Artspeak Radio with GK & Kēvin Callahan and Travis Pratt

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, January 26, 2022, noon – 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes GK and Kevin Callahan and artist Travis Pratt.

TRAVIS PRATT – Artist/stand up comedian talks about upcoming work at The Smalter Gallery and New York City.

The Smalter Gallery is a resource and advocate for both emerging and experienced artists.The goal of the Smalter Gallery is to create a welcoming space for artists, so that they may make tangible their greatest aspirations. This is accomplished through close relationships with artists and comprehensive support packages that help the artist reach a wider audience. The gallery maintains an open door policy intended to encourage artists to feel comfortable sharing their concerns and questions with the gallery team.
The gallery aims to curate an experience that leaves every patron – from a first-time buyer to an avid collector – feeling welcomed and comfortable.

www.travispratt.com
www.smalterart.com

KĒVIN CALLAHAN – Kēvin’s philosophy is simple: Composition, Story, Elegant Line.
If you find the elegant line, your work will be lyrical.

Kēvin’s journey through the art world has been long and fruitful, beginning as an award-winning undergrad. Over the many years that have followed, he has participated in numerous art shows across the USA. Including Des Moines, Philadelphia area, San Diego, Chicago, New Jersey, and Kansas City area. His awards include works in painting, sculpture, graphic design, journalism, and poetry. Also, he spent thirty years working pro bono in schools and Boys and Girls Clubs conducting artist-in-residence programs with children from third grade through high school.

Kēvin produces work in various mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, crafts, and writing (prose and poetry). A graduate of Drake University, where he studied painting under Jules Kirschenbaum. Then at a Painting Intensive at the San Francisco Art Institute, with world-renowned Israeli artist Larry Abramson. He continued his studies at the Ox-Bow School of the Art Institute Chicago under Phil Hanson and Michelle Grabner. Michelle was co-curator of the 2014 Whitney Museum Biennial and curator of the 2016 Portland Biennial.

His award-winning art hangs in collections throughout the United States and in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and Israel. He has self-published one novel and two collections of short stories. Flying Ketchup Press published his book Road Map, Poems, Paintings, & Stuff in 2019. His art, stories, and poems have appeared in numerous anthologies

He currently works and resides with his wife in Parkville, MO, and both of his sons are accomplished artists.

GK CALLAHAN – As a trans-media artist and engagement professional, GK has more than two decades of experience working in the community arts field. He has had the opportunity to work with Intersection for the Arts, The San Francisco Arts Education Project, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, LightHouse for the Blind & Visually Impaired, Harvey Milk, Civil Rights Academy, and the University of Missouri.
He earned his MFA in Social Practice at California College of the Arts and his BFA in Painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. He has taught, lectured, consulted, held board positions, and founded several community projects.

In 2010, he received a San Francisco Arts Commission, Arts & Communities: Innovative Partnerships Grant and founded the Please Touch Garden, an outdoor community space that addresses urban agriculture, arts, and disabilities. Due to structural instability of the neighboring building, the garden closed in the summer of 2019.

Callahan is also the co-founder and primary producer for Contracting an Issue, an international social awareness project that explored HIV/AIDS’s continuing impact. In 2017 he received an Inspiration Grant from ArtsKC to bring Contracting an Issue to Tanzania.  In 2018, he was invited to attend the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Residency to make work about his travels. In 2019 he showed a decade of his HIV stigma related work at Leedy-Voulkos Gallery Kansas City in a show entitled Mapping Stigma.

Callahan continues to work on the Beaded Quilt project, which started in 2010 at the LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco. An ongoing community art venture in partnership with the Blind/Def-Blind and Visually impaired community; in 2019, he showcased the KC Beaded Quilt at Weinberger Fine Art and has a forthcoming show in 2022 at the Johnson County Arts & Heritage Center.

Currently working as a Community Arts and County Engagement Specialist for the University of Missouri Extension, promoting and fostering community and economic development through the arts. In 2018, he was awarded the Excellence in Community Resource & Economic Development Award by MACEDEP for a feasibility study on an arts incubator for the City of Gladstone.

GK Callahan is currently working on numerous projects including;

www.artskc.org/advocacy/social-impact-project/
www.englewoodarts.art
www.artsinthepark.org
Callahhan has shows planned for 2023 at www.jcprd.com/327/Arts-Heritage-Center and the Stocksdale Gallery at William Jewell College
www.gkcallahan.com

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