ARTSPEAK RADIO-David Wayne Reed, Hugh Merrill, Don & Sarah Wilkison

Actor/writer David Wayne Reed, artist/poet Hugh Merrill, and Charlotte Street recipients Don & Sarah Wilkison join us on ARTSPEAK RADIO.

Hosted by David Wayne Reed, Shelf Life is a bi-monthly storytelling event featuring objects and the stories behind them
Shelf Life proudly debuts on September 17th with objects and stories about WINNING! Stories include: a guy who wins EVERYTHING, a teen finding early victories in high school forensics, a fortuitous mishap with the Stanley Cup, a Guinness Book World Record holder, winning by elimination on a reality tv show competition, and a woman who turned to winning as a way of coping with a family drama.
Also, everyone who buys a ticket is entered into a raffle for a really cool SURPRISE MYSTERY OBJECT to be unveiled at the event. Ooh, ahhh!

Saturday September 17 at The Brick 1727 McGee KCMO
7-9 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m. and show begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door or in advance at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2566948.
Shelf Life is made possible with support from Arts KC.
Follow us at Shelf Life!!
Have a storyful object you’d like to share? Send a picture and 100 word synopsis to [email protected].
Save the dates: November 5- Shelf Life (Election Season)
December 10- Shelf Life (The Gift)

Professor Hugh Merrill is a printmaker, educator, writer, community artist and the Director of Chameleon Arts Agency, a not for profit that facilitates new genre community and public art projects in Kansas City. He was awarded the Southern Graphics Councils Distinguish Teaching award in 2007. His artwork and prints are in over 50 Museums internationally including the Museum of Modern Art New York. Merrill is a past President of the Jewish Museum of Kansas City and the Southern Graphics Council. In 2011 the book Divergent Consistencies charting 40 years of Merrill’s studio and community artwork was published by the Leedy Voulkos Art Center. He and Adelia Ganson have published Shared Visions: Thoughts and Experiences in Social Arts Practice 2014 and Preaching to the Choir Thoughts on Contemporary Printmaking 2017. Was awarded a 2013 National Endowment to the Arts grant for his ArtWorker project at the Spiva Center for the Arts in Joplin Missouri.

September 2016— Hugh Meril, the printmaker, has a dirty little secret: for many years, he has been covertly writing…poetry. His debut book of poems, Nomadic? Rover by Days Singing These Gang Plank Songs of the Ambler, reflects the intense and unguarded energy of a vital artist and natural storyteller who has deep connections to both historic and current movements. His subject mater ranges from childhood memories of racialin equality to contemporary ideas of gender fluidity,and his absurdities tickle the what the xxx bone in all of us..Litered amongst the poems are moments of prose and snippets of email exchanges between Meril and his editor, Jeanete Powers. But perhaps the most dynamic aspect of this book is the inclusion of Meril’s original drawings and handwritten notes, which occupy the space around the poems:visual expansions from the poet’s haptic nonce of a squirrelly soul.
Book release performance Thursday September 15, 7pm at Prospero’s Books 1800 W. 39th St. KCMO
Admission includes copy of the book. All proceeds benefit Chameleon Arts.

Don & Sarah Wilkison discuss The Disconnected Undercut, Thursday 6:30pm – 9pm at The Drugstore 3948 Main St. KCMO. Artists, and past Charlotte St Fellows, Dylan Mortimer and Misha Kligman, will be in the barber chairs for the inaguaral event of Cut Your Hair in the Socialist Style. Come early for the the social(ist?) time: 6-6:30. Then the razors come out promptly at 7pm and we get down to the business of scissoring into some heady topics. For example: Sports as collectivism. Art as individualism. Banners, slogans, and apartment art: untitled conceptualism in the face of oligarchy. alt-socialism. Solidarity and love. Bring an opinion and share it. #cutyourhairinthesocialiststyle
Father-Daughter Confessional (FDC)—comprised of father, Don Wilkison (an artist working as m.o.i aka The Minister of Information) and daughter, Sarah Wilkison (an artist working as Sarah Star)— examines the cultural sins of America through the lens of age, gender, and middle-class economics. FDC collaborates with community and artists to make art that reflects societal, rather than corporate, concerns. FDC’s humorous, yet thought provoking engagements, meld science, popular culture, and visual acumen to engage the public in unexpected places and challenge entrenched institutional thinking FDC has created interventions coupling the perils of intractable political thought with activism directed against continued, cultural insensitivity for women’s issues (We Might be Wrong; Remember the Ladies). In (More or Le$$), FDC engaged the public through a series of pop-ups directly aimed at the intersection of food deserts and hipster food culture in one of America’s wealthiest counties. FDC’s activism re- imagined corporate giveaways (Köttbullar: Examining our Meatball Culture) transforming an advertising strategy designed to create corporate wealth into a system for expanding community capital. The pair is a 2016-17 Charlotte Street/Andy Warhol Foundation Rocket Grant recipient.

#artspeakradio
#kkfi901fm

Share This Episode