Kansas City, MO, March 5: Charlotte Street Foundation and Mobank are proud to announce that the recently installed Mobank Artboards from March through May will showcase three of the most vibrant Kansas City artists throughout the beginning of spring. These installations feature Charlotte Street Visual Artist Fellow Dylan Mortimer, as well as KC arts duo, the Argot/Nots. “Let’s start by removing the jargon from artspeak. Let’s start by trying to understand. Let’s talk,” said the Argot/Nots. “We hope that our proposal for the Artboards carries this meaning into the Kansas City urban environment by using a concise message and striking imagery.”
The Artboards are located next to the Mobank location on 125 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City, MO. The Artboards are a vibrant and unique way for artists to express themselves towards the public in all hours of the day. You can learn more about the Artboards program here and you can read the media release here.
(Dylan Mortimer, Heal Some Type of Way #1 and #2, 2017)
Dylan Mortimer’s Heal Some Type of Way #1 and #2 is inspired by various forms of imagery, including religious iconography, medical illustrations, and marquee signs found in Vegas or Times Square. “I am interested in the idea of healing,” Dylan states. “We search for cures to so many things… for our bodies, our minds, our spirits. This search compels me. I was born with a severe degenerative respiratory disease called Cystic Fibrosis. Growing up, the average lifespan of a patient was in the late teens, now it is early thirties. I also grew up the son of a pastor. I have and am wrestling through my work what healing means for me. I try to convey visually the battle that goes on in my body and mind.”
Dylan Mortimer graduated with a BFA Kansas City Art Institute and a MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York. He has been featured in the New York Times, The New York Post, The Chicago Sun, The Baltimore Sun, NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, The Kansas City Star, The Daily Mail, and several other publications internationally. He has created public art installations in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, Lawrence, and Washington. Local awards include a 2009 recipient of the Charlotte Street Award, a current resident of the Studios, Inc, Kansas City’s Best Artist by The Pitch in 2003, Avenue of the Arts in 2003, Art in the Loop in 2005.
(Argot/Nots, LET’S TALK, 2017)
“Our Artboards build upon our foundation of dialogue, presenting a close-up of our faces with the slogan-like imperative LET’S TALK,” replied the Argot/Nots. “This text concisely sums up our mission as a collective – to engage in critical conversation – as well as the implicit message that before we can arrive at understanding, we must be willing to speak and listen to one another.”
The ARGOT/NOTS are a two-person art collective working in digital media and critical writing. The starting point for a majority of their projects is to engage in their practice and community with generosity, humor, and criticality. Through a range of projects, they are examining the ideas and language that structure the art communities and institutions we all encounter.
Logan Hamilton Acton lives and works in Kansas City, Missouri. Acton earned an MA in Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and an MFA in Sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art. His past immersion in extreme music fostered an interest in its theatricality and the aesthetics of unrest. Acton’s current body of work explores the idea of transformation. Connecting myth and contemporary music this takes the form of video, performance, drawing, and installation. His work employs the language of archetype to explore identity and place through allegories that layer the world as it is with visions of a world that could be. Acton is a co-director/co-curator with PLUG Projects and a 2017-18 Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident with his two-person collective the ARGOT/NOTS.
Meghan Skevington is an artist working primarily in the realms of photography, filmmaking, and installation. She has exhibited in the East Gallery, Kansas City Missouri, the Yale Norfolk Gallery in Norfolk Connecticut, as well as La Corte Arte Contemporanea Gallery in Florence, Italy. She was awarded the Yale/Norfolk Summer School Fellowship in 2015, and has studied at the Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy. Meghan is currently living and working in Kansas City, Missouri. She graduated in May 2016 from the Kansas City Art Institute with a double major in Photography and Art History.
ABOUT ARTBOARDS
The Mobank ARTBOARDS were launched in fall 2008 when the Bank purchased the building that currently houses its Crossroads Branch and renovated and converted the building’s existing double-sided billboards into a highly visible site for work by area artists. The project was completed by Helix Architecture + Design. To date, commissions by approximately 58 Kansas City area artists have been featured on the ART- BOARDS. For a complete listing and more information, go to www.charlottestreet.org/opportunities/artboards
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street identifies the needs and fuels the evolution of an ever-changing multidisciplinary arts ecosystem, acting as its primary provocateur. Charlotte Street cultivates the contemporary, the exceptional, and the unexpected in the practice of artists working in and engaging with the Kansas City art community. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $1.1 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
ABOUT MOBANK
Mobank is part of BOK Financial Corporation, a $33 billion regional financial services company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Company’s stock is publicly traded on NASDAQ under the Global Select market listings (symbol: BOKF). Through its subsidiaries, the Company provides commercial and consumer banking, investment and trust services, mortgage origination and servicing, and an electronic funds transfer network. For more information, visit https://www.mobank.com/.
