open studio since 2007 and hasn't shown in the area since last October and November, when she was part of the Opposition group exhibition in the Coalition's Underground Gallery. So this will be a chance  not only to meet the artist, but also to see her newest textile works.

They don't always look like textiles, though ... at least, not at first glance. Elmusa's pieces -- of which Disturbing the Peace, pictured above, is a prime example -- combine aspects of other media as well.

My formal training was in painting. Fortunately, a way of working has evolved for me that combines the interest in painting media and my passion for fabric, sewing construction and textile surface design, such as dyeing and printing on cloth, Elmusa writes. Pattern plays an important part in my work. I enjoy using both traditional and modern technological methods.

Elmusa's work is more than cerebral, though. She aims to capture and interpret emotions, and she succeeds. A closer look at Disturbing the Peace brings out the "awww" factor, but without crossing the line into cutesiness. And if not every stitch is perfect ... well, that too is by design.

Authentic art work can occur when one is truly present in the act of creation, she writes. Mistakes, missteps, changes, seams that show all demonstrate the process of creation. Letting such evidence remain in the work helps us to understand that art and life are messy, full of trials and attempts, successes and failures, confusion and clarity. My goal is not to produce a “pretty package”. I want my art to show that in the processes of “working things out” there is purposeful struggle with creative adjustments.

That sounds like a springboard for a really good conversation about art ... one that could take place, say, at an open studio event.

As always ... that's a hint.

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