Collage 
Art with Legs : Katie Van Blaricum(0)
August 17, 2010 —
These are no sterile biological samples. They are carefully mounted and arranged against backgrounds which complement and highlight the animals’ colors and structures.
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Beauty Preserved: Venus Auxier
While Venus Auxier’s preserved botanical art is on display during the hottest, muggiest part of the year, it still serves as an advance reminder of what we’ll be missing this winter.
PRICING THE ‘COOL’
Wonder Fair gallery in Lawrence takes on the seemingly-arbitrary system of art market pricing with “Hott Sheets.” Deconstructing the façade of expertise by applying a tongue-in-cheek Value Assessment Methodology Form to 94 works on view through July 25, curators aim to determine the value of value-making in the art world.
Clip Quips: Bryan Voell
Voell knows a thing or several about strangely compelling combinations and juxtapositions. As a result, his creations manage somehow to be simultaneously beyond-left-field odd and possessed of an inarguable rightness.
Light Furnishings: Kale Van Leeuwen
The paintings in “Chairs” are, as with Van Leeuwen’s previous mixed-media pieces, uniformly slick, sleek and polished … the sort of thing Edward Hopper might have produced had he used furniture instead of faces as his props.
IT’S HER PARTY (SHE IS NOT CRYING)
Women make up at least 50 percent of the population of the planet and our art schools, yet in the larger museum and gallery setting tend to be underrepresented, according to “Who Does She Think She Is?”, a documentary by Pamela T. Boll. In a companion exhibition of the same title at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, artists respond to the age-old challenge of being female (and often also a mother) and being an artist.
Dream Statements: Melissa Arroyo
Melissa Arroyo inhabits a world of burning bathrooms, random police chases and animals running wild at Quik Trip. It’s not entirely a world of her own making … and for Arroyo, a senior at Shawnee Mission North High School, that’s half the fun.
One Gem, Many Facets: Hannah Hurrle
Hurrle covers a lot of ground — painting, sculpture, drawing, collage (and various mixed media combinations thereof), even video work — in “Escape.” Within those divisions by medium, there’s a good deal of visual and emotional variety, ranging from the spare to the saturated.
Layers upon Layers within Layers: Terri Rogers
Besides underscoring the theme of the wall hanging, the augmentations also serve as entry points into Rogers’ calm, meditative composition (another common thread, so to speak, which runs throughout her work). The layers in this show aren’t merely visual or structural, though.
(ARTKC365) Trainshooting: Andrea Fuhrman
Through Fuhrman’s lens, and in her hands, the train paintings are deconstructed into their basic elements of color, line and curve. (Sometimes a bit of context seeps through, as in the clearly visible “G” in today’s featured image.) Her arrangement of the shots highlights the complements and contrasts of those key components.
COMMUNITY-STUDIO INTEGRATION
Hugh Merrill’s 40 years of art-making have left impressions on communities he has worked with in doing so. “What began as a visual interest in spaces informed by architectural surroundings has moved full circle to involving much broader segments of the arts and local communities, including their architectural landmarks. The relationship between origin and fruition is extremely close in this work.”
(ARTKC365) Piecework Memories : Tanya Hartman
Hartman’s chosen materials, media and techniques influence more than the purely visual parts of her art. They also reinforce the idea of life — and of the memories created over a lifetime —as fragile and alterable, things to be constructed and assembled bit by bit.
Navigating the Waters Within: Steph Toth Kates at Beggars Table Church & Gallery
Steph Toth Kates
Suspended Narratives: Stories in Oil and Silk
11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Beggars Table Church & Gallery
2009 Baltimore
Kansas City, MO
913.558.9039
Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday
Runs through: Dec. 31.
Artist’s site: http://www.stephtothkates.com
Gallery site: http://www.beggarstablechurch.org
Ordinarily, you wouldn’t expect to find pictures of marine invertebrates in the sanctuary of a church. But when the church in question is the Crossroads’ Beggars Table Church [...]
Faces of the Stranger: Sheryl Pierson at Blue Gallery
Sheryl Pierson
Portrait Invitational Exhibition
(group show)
10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Blue Gallery
118 Southwest Boulevard
Kansas City, MO
816.527.0823
Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday.
Runs through: Sept. 29.
Gallery site: http://www.bluegalleryonline.com
Most of the works in The Blue Gallery’s Portrait Invitational Exhibition bend the parameters of the form, forcing viewers to expand their inner definitions as well.
Sheryl Pierson’s collage paintings are no exception.
The women’s faces she [...]
Begin the Beguile: JP Morrison at The Base Gallery
JP Morrison
Beguiled: The Folklore of Women
11 a.m.-4 p.m.
The Base Gallery
2012 Baltimore (Downstairs)
Kansas City, MO
816.398.8109
Hours: 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Runs through: Sept. 28
Artist’s site: http://www.jpmorrison.net
Gallery site: http://www.thebasegallery.com
In many areas of life and daily living, ambiguity is something to be avoided. It matters whether the light is red or green, whether or not you have enough to cover dinner [...]