ARTSPEAK RADIO with Cheryl Kimmi, Imagine That! and Studio Inc.

Host/producer Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes Executive Director of KC Creates Cheryl Kimmi, Imagine That!, and Director Studio Inc. Colby Smith with artists Kathy Liao, Patty Carroll, and Debra Smith.

Cheryl Kimmi-14th Annual KC Fringe Festival July 19-29 is an eleven day showcase featuring work from over 100 local, regional, and international performing artists throughout a 5 mile footprint of KC’s cultural corridors, music, dance, theatre, visual arts, youth & teen Fringe-there’s something for everyone! kcfringe.org In addition to KC Fringe, KC Creates also produces WaterFire KC and Inspire-KC Corporate Arts Challenge. We are also the Fiscal Agent and Project Manager for Mayor James and Scott Francis’ new citywide event- Open Spaces KC a new 2 month long celebration of the arts launching August 2018.

Imagine That! is a creative arts studio for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities located in the Crossroads Arts District. Our mission is to provide individuals with the tools and materials to create art, as well as the supports to define themselves as working artists. Every artist is encouraged to express themselves through a variety of artistic mediums and is given the opportunity to show and sell their artwork. Since opening its doors in April 2012, Imagine That! artists have exhibited in numerous locations in and around the KC metro area, as well as in group exhibitions across the state and country. Every First Friday of the month, the studio hosts an exhibition in the gallery, open to the public from 6-9pm. Imagine That! is a program of Resources for Human Development. Our website is imaginethatkc.org
August’s First Friday show is our annual music and arts festival, B-Side Fest (formerly known as Southwest x Central Street Fest). We will be showing work and performances of both our artists and local individual artists, giving them equal opportunity and shared space to present. Featured in the gallery space will be a music themed art installation with DJ performances, silent auction and a 50/50 raffle! Outside we will have musical performances from Natural Man and the Supreme Court and more, artist tables, a bounce house, food trucks and much more!

Our goal in hosting this event is to promote awareness of our program, the artists we support, and foster new and exciting connections to the arts community and population of Kansas City. There are so many great things happening in KC, and this is a celebration of our vibrant community!

Imagine That! 2010 McGee St. KCMO 64108 816.421.1481
imaginethatkc.org

Colby Smith-Studios Inc provides studio space, professional development, networking, and exhibitions for mid-career artists in Greater Kansas City.
Launched in 2003 to serve mid-career artists, Studios Inc is Kansas City’s only nonprofit arts organization offering pivotal three-year residencies to mid-career artists who are poised to significantly expand their careers in accordance with the career goals articulated in their residency application. Its competitive application process, sharp focus on career advancement, and commitment to serve the under-served population of mid-career artists set Studios Inc apart from other artist-support organizations. Studios Inc offers a unique immersion experience for resident artists, who use their studio and exhibition space to produce and exhibit work, network and learn from one another, and attract and cultivate relationships with art patrons, collectors, and arts professionals.
Operating within Studios Inc are five unique but inseparable programs. These are the Residency Program, the Public Exhibition Series Program which exhibits resident artist works five times annually free to the public, the Internship Program which offers students a custom designed internship experience that is immersive, fun and resume-building, the Patron Program which matches patrons to artists providing the opportunity for greater connection between patron and artist, and studios.gallery which provides a sales gallery and art lending program to increase exposure for past and current resident artists.

Studios Inc 1708 Campbell St. KCMO 64108
Tues – Friday
10:00AM – 12:00PM, 1:00PM – 4:00PM
Saturday
12:00PM – 4:00PM
First Friday
5:00PM – 9:00PM
studiosinc.org

Patty Carroll is known for her use of highly intense, saturated color photographs since the 1970’s. Her most recent project, “Anonymous Women”, is a 3-part series of studio installations made for the camera, addressing women and domestic status, and camouflages the figure in drapery and/or domestic objects. The photographs are exhibited in large scale and the work was published as a monograph released in January of 2017 by Daylight Books. This work has been exhibited in China several times, as well as won various awards. Carroll was one of the “Top 50” awarded by Photolucida in 2014. Carroll taught photography for many years and has enthusiastically returned to the studio to delight viewers with her sense of humor and critique of home life

Her work is represented by Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Martha Schneider Gallery in Chicago, and Martine Chaisson Gallery in New Orleans, and has been collected nationally and internationally.

“I make studio photographs that are commentary about women, home, and identity. In the “Anonymous Women: Draped” photographic series, a lone woman is hidden in a vignette within the drapery, where she performs domestic trickery. Her identity is fused with the domestic trappings of home. The “Anonymous Women: Reconstructed Series” is commentary on obsession with collecting, accumulating, designing and decorating, inviting hilarity and pathos about our relationship with “things.”  They are installations made in the studio for the camera that play with color, space and scale, and use household objects as subject matter. I am photographically creating worlds that debunk, critique and satirize myths of domestic, claustrophobic perfection.”

Kathy Liao is the Director of the Painting and Printmaking Studio Art Program at Missouri Western State University. Liao earned her MFA in Painting from Boston University and BFA in Painting and Drawing from University of Washington. Liao is a recipient of numerous awards including the Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Residency Grant, Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Grant, Artist Grants from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Jentel Artist Residency.  In the past Liao taught at Boston University, University of Washington, Seattle University, and Gage Academy of Art. Her work has been shown in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Kansas City, and many other cities nationally and internationally.

Kathy Liao is a painter who utilizes a mixed media platform of paintings and photographs. It centers on different forms of art coagulating into a concept that examines the modern relationships of distance, intimacy, and technology, in layers of paintings based around moments, memories, and observations with and recorded snapshot photos.

Debra Smith was raised in Hannibal, Missouri and currently works and resides in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a B.F.A in textiles and later received an Associates Degree in Applied Science from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She recently returned to the Midwest after living for almost a decade in Brooklyn, New
York.

“I am not a poet or someone who draws, but I feel that my use of vintage textiles as a medium brings a history, a weight, and a poetry to the work before I even begin to cut, sew, and piece the work back together. Allowing the work to intuitively flow through me I do feel the end result is similar to a drawing or poetry. My textile abstractions provide the stimulus for the viewer’s imagination.”

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