ARTSPEAK RADIO live- 1-70 Review, Kansas Authors Club, UMKC, & Isreal Garcia

John Todd host of Under The Radar, fills in for Maria this week. Guests include, writers Maryfrances Wagner, Greg Field, artist Davin Watne, writer Mark Scheel, and artist/gallery owner Isreal Garcia.

Maryfrances Wagner and Greg Field discuss the new issue of I-70 Review.
I-70 Review publishes contemporary poetry from anywhere in America and the world. WE read ALL submissions of poetry via [email protected], our reading period is July 1 thru Dec. 31. We have published the work of Harvey Hix, Diane Wakoski, Gary Gildner, Dennis Finnell, Gary Fincke, Jo McDougall, William Trowbridge, Alice Friman, Kathryn Nuernberger, and many others.

Come join us to celebrate the new issue of I-70 Review. We’ll socialize, eat, drink, and meet new people. We’ll also have a contributor reading, so come and join us. Get your copy of the new I-70 Review. Copies of the magazine will make nice holiday gifts as well. Check us out online if you want to see who we are and what we publish.

The Writer’s Place Friday September 30 2016, 7pm
3607 Pennsylvania KCMO www,writersplace.org
916.753.1090

Davin Watne talks about Arterial Echoes at UMKC Gallery of Fine Arts.
Arterial Echoes features seven UMKC Studio Art Faculty members each shown alongside an artist who mentored them and an artist to whom they have mentored. The mentor/mentee relationship reverberates throughout the space, highlighting the threads that are strengthened between these bonds. One can consider the ways in which these contemporary artists’ practices overlap with one another, yet how their generational differences become evident.
Thursday Sept. 8 through Oct. 28
UMKC Gallery of Art Fine Arts Building 203 5015 Holmes St. KCMO Visit our website at http://info.umkc.edu/art/umkcgallery/contact/, email [email protected],
or call 816-235-1502 for more info.

Mark Scheel, talks about The Kansas Authors Club 2016 Convention.
The Kansas Authors Club, founded in 1904, welcomes creative, technical, academic, and journalistic writers. Since 1904, the club has offered the opportunity to writers to share experiences and problems unique to their profession, not only to novices but also to authors of national reputation. While magazines and books may be helpful in improving one’s writing skills, there is no substitute for the camaraderie enjoyed or the expertise developed when poets, playwrights, and prose writers meet to listen, discuss and analyze their craft in an atmosphere of mutual support.

The Kansas Authors Club is holding their annual convention in Lawrence at the Doubletree Inn on September 30 through October 2. Several prominent authors will be in attendance including the keynote speaker Eric McHenry the Kansas Poet Laureate. There will be presentations on different aspects of writing, a banquet Saturday evening, and writing awards announced. A portion of the programming is devoted to youth and families. Kansas authors’ books will be on sale and Friday evening an authors’ signing and readings Both members and non-members are welcome.

Registration info, costs and specific presentation topics and presenters’ names are listed at www.trmscreativeservices.com/kac/convention.html
UMKC Gallery of Art Fine Arts Building 203 5015 Holmes St. Visit our website at http://info.umkc.edu/art/umkcgallery/contact/, email [email protected],

Isreal Garcia Creative Director/Curator/Owner of Garcia Squared Contemporary discusses his most recent finding in Guatemala.

Isreal Garcia stumbled on the work of the late artist Antonio Ramirez Sosóf, a member of the Tz’utujil community. Sosóf lived and worked in Santiago Atitlán from 1927 until his death in 2014. The artist worked as a lumberjack for his first 50 years, then dreamed of a woman wearing an embroidered garment. He took it as a direction from God. He began teaching himself the art of embroidery.

According to Garcia, Santiago Atitlán is home to 12 indigenous communities, each known for strikingly colorful, intricate works of embroidery, often depicting local birds or elements of everyday life. The artisans grow their own cotton, harvest it, spin it and dye it. Each community has its own recipe for the natural pigments.

In these communities, embroidery is the work of the native women. They sell their pieces, which often take several months to create, along the roads to tourists. Garcia had seen these pieces and even bought one: a 12-by-12 orange and yellow striped piece swarming with bright, tropical birds.

“He seemed to be the only one who took this very traditional art form and really kind of dug in deep and really depicted his own imagery without being censored in any way. In some of them he mixed sexuality with religion and it just seemed to be kind of what we might consider contradictory or out of place, it seemed to be very easy for him to continue to go into these forms quite a bit,” Garcia said.

Garcia was so taken by the work that he canceled the exhibitions he’d scheduled from August through December and began working with the Posada’s proprietor, who also owns the Sosóf collection, to bring the pieces to Kansas City. Word of the collection’s arrival spread quickly through the Kansas City arts community. To Garcia’s surprise and delight, people began contacting him, among them a textile conservator from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the author of “Traditional Weavers of Guatemala,” and the man who owns YJ’s Snackbar, just across the street from Garcia Squared.

The conservator wanted to help preserve the pieces, which had had a rough life in Guatemala. The author said she had devoted a section to Sosóf and sent Garcia several copies of her book. And the YJ’s owner just happened to have several artifacts from Santiago Atitlán that he wanted to lend to the exhibition.

Garcia, a graduate of the Kansas City Arts Institute in mixed media, strives to incorporate both educational and sensory elements into his shows and gladly added the books and artifacts, which he hopes heightens the experience of the show. The conservator taught Garcia how to clean the pieces and has said she’ll give them a final professional cleaning herself before he sends them back to Guatemala. The show closes Dec. 29.

GARCIA SQUARED CONTEMPORARY
See the works of Antonio Ramirez Sosóf through Dec. 29. Second floor of Bauer Machine Works, 115 W. 18th St. 6-10 p.m. First Friday. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday-Saturday.

115 W. 18th Street KCMO

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