Charlotte Street news from elsewhere.
Via Bad At Sports
Episode 826: Confluence Studio and Charlotte Street Foundation
Live from our tailgate at the MdW fair we bring you part two of a series we are doing with the organizing members of the MdW and a wrap up conversation that looks at the current state of arts organizing. But this week we have Confluence Studio, Duaba Unenra and Sam Gould, then are joined by Amy Kligman of the Charlotte Street Foundation. We learn about contemporary policing practice in MN and how residents mobilize through art and stories. Then we shift over to Kansas City MO and touch the other side of artist run culture through a 25 year old entrenched arts org. Good times had by all!
Via KC Studio
“2022 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards,” H&R Block Artspace
Featuring new work from three Charlotte Street Fellows — Andrew Mcilvaine, Harold Smith, Jr., and Johanna Winters — this year’s Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards exhibition is a study in what it means to be seen. And although each artist embraces their own perspective and motivations, the concepts of identity and how people perceive one another permeate the installations.
Via KC Studio
The Black Creatures: A Scrappy DIY Hip-Hop Duo with a Sci-Fi Bent
Storyteller musicians Jade Green and Xavier Martin are ‘going places others have not’
The Black Creatures are intergalactic storytellers, a scrappy DIY hip-hop duo with a sci-fi bent.
The Black Creatures — Jade Green (they/them) and Xavier Martin (he/him) — are also 2022 Generative Performing Artist Fellows for Charlotte Street.
Via KC Studio
Kansas City Artist Harold Smith is Racking Up the Recognition, Including a Prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
There are good years and there are banner years. Harold Smith is having a banner year. And 2022 isn’t over yet.
Smith is best known for his dynamic, expressionist, full-frontal portraits of Black men. He increasingly incorporates collage in his powerful, painterly works, inspired by what he describes as “my personal exploration of the complex, chaotic and multi-layered experience of men of color in America.” In his art — which also includes writing and filmmaking — Smith embodies James Baldwin’s belief that “The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way a person looks at reality, then you can change it.”
Via Sixty Inches From Center
Review: MDW Art Fair at Mana Contemporary
MdW Assembly (pronounced Midway) returns ten years after its first three iterations, allowing its attendees to unpack the trouble and possibility of artist-run spaces
I set out to Pilsen in the early afternoon on Saturday, September 10th to attend the fair, housed on the 2nd and 4th floors of Mana Contemporary. MdW Assembly (pronounced Midway) returns ten years after its first three iterations from 2010-2012. MdW, helmed by Chicago mainstay, the artist-run-mammoth Public Media Institute, worked with six other central midwest arts organizations to make up the assembly. The fourth floor was the art fair, containing over sixty quasi-booths from organizations from all over Illinois and the central midwest. The second floor consisted of the six state pavilions, a family and youth studio, the print zone, a screening room, and the performance arena. The event was a sweet discord of people walking between the two floors until open studios in the evening. It was sometimes hard to find so
Via KCUR 89.3 FM
A Kansas City writer’s new book provides something ‘tangible to hold on to’ after years of isolation
Andrew Michael Johnson’s book of poetry and prose, “The Thread,” explores cosmic events and everyday moments.
A few months into the coronavirus pandemic, poet and essayist Andrew Michael Johnson started a weekly newsletter called “The Thread.”
“Partly because I needed, as a writer, a regular routine for my writing, and also wanted to share what I was writing,” he said. “In the midst of lockdown, (I) saw that as a way to regularly connect with people.”
Via Kansas City Star
Take a stroll through Volker: Indie books, drinks & dresses in the walkable heart of midtown
Few blocks in Kansas City achieve the busy, youthful “college town” energy of Lawrence or Columbia quite as well as those on West 39th Street. Neighbors call the local business-packed strip between Southwest Trafficway and State Line Road the heart of the Volker neighborhood, while the sidestreets are marked by homes with plant-filled front porches and small apartment buildings with patios.
Via Kansas City Star
In the mood for a movie? KC Underground Film Festival hosting two weeks of free screenings
The Kansas City Underground Film Festival is bringing free entertainment to the city until Sept. 24. Low-budget but high quality independent films take center stage at Charlotte Street Foundation on 3333 Wyoming St.. This marks the third year of the festival that started because Willy Evans, Kari Bingham-Gutierrez and Courtney Bierman wanted to fill the void left by The Tivoli Theater’s closing in 2019.
Via KC Studio
A Robust Spectrum: Kansas City Underground Film Festival Starts Sept. 14
“Film is an integrating art and everything that happens in your life, or the stimuli you receive, influences your films,” says Arturo Dueñas Herrero, whose Pessoas, a bittersweet travelogue, plays at the Kansas City Underground Film Festival (KCUFF), which runs this and next weekend at the Charlotte Street Foundation (3333 Wyoming St.). Herrero is among the nearly 100 directors whose films among eight headings — Animated, Documentary, Experimental, Feature Film, Horror, International, Local, Short Film — were selected for this year’s festival. Ranging in length from five-minute shorts to hour-plus features, this year’s festival offers a robust spectrum of subject matter for festival attendees, particularly those deprived of the stimuli of travel. Or of a perspective that informs us of the unknown here at home.