Charlotte Street Foundation

Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project is pleased to present Information is Incidental, a two-person exhibition by Kansas City based artist Emily Sall and Austin, Texas based artist Rebecca Ward, opening at Paragraph gallery on Friday, June 19, 6-9pm. The artists will deliver a gallery talk at 6pm that evening, free and open to the public.

The exhibition centers around these two artists’ ideas about space, in terms of responding to the architectures of existing spaces as well as creating new spaces within these architectures or within the confines of flat surfaces. In exploring these interests, the two artists share a high-key color palette, the use of crisp, graphic line, and a cumulative process, whereby forms are constructed or suggested through a repetition and layering of line. The exhibition will feature a series of new paintings by Sall, installation- based work by Ward, and a new collaborative installation developed by the artists (who have never met) on site. CSF Associate Director Kate Hackman invited Sall and Ward to exhibit together based on perceived affinities in their work following a studio visit with Ward in Austin in summer 2008 while planning UCP’s prior exchange/collaboration with Austin’s Okay Mountain. Read full press release.

Click here to read the Kansas City Star review by Nick Malewski

Read the ArtTattler.com review: http://www.arttattler.com/commentaryinformationisincidental.html

Read review in Review.

Time Passes, Time Passes By, a site-specific installation by Kansas City based artist Alexandra Robinson, opens at Project Space on Friday, June 19, 6-9pm.  The artist will deliver a gallery talk at 6:30pm that evening, free and open to the public.

This exhibition is inspired by time, specifically how long Paragraph gallery and Project Space have been in operation by Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project (since May 16, 2003).  Robinson will use geometric forms - cast plaster cubes and latex - to document the number of days the space has been in use as well as to mark different important moments in the site’s history.  By the date of the opening, the approximate number of forms, or markers, will number 2360. It is the artist’s intent to convey a sense of mass, beauty, and possibility in this accumulation of forms, and to create an opportunity for self-reflection. Read full press release.

Read review in Review.

CSF’s la Esquina, 1000 West 25th Street, is pleased to present a presentation by Sans façon, an innovative collaborative art practice between British artist Tristan Surtee and French architect Charles Blanc. Focused on exploring the complex relationship between people and place, and committed to expanding the expectation of the role of the artist in society, they have undertaken projects ranging from temporary interventions that renew awareness and appreciation of the idiosyncrasies of specific public spaces; to leading multidisciplinary design teams to produce alternative design solutions; to developing and implementing city wide strategies involving artists in the rethinking and re-qualification of place. Sans façon sees the role of the artist and art as a catalyst in a process of raising questions and inviting one to look and think differently. Visit http://www.sansfacon.co.uk for more about Sans façon’s practice.

Free and open to all, the talk on Wednesday July 1, at 7:30 with a reception to follow is hosted by Art through Architecture (AtA), a partnership program of Charlotte Street Foundation and American Institute of Architects-Kansas City. Aiming to encourage and empower architects and their clients to incorporate art and artists of excellence from the Kansas City area into their projects, AtA provides a range of tools to support this practice, including a database of eligible artists selected annually. Visit ArtArch.org for more information.

Charlotte Street Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of two Kansas City generative performing artists to receive unrestricted cash Awards of $5,000 each in 2009. Selected by a panel of area performing arts professionals from a pool of nearly 30 nominated artists, the recipients are performance poet Glenn North and choreographer/dancer Tiffany Sisemore.

Launched in 2008, the Charlotte Street Generative Performing Artist Awards support and recognize artists creating outstanding, innovative, original work in the fields of dance, theater, music, experimental music performance, theater/performance art, and hybrid/interdisciplinary versions thereof.  The awards seek to foster the continued creative and professional development of the selected artists, provide the means for them to further focus on and develop their work, and increase exposure for their accomplishments, as the CSF Visual Artist Awards have done since 1997. Through its Awards programs, CSF seeks to contribute to the vitality of Kansas City’s art community and to enhance Kansas City’s desirability as a place for artists to work and live. Read full press release. 

Read article about recipients by Robert Trussell in Kansas City Star.