Review

Fiber Artists and Abstractionist Selected for 2010

The Charlotte Street Foundation announced its annual visual artist awards Wednesday evening, January 27. Pictured at Helix Architecture + Design, Inc., where the reception was held are: (foreground, left to right) Ari Fish, Maria Elena Buszek, Sonié Ruffin, Stacy Switzer and (background) Caleb Taylor, James Martin, and Gregory Volk. Photo: Jared Panick, courtesy of Charlotte Street Foundation

The anticipation and excitement was palpable in the lobby of architecture and design firm, Helix, for the 2010 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Awards announcement. This was the first time that such a "media event" event had been staged to announce the grants. While attendees mingled, the three awards recipients arrived, having been notified of their achievement only an hour earlier.

Jay Tomlinson, board president of Charlotte Street Foundation and principal at Helix, kicked off the evening with a brief history of the non-profit arts organization and its accomplishments. Since its inception in 1997, Charlotte Street Foundation has given awards to 71 visusal artists, bestowing a total of $487,000. In 2008, it began making smaller grants to generative performing artists. Charlotte Street Foundation is also behind free studio space programs and exhibitions and performances at venues like la Esquina and the Urban Culture Project's Paragraph and Project space galleries.

This year's awards — individual, unrestricted grants of $10,000 each — went to three artists in unique disciplines. Artists were selected based on the maturity of their work, their dedication to it, and other accomplishments. The selection process, Tomlinson related from the committee members, had not been easy because all of the nominated artists have excellent qualifications. Here are the selected visual artist-winners for 2010:

Ari Fish

Ari Fish attended the Kansas City Art Institute for performance art, then painting, then ceramics — but fashion design was something she came to independently, outside of a traditional classroom setting. Fish's work is certainly not traditional, commercial fashion design. Instead, her creations are highly conceptual artworks that happen to be wearable. Her garment constructions are architectural and representative of subcultural, occult, and post-apocalyptic themes. Her work suggests an empowerment of individuals to create the world they want to live in and from that ideal, form a larger collective identity. She has designed clothing for artists Jesse Small and Mark Southerland, bands such as Ssion and Tilley and the Wall, been included as a featured designer in the West 18th Street Fashion Show, and worked with internationally acclaimed designer Peggy Noland.

Ari Fish, "Dreamteam: John, Yoko, Kurt, Courtney," graphite on paper, 36" x 24”, 2007. Image: courtesy of the artist

Actor/artists wear designs by Ari Fish from her Com-Domestication Collection, made of nylon, cotton, rayon, linen, poly-fil, polyester and silk, 2007 (dimensions variable). Image: courtesy of the artist

Sonié Joi Ruffin

Sonié Ruffin's work focuses on building community and expressing the shared human experience, giving traditional crafts like quilting expanded relevance as art. Both abstract and narrative, her quilts communicate stories about the African American and urban experience, music, and the interconnectedness of all people. Ruffin has a background in design and business, is a published author (Opening Day: 14 Quilts Celebrating the Life and Times of Negro League Baseball, 2009; and The Soulful Art of African American Quilts: Nineteen Bold, Improvisational Projects, 2007, both by Kansas City Star Quilt Books), has served as a visiting curator for the American Jazz Museum, and currently is gallery director for Faso Gallery of Art, 3120 Troost Avenue.

Sonié Ruffin, "Wynton Marsalis’ Conversation with Jazz," hand-dyed cotton, 7’ x 8’, 2007. Image: courtesy of the artist

Sonié Ruffin, "Home Run the Integration of Baseball," cotton, 53" x 53”, 2008. Image: courtesy of the artist

Caleb Taylor

Caleb Taylor received his BFA from Northwest Missouri State University and his MFA from Montana State University. His work can be found in numerous public and private collections and he has been a resident artist at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Urban Culture Project Studio. In addition to this year's Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award, he received a grant from the Vermont Studio Center last year for the studio residency (supported, in part, too, by an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant) and a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA grant in 2008. Taylor's work is an investigation of abstract language using drawings, prints, ceramics and installations. He is as intimately connected with his process as he is with the end result of his work. Using large swaths of flat space in layers, concealing and revealing complicated and detailed forms, Taylor references the body and its potential to be dissected and manipulated.

Caleb Taylor, "Cornered," oil on canvas, 35" x 32”, 2008. Image: courtesy of the artist

Caleb Taylor, "Contained II," acrylic, gouache, pencil on paper, 15" x 17”, 2010. Image: courtesy of the artist

Before the closing speech, committee member Gregory Volk not only commended Charlotte Street Foundations for the work it has done for visual art in Kansas City, but challenged the organization to do more. "What Charlotte Street is doing is something amazingly important at the right time, not just for Kansas City, but in our culture's history. There is something truly visionary here, and of sustenance. However, it's very important that artists of this caliber be connected to elsewhere." Clearly, Volk looks forward to artists from Kansas City enjoying success not only at the local or regional level, but also at the national and international level.

Undoubtedly, Fish, having already made an international impression with her appearance on Project Runway; Ruffin, whose work has found its way from Houston, Texas, to New York, to Tanzania; and Taylor, who has exhibited nationally from Arizona to New York, will rise to this challenge.

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