Traces & Trajectories: an exhibition celebrating the Rocket Grants Program
Friday 6:00 pm- 9:00 pm
La Esquina
1000 W 25th St
Kansas City, MO 64108
Informality editors Melaney Mitchell and Blair Schulman have worked together to create a micro retrospective of the six year history of the Rocket Grants program. The exhibition is showcasing the work of Blanket Undercover, Nedra Bonds, Darryl Chamberlain, Amber Hansen, Judith G. Levy, David Lowenstein, PLUG projects, Michael Toombs, and Don Wilkinson. There will also be a series of Rocket Talks along with the exhibition to help further the conversation at play in the work at La Esquina.
Simone Leigh: “I ran to the rock to hide my face the rock cried out no hiding place”
Friday 6:00 pm- 8:00 pm
H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute
16 E 43rd St
Kansas City, MO 64111
Ceramic sculpture, video, and installation by Simone Leigh with influences ranging from African art and architecture, historical folk and craft traditions, pop culture, science fiction, ethnography, performance and an ongoing consideration of the black female body.
The Art of Carl Kurtz: Ballet on Paper Cohen Resource Room
Friday 6:00 pm- 8:00 pm
H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute
16 E 43rd St
Kansas City, MO 64111
Celebrating the creative life and work of Carl Kurtz, who taught as a professor in the School of the Foundation Year at the Kansas City Art Institute for more than 40 years. This exhibition was co curated by KCAI professor Hal Wert and former student Molly Kaderka(Painting ’11)
RE/WORK
Friday 6:00 pm- 9:00 pm
Vulpes Bastille
1737 Locust St
Kansas City, MO 64111
Second of three openings for RE/WORK featuring the resident artists at Vulpes Bastille. Instead of a traditional gallery exhibition, these artists have taken over the gallery as work space, streaming video of them working 24/7. Ideas of privacy and reality-tv blend into an activated and continually shifting display of making. You can follow the progress on instagram @re.work.kc
Rocket Talks Opening Weekend
1000 W 25th St
Kansas City, MO 64108
Saturday 1:00 pm
Rocket Talk – Elaborations: A conversation about persona and place
Judith G. Levy and Jessica Borusky will host a conversation with one another about the role of persona and place in their work. They will show projected images as they discuss how they individually explore narrative, locale, provocation, humor, memory, objects and queer theory to create multi-disciplinary work that investigates assumptions, omissions, and ideology in formal presentations of history and culture.
Saturday 3:00 pm
Rocket Talk -A discussion about the arts and creative placemaking
Give Take Give, Dave Loewenstein’s Rocket Grant supported project from 2013, focused on the improvised gift economy and social space that emerged within and around a local dumpster near his home in Lawrence, KS. The project was propelled by a new wave of upscale development that was encroaching into the beloved working class neighborhood of East Lawrence. Three years down the road and the pressure of development pushing gentrification has reached a fever pitch, bolstered by a new planning strategy known popularly as Creative Placemaking. This has become the rallying cry, economic argument, seduction, and defense for a host of new initiatives to increase “vibrancy” in places deemed unvibrant. In response to a new multi-million dollar Placemaking initiative announced in 2015, some East Lawrence neighbors launched the East 9th Street Placekeepers with a website (eastninth.net) that looks deeply at Placemaking projects across the country. Here in the gallery on February 6th from 3-5:30pm, a group of invited artists, planners, neighbors and others will engage in a facilitated dialogue about the role of artists in this new development paradigm.
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