Interviews 
KANSAS CITY-CHINA CONNECTION(0)
March 9, 2011 —
The year 2011 has seen spreading anti-government demonstrations in countries with oppressive regimes. In China, the so-called Jasmine Revolution was a non-starter, due to the strength of the government’s ability to suppress free speech and assembly. Kansas City artist and activist Hugh Merrill talks about being part of the upcoming Guanlan International Print Biennial, the Gao Brothers, and social justice issues in art.
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BEST-KNOWN UNKNOWN ARTIST IN KS
Based in Lawrence, Kansas, artist Dave Loewenstein has created 75 murals across the US (and one in Northern Ireland), in a process he describes as “part street installation, part performance piece, and part social intervention.” Last year he worked with Mid-America Arts Alliance to bring new swaths of color to Tonkawa, Oklahoma, and Newton, Kansas, and he’s teaching about his process this semester at Washburn University. He discusses his work in an interview with Tom King.
THE SPENCER’S CLAIRVOYANT
Director of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, Saralyn Reece Hardy has worked for the past five years to expand the museum’s reach and influence on regional, national, and international levels. She talks about community involvement and what’s ahead for the museum in 2011.
REALITY MY WAY
The art of Wayne Propst is scripted by real life; he says that true outsider art is not eccentricity but truth. Tom King catches up with the 64-year-old Lawrence, Kansas, artist whose exhibitions have a reputation both for being highly provocative and for enjoying good sales. King’s interview was conducted the day before Propst’s latest show, “Baby Heads 02,” which is being changed out at the Bourgeois Pig for the coming Final Friday openings.
THE QUIET DOMESTIC PAUSE
Jonah Criswell discusses his drawings and paintings of domestic interiors that make up a solo exhibition, “Reside,” opening at Cocoon Gallery September 3. Fellow artist Erica Mahinay writes, “Common associations with comfort and familiarity are inverted as spaces become charged with apparitions and traces of history and memory,” and explores these ideas further with him.
NO PEREGRINATIONS FOR THIS KC ARTIST
With the broadcast finale of Bravo TV’s “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” on Wednesday, viewers learned that Kansas City’s Peregrine Honig made it to the end — and came in second to Abdi Farah. Read about her experience, how close the screened version was to reality, and what she learned about pop culture that will influence her work for years to come.
Q&A WITH RYAN MOSLEY
Ryan Mosley’s “Painting Séance” is the result of his residency at Grand Arts this spring, when the popular young British artist worked for six weeks painting “a mismatch of Victorian, Midwestern buffoon-like figureheads,” among other things. After traveling back home, he discusses his time in Kansas City and the influence it had on his work (on view through July 24).
Q&A WITH LIZ SEATON
The associate curator at the Beach Museum of Art in Manhattan, Kansas, discusses Yoonmi Nam’s exhibition and the Beach Museum of Art gift print program. “Yoonmi Nam: Transient Landscape” is on view from June 18 through December 19, 2010. Nam will give a lecture about her work on September 22.
Q&A WITH THE WONDER FAIR FAMILY
The Wonder Fair gallery in Lawrence, Kansas, is in its third year as a base of creative operations for the college town an hour’s drive from downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and has moved “up” in the world, expanded its staff, and is ready to create more involved, concept-driven exhibitions. “Hott Sheets” opens there June 25, with a reception from 7 to 10 p.m.
COUNTDOWN TO FASHION SHOW #10
The West 18th Street Fashion Show is celebrating its 10th year with “A Decadent Summer” — 18 featured collections selected from more than 60 fashion designer applicants, music by The People’s Liberation Big Band, and other dramatic decade-fitting touches. Read “5Mins/5Qs,” an interview with one of the show’s producers, Ashlee Broome, by Kristin Grossman.
LISA IGLESIAS DISCUSSES LATEST EXHIBITION
“Ain’t no grave gonna hold me down,” Lisa Iglesias’s solo exhibition at the UCM Gallery of Art & Design at the University of Central Missouri is on display through April 10 and is an exploration of her “fascination with repetition, futility, and time.”