Charlotte Street Foundation

The Missouri Bank Crossroads Branch, 125 Southwest Boulevard, will debut four new large-scale commissioned images, by Kansas City based artists Grant Miller and May Tveit, on its “Artboards” in time for First Friday October 2, 2009.  

Grant Miller’s two east-facing images, which are croppings of recent acrylic on wood paintings, are attempts to physically portray the abundance of information that surrounds us at all times in a myriad of forms. Interweaving hard-edges and painterly drips, they suggest the chaotic, complex network of information, tangible and intangible, that shapes our lives and informs our choices.  May Tveit’s west-facing billboards document “COLOR FIELD,” a series of hardcoated and painted rectangular hay bales, as installed on a beach along the Cape Cod National Seashore. The sculptures here compose a minimalist dotted line along the ocean horizon and shoreline, bringing a sense of serenity, order, and beauty to the Artboards’ urban context.  The installation was one of 16 “happenings” Tveit completed this summer as part of an ambitious  solo exhibition project in Wellfleet, MA, whereby the artist, with the help of dozens of far-ranging volunteers, moved and located these and related sculptures in unexpected locations around Wellfleet. 

An Art through Architecture “Art Achievement” project, the Missouri Bank “Artboards” launched fall 2008, when the building’s existing double-sided billboards were renovated and converted into a highly visible site for work by area artists as part of the bank’s purchase and renovation of the building to house its Crossroads Branch, completed by Helix Architecture + Design.  Read full press release.

Renowned experimental filmmaker Roger Beebe takes to the Heartland this fall to present a program of his recent multi-projector films as part of a 6-week US tour.  CSF’s Urban Culture Project is pleased to host Beebe’s Films for One to Eight Projectors program at la Esquina, 1000 West 25th, Thursday September 24 at 8pm in partnership with Film and Media Arts, University of Missouri Kansas City.

In his recent films, Beebe explores the possibilities of using multiple projectors—running as many as 8 projectors simultaneously—not for a free-form VJ-type experience, but for the creation of discrete works of “expanded cinema.” These films are simultaneously performance films (as they can only be screened with Beebe actually running the projectors—and running from projector to projector), technological demonstrations (with a parade of different modes of image making and presentation—16mm and super 8mm film alongside video and digital formats), and significant aesthetic works in their own right. Read full press release.