Charlotte Street news from elsewhere.
Via Artforum
WARHOL FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANTS TOTALING $3.9 MILLION
The Warhol Foundation today revealed that it will award $3.9 million in grants to fifty US arts organizations scattered across eighteen states and the District of Columbia. Nineteen of those receiving funding are first-time recipients. In order to assure the long-term recovery and continued stability of the arts, which were hard hit by the Covid-19 crisis, the foundation announced that with this round of funding it would continue its practice, established during the pandemic, of allowing grantees to use up to 50 percent of the award money for administrative expenses.
Via The Pitch KC
Kansas City Zine Con (KCZC) goes hybrid June 11 for its seventh year of promoting outsider publications
This year’s Kansas City Zine Con (KCZC) will celebrate seven years of promoting self-published publications in the Midwest.
The event will be hybrid, with the in-person section at Plexpod Westport Commons June 11 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Masks are required. Panels will also be live-streamed and the online portion will include a virtual table experience to view digital portfolios.
The convention is free to attend, and attendees can exhibit, sell, buy, and trade a variety of DIY publications.
Via City of KCMO
Several KC arts organizations win National Endowment for the Arts Grants
Eight Kansas City area arts organizations received nearly $2 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The NEA distributed more than $91 million nationwide during this second round of grants for fiscal year 2022. The Arts Asylum was one of the recipients, receiving $75,000 for their ‘Our Town’ initiative.
Via KC Studio
Artist to Watch: Craig Auge
Embracing transience and change, the Kansas City artist mines old and new to create works that are eclectic, singular and visually intelligent
Craig Auge is no stranger to the ephemeral terms of existence. It’s something that informs his artistic sensibilities and philosophies.
Auge has developed a philosophy of artmaking that plays on his notion that what he is creating might be ever evolving or transient. “I grew up in West Virginia, where you have this mixture of new and old and the city and the woods . . . I find aged aesthetics and patchwork qualities (that) visually excite me and remind me of home. I then start to make connections in my mind with humanity,” says Auge. “I’ve just always been attracted to that thing that’s kind of the rust or that wears the elements of time and age.”
Via The Pitch KC
Kostas Contemporary steps into company launch with In All Forms performance
Kostas Contemporary could have been just another dance company, but instead, creator and choreographer Haley Kostas wanted to tap into something greater. This movement arts troop officially soft launched Thursday, May 19, with the first performance of its dark commentary on mental illness, In All Forms, at the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Stern Theater (3333 Wyoming Street).
Kostas co-produced the show with composer Conner Giles. Their mission was to lift the curtain on Kostas Contemporary with a tone-setter that would firmly land it as one of Kansas City’s most intense arthouse projects.
Via KC Studio
“Sweeping the Chimney through the Mantle of the Earth,” Charlotte Street Foundation
Curated by Charlotte Street resident Andrew Ordonez, “Sweeping the Chimney through the Mantle of the Earth” is an exhibition about the decay of the world. Each artists tackles their own concept of ruin through painting, sculptures, photography, film and drawing. With all the exhibition’s artists living in the Central Time Zone, the show provides a cross section of America and Mexico, focusing on shared experiences of finding tragic beauty in our recent past.
Jose Villalobos’s installation “Lo Que Existe Entre Paredes” is a large cinder block wall, painted white and topped with dozens of broken Coca-Cola and Juarito’s bottles, planted like dangerous flowers. Across the wall, a single line of homophobic graffiti is scrawled “PUTO el que lo leea” (roughly meaning “gay if you read this”). Behind the wall, one can look at a photograph and see that the entire scene is a recreation of an actual wall near his grandfather’s house in Juarez, Mexico. The homophobic machismo of the graffiti becomes smaller and pathetic as Villalobos defiantly transplants it into the gallery space, unafraid of expressing his own queer identity.
Via KC Studio
Arts News: Charlotte Street Foundation Announces New Awards Fellows
Twenty-five years ago, a group of like-minded artists and their supporters met informally yet regularly at a bungalow on Charlotte Street. A few years before, the National Endowment for the Arts, for political reasons, stopped awarding individual grants for visual artists throughout the United States, and there was little money anywhere for local artists. Some of the Charlotte Street regulars decided to do something about the paucity of funding for artists in Kansas City, and they began raising money for artist grants annually.
Via KCUR 89.3 FM
A Kansas City composer’s tribute to Judy Garland is part concerto, part drag show
For a Judy Garland centennial tribute, Stacy Busch’s double concerto premieres with the Mid America Freedom Band and solos for two Kansas City drag queens.
Few performances are as iconic as Judy Garland’s Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” Garland, who died in 1969, would have turned 100 this year. To mark that occasion, Kansas City’s Mid America Freedom Band presents a tribute concert, which includes the premiere of a commissioned piece of music with a unique role for two particular soloists.
Via KC Studio
Honors: Victoria Botero
The lauded soprano is recognized with a cultural producer grant from the Charlotte Street Foundation for her The Cecilia Series of concerts, including an upcoming program highlighting Gabriel García Márquez
A soprano hits the high notes. The highest.