Charlotte Street Foundation and Mobank release new Artboards in the Crossroads District through November 2018
Charlotte Street Foundation and Mobank have teamed up again to release the next exciting display of Mobank Artboards into the fall season. The new Artboards were recently installed in the Crossroads District of Kansas City next to the Mobank location on 125 Southwest Blvd, Kansas City, MO. This set of Artboards features two unique and vibrant Kansas City artists, John Buice and Steve Snell. The Artboards will be on display through November.
John Buice, Well Welcome to Business, 2018
John Buice (aka Johnny B) is a story-teller at heart. Shortly after starting at Imagine That!, John’s work began to encompass personal ideas and opinions, touching on his feelings about religion, geography, and politics. His work is highly influenced by his personal experience of historical events and pop culture high points from the 60’s through the 80’s and most of all, his favorite foods. Working primarily through collage or map-making, he uses these references to make hilarious and often poignant statements about the world in which we exist.”
John makes collages by looking through fashion and food magazines to find the images that he likes best. Once he has chosen the image, he adds faces and the takes time to look at the body language and setting of the image and then respond to it accordingly. In the image Well Welcome to Business, he responds humorously to the 4 suited men in a dark setting, pointing out the sometimes shady side of the business world.
Steve Snell, Bellwether Snacks: Falling Peanut & Pretzel Rising, 2018
Steve Snell wants adventure, or at least the image of one. His work is inspired by the mythology and popular culture of American history and the Western landscape. He both celebrates and critiques this fantastic, fabricated, and complicated narrative through painting, video, and “real” adventures. From floating a cardboard replica of Lewis and Clark’s keelboat on the Missouri River to a random encounter with Alec Baldwin while hiking across Western Massachusetts, Snell’s work attempts to engage life as though it were an epic movie, or at least present the image that it is one.
Steve has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Tallgrass National Preserve in the Flint Hills, the Teton ArtLab in Jackson, WY, and along the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska and British Columbia, which was sponsored by the National Parks Service and Parks Canada. His work has been shown in galleries and film festivals throughout the United States, including the Aspen Shorts Fest and the Currents New Media Festival in Santa Fe. Steve earned his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2011) as well as a BFA in Painting / BS in Art Education from Miami University (2006). He currently is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Foundation Department at the Kansas City Art Institute. His work is represented by Weinberger Fine Art in Kansas City, MO.
Snell’s Bellwether Snacks: Falling Peanut & Pretzel Rising is an interesting inclusion for the Artboards. The snack can symbolize comfort and consumption. Its form is accessible and personal. One can eat snacks while watching devastation on the nightly news or while peacefully floating down the Missouri River. The snack can be a refuge or a forbidden fruit. What do these images mean? There are no definitive answers. Only a strange juxtaposition of imagery to initiate wonder and provoke questions. This piece transforms the pretzel and the peanut into larger than life icons. They exist as a mirage of hope and impending doom. Each of these artboards are derived from a series of snack paintings made over the last couple of years.
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. 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/.
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