Charlotte Street Foundation

Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project Biannual Open Studios Weekend, showcases the work of artists in its Studio Residency Program for visual and performing artists. The 2-day event, May 18 + 19, 2012 will include live music, dance, comedy improv, and cross-disciplinary performances, special sales, temporary installations, workshops, participatory activities, artist talks, and more, highlighting the work of 30 visual artists and 6 performing artists/ensembles awarded free studios for year-long terms through Charlotte Street’s competitive Urban Culture Project Studio Residency Program. This is the culminated event for the 2011-2012 Studio Residents! All events are free and open to the public.

Dates: Friday, May 18, 5:30 PM-9 PM
Saturday, May 19, 11 AM-3 PM

Studio Residency Venues:
Partnership Place/ 906 Grand, 13th Floor
City Center Square/ 1100 Main, 5th Floor
Town Pavilion/ 1100 Walnut, 6th Floor

Parking:
There is a lot going on Downtown this weekend. Please be advised that surrounding the Power & Light District, Walnut will be closed from Truman to 12th, and 14th will be closed from Friday morning to Sunday. The H&R Block parking garage will be closed. Park is available in the Cosentino, Town Pavilion, and City Center Square garages.

Visit the Open Studios page for more information and a downloadable Open Studios program, including a map, brief descriptions of each artists’ studio, and a complete schedule of events and activities, and kid-friendly info!

Charlotte Street Foundation is seeking applications from artists interested in being considered for its Urban Culture Project Studio Residency Program for Visual and Performing Artists. Launched in January 2004, UCP’s Studio Residency Program provides free studio spaces to talented and dedicated area artists in need of work-space among a community of peers.

The studio residency program provides studio spaces for approximately 30 visual artists and shared rehearsal space for 7 performing artists/ensembles each year in three facilities in downtown Kansas City:

• Center City Square, 1100 Main, 5th floor (providing large, shared studio/rehearsal space for several performing artists/groups and small private studios for 12 visual artists)
• pARTnership Place, 906 Grand, 13th floor (providing space for 7 visual artists in a large, open space)
• Town Pavilion, 1100 Walnut, 6th floor (providing private and shared open space studios for 8 visual artists)

The studios are granted to selected artists for one year terms. Full time students will NOT be considered. Studios are work spaces only; the program does not provide residential accommodations. The studios do not include access to specialized equipment, tools, materials, etc. A dance stage with Marley floor is provided for dancers/choreographers.

Deadline
Applications are due MONDAY, July 2, 2012 from artists wishing to be considered for studio residencies whose terms will begin in September, 2012.

Participant Expectations
Artists participating in the program host public Open Studio Weekends twice per year and volunteer 5 hours per month assisting with Charlotte Street Foundation efforts, including gallery sitting at our nearby galleries. Charlotte Street expects participating artists to be committed to their studio practices and to building sense of community in the studios with their fellow artists. Artists are encouraged to take advantage of their time in the studios to further establish a peer artist network for themselves, and to leverage the residency toward future opportunities. As part of the program, each resident completes a goal-setting worksheet at the beginning of the residency, and is paired with a studio mentor (an artist or arts professional from the community) who meets with the resident several times over the course of the year to offer feedback and guidance.

Selection Process
Artists are selected through a competitive process by a selection panel comprised of artists and arts professionals. Criteria for selection are quality and contemporary relevance of work to date and assessment of continued promise — both as evidenced in materials submitted; assessment of artist’s potential to maximize the studio residency opportunity for further artistic and professional growth; and assessment of artist’s capacity to meaningfully contribute to the studio residency environment and community of artist peers therein.

For more about the program, visit the Studio Residents’ Blog.

To apply, go to the Application on callforentry.org

Charlotte Street Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of two Kansas City generative performing artists to receive unrestricted cash Awards of $8,500 each in 2012. The 2012 Fellows are composer/musician PAT ALONZO CONWAY and theatre creator and performer HEIDI VAN. They were selected by a panel of local and national performing arts professionals through a highly competitive process, beginning with an open call for applicants, and including in-person visits with 10 semi-finalists. A public performance of the work of this year’s Generative Performing Awards Fellows is planned for fall 2012.

Since launching in 2008, and including the 2012 Generative Performing Artist Fellows, Charlotte Street Foundation has recognized 11 Generative Performing Artists in Kansas City creating outstanding, innovative, original work in the fields of dance, theater, music, experimental music performance, theater/performance art, and hybrid/interdisciplinary versions thereof, with $75,000 in cash distributed.  In addition, over 15 years Charlotte Street has recognized 77 Kansas City based visual artists with Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards totaling $512,500. These Awards recognized achievement and promise, and foster continued artistic and professional development. In doing so, they distinguish Kansas City as a place that values individual artists, and enhance its desirability as a place for artists to live and work.

About the artists:

Pat Alonzo Conway is a composer and creator of original music as well as a teacher, performing musician, and active collaborator with a wide range of other musicians, composers, and artists of other disciplines. Over the past two decades, Conway’s creative output has been primarily comprised of large ensemble musical compositions that strive to marry source materials gleaned from musical training in the academy and individual studies of musical traditions from other sources, primarily African based . . . read more in the full press release.

Heidi Van is creator, producer of experimental live theater, performer and actor. She is Co-founder and Curator of Fishtank Performance Studio, a storefront theater located at 18^th and Wyandotte in the Crossroads area of downtown Kansas City. At Fishtank, she has produced and presented both a series of works of her own creation and co-creation –Rubble: A Window Play (2011), Brindsay Kardilton’s Bump (2011, co-created with David Wayne Reed), 53 Days & 52 Nights: A Clown Requiem (2010), White Nose Christmas: A Tabloid Nativity Of Rehab & Rebirth (2010, co-created with David Wayne Reed), and l’Histoire d’Amour: A Clown Love Story (2009)—as well as productions of the work of many other artists . . . read more in the full press release.

New dance works exploring the human psyche, inspired by and presented with photographic work by Elijah Gowin.

Dates: Friday, June 1, performances on the hour 6-9pm.
Saturday, June 2, rehearsals 12-2pm, performances on the hour 2-4pm.
Location: La Esquina/ 1000 W 25th St. KCMO 64108

Stayce Camparo, curator
Elijah Gowin, visual artist
Choreographers/Dancers: Kansas City Ballet dancers Stayce Camparo, Rachel Coats, Gabriel Davidsson, Logan Pachiarz + Catherine Russell.

The mission of Exhibit Sway is to create gallery-based performances of original choreography that are inspired and shaped by collaboration with local artists and that re-imagine traditional roles of dancer and spectator.

The Frontier is a Charlotte Street Foundation 15 year anniversary project considering “frontiers” as related to the history, evolution, and future of artistic practice, culture-making, and creative opportunity in Kansas City. Interested in the changing nature of Kansas City’s urban environment and cultural ecosystem, The Frontier will examine this changing landscape and explore how it might inform and give rise to new artist-driven and artist-centered pioneering efforts in our city.

The Frontier: A SERIES of evolving, collaborative, multi-disciplinary projects. A LIVING ARCHIVE of artist-driven efforts in Kansas City. A SITE for interviews, research, discussions, and public programs. A LAUNCH PAD for excursions, investigations, and propositions. An INVITATION for YOUR participation.

Opening: Friday, April 20, 6-9pm
Location: Paragraph & Project Space / 21-23 East 12th St., KCMO
Exhibition Runs: April 20-July 7, 2012; Phase I April 20-May 19; Phase II May 22-July 7
Weekly hours: Wed, Fri, Sat 12-5pm; Thurs 11-6
Third Friday receptions with new projects, new work & new performances:  Friday, May 18, 6-9pm + Friday, June 15, 6-9pm
Project Website: http://thefrontierkc.wordpress.com

The Frontier is an evolving exhibition comprised of a series of artist and curator-driven projects that take the idea of “the frontier” as their starting point. The exhibition is divided into two “phases,” each involving projects with teams of collaborators. Throughout the exhibition run, the gallery will remain an active site, in a continual state of flux, as new project components and responses to these components are developed and added.

• Phase I curators are Jonah Criswell, Julia Cole, Jane Gotch, Nicole Mauser, Mike Sinclair, and Michael Schonhoff.  Their collaborators include Jim Woodfill, Michael Frisch, Laura Isaac, Drew Roth + Amos Leager, Charlie Mylie,  Jamie Burkart, Travis Shaffer, Laura Frank, Tiffany Sisemore, Abbe Findley, Katie Ford, Deanna Dikeman, Ahram Park, Kevin Sisemore, James Woodfill, Emily Henson, Luke Firle, Dennis Helsel, Lyndsey Ogle and others.
• Phase II curators are Robert Josiah Bingaman, Heather Lustfeldt, Molly Kaderka, and Erika Lynne Hanson, with collaborators to be announced.

The Frontier will also include a “Living Archive” and series of related public programs. The Living Archive is focused on the history of artist-run initiatives and artist-run spaces in Kansas City, the roles these efforts and individuals involved have played in shaping our arts ecosystem and our city, and the manner in which these histories and experiences can inform future efforts. The gallery will serve as a hub for research, collection, and presentation of Living Archive components. Components of the archive will be made accessible during and following the exhibition via the project website, http://thefrontierkc.wordpress.com.

For more information about this project, as well as regular updates, a schedule of public programs (to be announced), and more, visit the project website: http://thefrontierkc.wordpress.com.

Read the full press release.

performARTS Series Launched in KC Studio November/December Issue and on KCPT’s The Local Show November 10, 2011.

Charlotte Street Foundation is featured in the May/June issue of KC Studio; air date on KCPT’s The Local Show is May 17 at 7:30pm. READ THE CHARLOTTE STREET FEATURE!

Townsend Communications in Kansas City, MO along with KCPT, Kansas City Public Television, presents a new series called performARTS. Underwritten by Speas Memorial Trusts and the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts, the series will be part of the next six issues of KC Studio and will include installments about some of Kansas City’s best artistic organizations. The six featured performARTS organizations were selected out of hundreds of arts organizations across this metropolitan community.

Along with the printed story in KC Studio, KCPT will produce a piece on each of the selected groups airing multiple times over the next 12 months on KCPT’s The Local Show.

The performARTS participants for this inaugural assembly are:

- Charlotte Street Foundation
- Coterie Theatre
- The Kansas City Chorale
- Quality Hill Playhouse
- Kansas City Actors Theatre
- Paul Mesner Puppets

   
In celebration of Charlotte Street Foundation’s 15th Anniversary, Charlotte Street and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art present Charlotte Street Artists’ Walks, a series of tours and talks at the Museum led by Charlotte Street Awards Fellows. At these Friday evening events, visitors will see the Nelson’s collection through the eyes of some of Kansas City’s most exceptional artists as they are led on tours of works in the Nelson’s collection that particularly inspire and resonate with Charlotte Street Award Fellows.In conjunction with the tours, each artist will present a short slide talk about their own art.

Charlotte Street Artists’ Walks

Dates: Friday, January 13 + Sunday, January 15– Peregrine Honig + Mark Southerland
Friday, February 10 + Sunday, February 12- Anne Lindberg
Friday, March 9 – Tom Gregg
Friday, May 11 – David Ford – tours/talks combos begin at 6 + 7pm – REGISTER NOW (follow link then click  ”in gallery programs” on sidebar)
Cost: FREE; space is limited so registration is required
Location: Nelson-Atkins Museum

Find all the details in the press release.

Organized by Kansas City-based artists Sean Starowitz and Andrew Erdrich, The Speakeasy aims to create a center within our emerging cultural corridor for the kind of increasingly prevalent creative work that New York-based artist and writer Gregory Sholette describes as dedicated to the “imaginative exploration of ideas, the pleasure of communication, the exchange of education, and the construction of fantasy, all within a radically defined social-artist practice.”

Opening Reception: Friday, April 6, 6-9pm
Location: La Esquina/ 1000 W 25th St. KCMO 64108
Exhibition Runs: April 6- May 13, 2012
Gallery Hours: Fridays + Saturdays 12-6pm, Sundays 12-5pm + special events
Website: thespeak-easy.org
Special Events: (see the Speakeasy’s complete calendar at thespeak-easy.org)
“BBQ Migration” featuring Eric May’s E-Dogz truck – April 6, 6-9pm
Presentation + Discussion with Marc Fischer of Temporary Services – April 13, 6-9pm
Curated Reading organized by Jordan Stempleman – April 27
BREAD! micro-granting dinners each Sunday evening (excepting Easter)
Panel Discussions on topics including Creative Labor – April 7, 21st Century Philanthropy – April 18 + Non-Profit vs. Non-Non-Profit models for arts + cultural centers – April 29
Live Music by Gamelan Kenta Kasturi – April 14, Grisly Hand with Howard Iceberg + the Titanics – April 21, and Umberto + This Is My Condition – May 5

Featuring a bar (serving sandwiches, coffee, and drinks) that doubles as a podium for lectures, a communal table for meals and conversations, a reading and research room, display areas, and space for creating, The Speakeasy will function as an “evolving, experimental temporary cultural center. “ Within this conducive environment will unfold events, panel discussions, conversations, lectures, collaborations, object production, and more, presented by and including a diverse roster of participants from Kansas City and elsewhere.

Among the featured visiting participants are Eric May (Chicago, IL), Temporary Services (Chicago, IL), and Wes Janz (Muncie, Indiana).  Kansas City participants include CartWheel, Julia Cole, Tori Abernathy, Alex Pope/Vagabond, La Cucaracha, Phresh Prints Co-op, and Field Trip Publishing. 

The Speakeasy will also feature Boulevard Beer, Oddly Correct Coffee, and custom sandwiches by The Local Pig, The Rieger, and others.

For a complete schedule of events, biographies of participating artists, and more, visit http://thespeak-easy.org. 

Charlotte Street is pleased to present Telling, an ArtSounds performance with collaborators Lizz Hougland (performing violin), Mintra Greer (performing accordion), and Taylor Wallace (performing banjo).

Date: Tuesday, April 24th
Time: 7:30pm
Venue: La Esquina / 1000 W. 25th St. KCMO 64108
FREE and open to the public

Telling is an installation that combines video, storytelling, and music. It explores the states of being afraid and unafraid, and in this way it questions what it is to be human. Wallace and other storytellers share memories from their pasts, interlaced with jam sessions; Hougland’s use of sounds and voices weaves a provocative city-scape; Greer utilizes filmed landscapes to bind together the performance.

The result is an immersing experience steeped in spoken word, sound sculpture, bluegrass jams, bright lights, and contemplative music.

Initiated by faculty from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance and the Kansas City Art Institute, ArtSounds explores cross-media expression through creative concert-making.

Charlotte Street Foundation, a nationally leading, non-profit, artist-focused organization, is pleased to announce the launch of Curatorial Residencies at its Paragraph Gallery + Project Space in downtown Kansas City.

In its pilot year, this initiative seeks to provide a unique opportunity for up to two curators to immerse themselves in—and actively contribute their perspectives to —the arts ecology of the Kansas City area. The selected curator/s will be awarded full use of Charlotte Street Foundation’s Paragraph Gallery + Project Space —an approximately 1500 square foot, street-level, architecturally awarded gallery space located at 21-23 East 12^th Street in downtown Kansas City, Missouri—to use as a venue and platform for exploring and sharing their ideas through producing and presenting a dynamic program of publicly accessible exhibitions, programs, talks and discussions, etc.

Curators are sought for two back-to-back terms of 4 to 5 months each, to occur between August 2012 and June 2013. Candidates may apply for one 4-5 month term or a combined  8-10 month term.  One curator per term will be selected.

VISION

In launching these Curatorial Residencies, Charlotte Street Foundation seeks to provide the opportunity for promising, ambitious curators to actively, thoughtfully engage with Kansas City’s energetic, diverse, emergent arts community, and to further develop their curatorial voices and practices through direct, hands-on experience programming a highly regarded, well-established contemporary art space.  The residencies are intended to encourage and support fresh, innovative, experimental, resourceful, community-responsive curatorial approaches that will introduce new ideas, and foster critical discourse, creative production, and community participation in the Kansas City region.

COMMITMENT

This initiative extends Charlotte Street’s longstanding commitment to nurturing and supporting Kansas City’s artists and arts community, and to fostering connections among and between artists and arts practitioners from Kansas City and elsewhere.

View all the CALL details and how to apply.

View the CALL FAQ document.