ARTSPEAK RADIO presents, John Ferry, Jonah Criswell, Brett Chenowith, Hector Casanova, & Suzanne Günther

Kansas City Art Institute alumni/instructors; John Ferry, Jonah Criswell, Brett Chenowith, & Hé́ctor Casanova compare and contrast their experiences as a student on campus and returning as instructors.
In the second half of the program, photograper, Suzanne Günther talks about her project that involved an open call for a photo shoot with the KC creative community .

John Ferry received his B.F.A. degree from KCAI and his M.F.A. from School of Visual Arts, New York. He teaches illustration, drawing, and painting at KCAI, and has taught at the Maryland Institute, College of Art where he won a Trustees award for Excellence in Teaching. His work has appeared in mumerous corporate collections including Sprint, Stowers Institute, and H& R Block. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, The Wichita Center for the Arts and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art all have his paintings in their permanent collection. He’s been published in New American Paintings, Society o fIllustrators and International Painting Annual most recently. John lives and paints in Prairie Village, Kansas with his wife Amy and two daughters, Katherine and Paige. “Ferry’s works reveal the aesthetic beauty of the overlooked and forgotten urban environment and brilliantly portrays the cycle of change in our citites, “ said Will Hipps, Art Museum and Gallery director at Kennesaw State University.

John Ferry, Artist statement: I like this eloquently worded statement by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “We wouldn’t be creative at all if we didn’t have boundaries to deal with.”

www.johnferry.net

Jonah Criswell was born in Springfield Missouri and raised in Pensacola Florida. He attended KCAI form 2001-2005 where he earned a BFA. He graduated with an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University’s School of Visual Art in 2008. From 2008-2011 he worked at KCAI’s Office of Admissions. He started teaching in KCAI’s painting department in 2008 where he is currently an Assistant Professor of Art.

www.jonahcriswell.com

Brett Chenoweth is an award-winning and internationally exhibiting artist from Kansas City Missouri. He earned a B.F.A. in photography with a minor in art history from Washington University in St. Louis in 1986 and a B.F.A. degree in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1989. Brett also earned his master’s degree of interdisciplinary studies in Humanities from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt. in 1999. He has been a painting and drawing instructor in Kansas City, Vermont, and Maine.
Brett reignited his love for photography while taking pictures for source material for his drawings. As the iPhone began to emerge as a valid and present vehicle for documentation, Brett now focuses on mobile photography as his primary tool for his work. Additionally, the iPad allows him to mix drawing, painting and photography together with ease, essentially obliterating the boundaries between these media–taking Brett’s work into new directions.

www.brettchenowith.com

Héctor Casanova
“In Mexico, being an artist is by definition signing up for a tremendous responsibility in which you are able to communicate through your art visually to the people. You have a
responsibility to the people who are voiceless. And so, art, just by definition, is a very political act in Mexico. And that is something I grew up very strongly believing since I was a kid. So that’s one of the things that I think have defined me just in the way that I feel and approach art from an early age.”
A native of Mexico City, Héctor Casanova graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1998 with a double major in illustration and art history. He has been working as a fine and graphic artist for more than 15 years, doing work for collectors, magazines and corporations nationally and abroad. He is a staff artist at The Kansas City Star, where he has illustrated hundreds of articles and stories and won a handful of awards and accolades. His comics work include Screamland with writer Harold Sipe (published by Image Comics) and The Lurkers with writer Steve Niles (published by IDW).
Between 2000-2008, he co-founded and operated The Green Door Gallery, an alternative art space dedicated to showcasing the work of established and emerging artists from Kansas City and beyond. Since the gallery’s closing, his work has often involved collaborations with other artists, musicians and dancers to create larger than life spectacles, most recently collaborating with Renée Cinderhouse for the exhibition ‘Manifest Destiny’ at La Esquina and with Voler – Thieves of Flight for ‘Lucid’ during the 2012 Fringe Festival.

www.facebook.com/therealhectorcasanova
www.hectorcasanova.com

Suzanne Günther Photography, Kransberg, Hessen, Germany

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