KANSAS CITY, MO, January 9, 2025: Charlotte Street is pleased to premiere Crossroads Artboards this winter by artists Heidi Pitre and Katherine Looney, currently installed at 125 Southwest Boulevard. The Artboards program is a collaboration with the Crossroads Community Association and co-sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance, capturing the creative spirit of the Crossroads neighborhood and serving as an alternative outdoor platform where artists’ work can be viewed during all hours of the day. The current work will remain on view through the end of March 2025.
This round of Artboards highlights themes of connection, love, and belonging. Katherine Looney’s pieces celebrate friendship and togetherness in the Crossroads community. Drawing from a previous series of solo portraits, these four vibrant cropped portraits of friends and family share joyful moments—embracing, holding hands, and simply being themselves. Using saturated colors, intricate details, and bright backgrounds, Looney seeks to promote a lasting, positive message of social bonding.
Heidi Pitre’s work emphasizes love and inclusion with her piece, Love More. Featuring the phrase “LOVE MORE” spelled out in American Sign Language by hands covered in colorful rubber gloves, Petrie’s design incorporates the original 1978 Pride Flag palette to symbolize sex, life, healing, the sun, nature, art, serenity, and spirit. The gloves, which she often uses in her paintings to represent duty and expectation, also serve to conceal skin color, promoting a message of unity and solidarity.
Documentation of these artboards can be found at bit.ly/artboards-winter2025
For interview requests contact Amanda Middaugh at [email protected] or 816-994-7734.
ABOUT CROSSROADS ARTBOARDS
Since 2008, the Crossroads Artboards has featured over 100 commissioned works by Kansas City-area artists. In partnership with the Crossroads Community Association, the Artboards capture the creative spirit of the Crossroads neighborhood while serving as an alternative platform for contemporary art. For a complete listing of artists and more information, visit charlottestreet.org/crossroads-artboards/.
ABOUT CROSSROADS COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
The mission of the Crossroads Community Association shall be to support, promote, advance, and encourage the revitalization of the community as a thriving, safe and attractive center of art, history, enterprise, commerce, culture, residence, entertainment, education, and other activity; to inform and educate the members of this association and the public about community issues; to provide a forum to address community objectives and issues; to build a strong community through communication, cooperation, planning and leadership; to build a strong partnership between business owners, property owners, tenants, and residents to ensure community involvement; and to enhance the quality of life within the community. For more information visit https://kccrossroads.org/about/cca/
ABOUT MID-AMERICA ARTS ALLIANCE
Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) strengthens and supports artists, cultural organizations, and communities throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and beyond. To learn more about M-AAA grants, programs, exhibitions, and fellowships, visit www.maaa.org and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street centers Kansas City’s most forward-thinking visual artists, writers, and performers—acting as the primary incubator, provocateur, and connector for the region’s contemporary arts community and its leading advocate on the national stage. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $2.5 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects and has hosted countless exhibitions, performances, convenings, and conversations connecting and challenging Kansas City’s contemporary art ecosystem. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
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View the press release as a PDF here.
