Charlotte Street Foundation

The Art through Architecture “Artboards” at Missouri Bank Crossroads, 125 Southwest Boulevard, will present commissioned images by KC artists Anne Lindberg and Paul Shortt, July-October, 2010.

Since the first day of 2010, Anne Lindberg has been taking at least one photograph each day in her home or wherever she travels, creating an intimate, cumulative mapping of personal space and record of private observations. Her pair of west-facing images, titled once a day 59 and 62, come from this series, and feature two views of curtains photographed at dusk.  “I wanted to lift these subtle, private images up into the public realm of the urban billboard, where they will hang in the sky day and night, transporting viewers to a different time of day, place, and mood,” said Lindberg.  “The mirror in one of the images again shifts the viewer’s perspective and position, creating a complex sense of time and space.”

Paul Shortt’s pair of east-facing images are two examples from a larger body of recent work titled Nimby’s, which involve the artist photographing yard signs he has made by hand and installed in undeveloped lots, empty houses, and along the roadside.  “The Nimby’s project gets its name from the term ‘Not In My Back Yard,’ a mindset of opposition to change,” says Shortt. “By hand-making the signs and text, I’m throwing into question the authority of signs, while giving the locations an authority and presence to be interpreted by the viewer. My hope in these images being on the billboards is that they will offer viewers lenses with which to reconsider the environments they drive by every day.”

An Art through Architecture “Art Achievement” project, the Missouri Bank “Artboards” are double-sided exterior billboards converted into a highly visible site for work by area artists. Since launching in late 2008, the “Artboards” have presented commissioned images by ten Kansas City area artists, with Lindberg and Shortt’s images bringing the number of artists to twelve.  For more about Art through Architecture, visit www.ArtArch.org. Read full press release.

American Institute of Architects-Kansas City (AIA-KC) is being awarded Bronze level “Art Achievement” by Art through Architecture (AtA) for Recirculate, a new site-specific art installation by Kansas City based artist Marcie Miller Gross.  Commissioned for AIA-KC’s new offices on the ground floor of 1801 McGee, a historic building in the East Crossroads District of Kansas City, Mo, Recirculate debuts with a public reception on Friday, June 4, 6:30-9:30 pm.

“As an artist and maker, I am compelled with the dynamic dialogue between art and architecture, between objects and space,” said Miller Gross.  In this case, the artist was particularly inspired by the office space’s high, concrete ceilings, the “marks and traces of history” evident in the space, and by “the activity of cables and electrical wiring” that Helix Architecture + Design, which designed the recent renovation of the space for AIA-KC, opted to leave exposed overhead. 

Identifying the electrical cable trays that carry telecommunications wires through the office as “an inherent element within the vocabulary of this utilitarian space,” Gross determined to employ these same metal trays as a key component of her artwork. Her installation incorporates a series of cable trays as the support structures for colorful, neatly folded stacks of discontinued fabric samples, which Miller Gross collected from architectural office libraries in the Kansas City area.

Marcie Miller Gross was awarded this $5500 commission by a committee comprised of AIA-KC Executive Director Dawn Kirkwood;  AIA-KC Board Member Kimball Hales, architect, Hufft Projects; and immediate-past AIA-KC Board Member Debra L. Smith, Architect and Planner, City of KCMO, Water Services Department.

Through AtA, a partnership of American Institute of Architects-Kansas City and Charlotte Street Foundation, new architectural projects may earn Gold, Silver or Bronze levels of Art Achievement by dedicating a percentage of the total construction budget to collecting artworks, commissioning temporary or permanent artworks, and/or including artists on design teams. AtA facilitates this process by providing a web-based database at http://artarch.org, featuring work by some 90 artists selected for the program through a competitive process, and by providing hands-on support for project implementation, from artist selection through completion. Read full press release.

New large-scale commissioned images by Kansas City based artists Michael Sinclair and Allan Winkler debut on Missouri Bank Crossroads Branch’s Art through Architecture “Artboards” at 125 Southwest Boulevard in time for First Friday March, 2010.

Michael Sinclair presents photographs taken at two Kansas City, Missouri parks: Blue Valley Park at East 23rd and Topping, and Loose Park at 52nd and Wornall. The two images (from a much larger body of Sinclair’s work focused on urban parks in the area) share a strong sense symmetry, emphasizing the carefully designed interplay of nature and culture in these places while also calling into relief the contrast between the two parks, one on the East side of the city, the other on the West. Allan Winkler presents images of two new black and white paper-cut artworks that offer a portrait of community; a lively, diverse neighborhood of friendly cohorts.  Titled “Community Meeting,” Winkler’s detailed pair of images exemplify the artist’s skillfulness in the medium of paper cutting as well as his ability to convey joy, delight, and a deep sense of humanity using the simplest of means.

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. Art through Architecture (AtA) is a partnership of American Institute of Architects-Kansas City and Charlotte Street Foundation designed to encourage collecting and commissioning work by Kansas City area artists through architectural practice. Read full press release.

Missouri Bank, BKS Real Estate, and Helix Architecture + Design have been awarded highest level “Art Achievement” by Art through Architecture (AtA) for commissioning “DREAM,” a new, site-specific art installation by Kansas City based artist Archie Scott Gobber. The project was commissioned as part of the architectural renovation of the historic former Star Motors building at 7 West 62nd Terrace in the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City, MO.

Gobber’s installation animates one long wall of Missouri Bank’s new vehicular drive-thru, which runs straight through the center of the building. It features large-scale, hand-painted aluminum letters (each approx 93”x84”) spelling “DREAM,” which float off of a brightly painted, horizontally-striped background spanning the length of the drive-thru, some 90 feet long.

“DREAM is a spectacular addition to the building,” said Grant Burcham, President and CEO of Missouri Bank. “Not only does it make an ordinary drive-through extraordinary, it speaks to our entrepreneurial niche: entrepreneurs are dreamers by definition! We are very pleased with the public support we have received for participating in the Art through Architecture program for both our Crossroads bank, and our new Brookside bank,” he added. “The response has been so overwhelmingly positive, we would not consider another project without participating in the program.”

Read full press release. For more about Art through Architecture, a partnership of Charlotte Street and American Institute of Architects-Kansas City, visit www.artarch.org.

See Review article featuring the installation by Jessica Sain-Baird.

Informal Urbanisms: The Production of Space in the Developing World on Wednesday, January 6, 6:30 pm at la Esquina, 1000 West 25th Street KC MO, is a provocative public program organized by Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller, founding partners of AGENCY, a design and research practice in NYC. 

The evening includes a screening of the feature-length documentary film Garbage Dreams: Raised in the Trash Trade, which follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, a ghetto located on the outskirts of Cairo that is home to 60,000 Zaballeen (or Zabbaleen), Egypt’s “garbage people.” 10% of proceeds from Garbage Dreams’ tour will go to the Spirit of Youth Association, a non-governmental organization of Zaballeen, which runs The Recycling School profiled in Garbage Dreams.

After the screening, Kripa and Mueller will host and moderate a panel discussion concerning emerging conditions in disadvantaged and marginalized urban populations around the world. Panelists include Toby Lunn, Mechanical Engineer; Maureen Lunn, Southtown Foundation / MA International Studies (University of Kansas);  Andrew Mikhael, RA, LEEP AP; and Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller of AGENCY, who will also present recent architectural and infrastructural proposals. Read full press release.

Read coverage on Green Dream Living.

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.

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.

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.

The Missouri Bank Crossroads Branch, 125 Southwest Boulevard, debuts four new large-scale commissioned images, by Kansas City based artists Elijah Gowin and Emily Sall, on its “Artboards” in time for First Friday June 5, 2009.  Elijah Gowin’s images, featuring a single figure set against a backdrop of blue sky punctuated by wispy clouds, might be seen as poignant meditations on personal and societal anxiety during a time of global change and crisis, as evocations of existential uncertainty, or as portraits of escape or release.  Inspired by the urban environment, Emily Sall describes her two east-facing images as “graffiti like blueprints of ever changing cityscapes.”  They also play on the idea of billboard advertising in terms of their bold colors, flattened imagery, and the digital manner in which they were created.

The “Artboards” project began last fall, 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 Missouri Bank’s purchase and renovation of the building. Designed by Helix Architecture + Design, Missouri Bank’s  was the first Kansas City area building project to gain “Art Achievement” through Art through Architecture (AtA), a partnership of American Institute of Architects-Kansas City and Charlotte Street Foundation designed to encourage collecting and commissioning work by Kansas City area artists through architectural practice. Read full press release.

Missouri Bank’s Crossroads Branch, 125 Southwest Boulevard, debuts four new commissioned images on its “Artboards” on Feburary 6, by Kansas City based artists Archie Scott Gobber and Miki Baird. Gobber’s images, to be displayed side-by-side, reference, and literally illustrate, the buzzword that so pervaded the recent presidential election, while also capitalizing on the nature of the billboard itself as something temporary, to be replaced in the near future with  a different message. Miki Baird’s “Urban Deposit” draws upon her interest in pedestrian waste—“litter, trash and ‘stuff’—the kind of things we all leave behind.” For this piece, Baird walked around the Crossroads area photographing plastic bottles, cups, and discarded wrappers, in situ and close-up, then combined dozens of these small images to create a larger pattern.

The “Artboards” project began last fall, 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 Missouri Bank’s purchase and renovation of the building. Designed by Helix Architecture + Design, Missouri Bank’s  was the first Kansas City area building project to gain “Art Achievement” through Art through Architecture (AtA), a partnership of American Institute of Architects-Kansas City and Charlotte Street Foundation designed to encourage collecting and commissioning work by Kansas City area artists through architectural practice. Read the full press release. Visit AtA’s NEW WEBSITE: www.ArtArch.org.