national center for drug free sport awarded highest level “art achievement” by art through architecture
National Center for Drug Free Sport (NCDFS) has been awarded highest level “Art Achievement” by Art through Architecture (AtA) – a partnership program of CSF and AIA-KC - for commissioning a new, site-specific video installation by Kansas City based artist Barry Anderson as part of a recent architectural renovation project completed by el dorado architects. The artwork was commissioned as part of the second phase of a two-phase building renovation for NCDFS’s offices at 2537 Madison, on the Westside in downtown Kansas City.
Working with AtA, Frank Uryasz, owner of Drug Free Sport, and Josh Shelton, project architect, el dorado, reviewed the work of eligible artists in AtA’s online database at www.ArtArch.org, selected a short list of artists, then conducted studio visits with five finalists, ultimately selecting Barry Anderson for the commission.
Anderson’s 8-plus minute looping digital animation, “There and Back Again,” spreads out across three synched flat screen monitors mounted in a vertical arrangement on a wall in NCDFS’s entrance lobby. The work takes inspiration from the architecture and design of the office lobby, particularly its brightly striped walls, its exposed, white-painted ceiling trusses, and its overall lightness, as well as from the function of the office lobby as a space which people enter and move through. Read the full press release.