October–December 2026
Charlotte Street is pleased to premiere Artboards this winter by artists Caroline Honas and Arin Yoon, to be installed at 125 Southwest Boulevard. The Artboards program captures 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 December 2026.
Caroline Honas says of her Artboards:
Rendered as oil paintings, these two images depict the vibrant duality of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. The prairie is a delicate, dwindling environment. These partnered paintings characterize this landscape through stylized flora and the interwoven patterns. The first image depicts woody encroachment, a natural phenomenon spurred on by climate change, wherein native and naturalized trees are slowly spreading across the plains, disrupting the tallgrass by occupying root space and blocking the sun. Woody encroachment is one of the biggest threats to the last remaining prairies. Growth, in this phenomena, means decline. The second image depicts evidence of controlled burning. This custodial practice is traced back to Indigenous land caretaking, and is used to promote soil health and burn off invasive growth. The charred grass stalks fertilize the soil which protects the deep roots. Fire, typically seen as a destructive force, becomes a symbol for regeneration.
Kansas City lies on the easternmost edge of the tallgrass ecoregion. These paintings blend imagery captured from the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, the Konza prairie, Mount Mitchell Heritage Prairie Park, and the Flint Hills
Arin Yoon says of her Artboards:
My long-term project ‘To Be At War’ explores the social impacts of war on the military community. To understand my new role as a military spouse living on a remote military base, I began taking pictures to make sense of this life. I don’t recall at what point I realized that John had poor hearing. Service members are at a greater risk of hearing loss than their civilian counterparts due to repeated exposures to high intensity noise such as small arms fire and explosions from training exercises and deployments. It’s something I became accustomed to and now, my children too. John was shot in 2007 during the “surge” in Iraq. It was not until recently that the children were old enough to notice the scar on his right shoulder. “Will Daddy get shot by a sniper again?” my youngest asked. I began thinking about the trauma that we inherit through John’s experiences with war. I wanted to make a photograph of John’s hearing aid, which for me, symbolized this secondary trauma. When our son, Teo, drew close to his ear, his face close enough for John to feel the warmth of his breath, I knew this was the photograph that I was trying to make.
Date- April 18, 2021
Location- Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, USA
About the Crossroads Artboards
Since 2008, the Crossroads Artboards has featured over 100 commissioned works by Kansas City-area artists. 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 CAROLINE HONAS
Caroline Honas is a visual artist from Kansas City, Kansas. She graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2022 with a BFA in painting. Primarily an oil painter, she depicts botanical and ecological imagery to dig into the fertile soil of interdependence and philosophy. Honas has shown work at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, the Emily & Todd Voth Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute, and the Mark Arts Center in Wichita, KS, among others. She has attended the Oak Spring Garden Foundation interdisciplinary residency, the Tallgrass Artist Residency, and was a 2024-2026 Charlotte Street studio resident.
ABOUT ARIN YOON
Arin Yoon is a Korean American documentary photographer and visual artist based in Overland Park. Her work focuses on the military community and the impacts of war, trauma and healing, notions of family, women and issues of identity and representation. Arin is a National Geographic Explorer and a member of Women Photograph, Diversify Photo, the Asian American Journalists Association and National Press Photographers Association.
Her project tobeatwar.com, a multimedia interactive website which examines the lasting impacts of war through first person narratives from members of the post-9/11 military community, received the 2025 Best of Photojournalism Award- First Place in the Online Innovation category. Her story ‘The Scars of War,’ about her husband’s last year in the military, won First Place in the 2025 Online Story of the Year from Pictures of the Year International. She was recognized by the Asian American Journalists Association in 2023 with the Photojournalism Award for her story, ‘Where the Tallgrass Sways,’ about her immigration experience.
Arin’s personal work has been featured in National Geographic, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN and The New York Times. Her work is a part of the public collection at The Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University. She has exhibited at venues such as the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History in Seoul, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and Photoville in New York. She has an MFA in Photography, Video and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts and a BA in Political Science and a BA in English Language and Literature from The University of Chicago.
