ARTSPEAK RADIO + Gunard Polite, Kwanzaa Humphrey, Emily Smalter, & Ari Fish

ARTSPEAK RADIO Wednesday, January 22, 2020, noon- 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd talks with President One Kansas City Radio Gunard Polite, artist Kwanzaa Humphrey, Smalter Gallery owner Emily Smalter, and artist Ari Fish.

GUNARD POLITE, President One Kansas City Radio-One Kansas City Radio unites the multicultural voices in the Kansas City Urban Core through programming and community services that entertain, educate, inform and inspire. One KC Radio will bring together the African American, Latino, and other underrepresented ethnic and cultural voices in Kansas City with music, culture, and information. We will provide information and a forum to deliver community services, job opportunities, health education and other messages that will serve our community and listeners.
Through our programming and broadcast we will give a new and positive voice to the young adults in ethnic and cultural groups. Our station will also be an intentional outlet for local musicians and community members from all walks of life, not currently represented in radio in the growing Kansas City market.
ONE KANSAS CITY RADIO | KONN 100.1 FM | 3921 Bell Street, KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI 64111 816.535.0152 | onekcradio.org | [email protected]

EMILY SMALTER, KWANZAA HUMPHREY- 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.

A solo exhibition of recent works by Kwanza Humphrey. Kwanza is a Kansas City painter who creates beautiful portraits of figures against a cloud filled sky. 

”The clouds represent wonder, hope, and unity. We’re all on this planet under the same sky. When you look up, the possibilities are endless. I want to share with the world that we are all a part of the same whole, and despite our differences, we all crave the same thing. Truth and love.” –KH

The Smalter Gallery 1802 W 39th St, Kansas City, MO 64111 816.200-255 www.smaltergallery.com

Kwanzaa Humphrey www.khimages.com

Crossroads Hotel\_ art programming (winter/spring)
Artist\_ Ari Fish
Title\_ Grid-Rid : grease the release (The Seventh Temple by Ari Fish) Date\_ January 1- April 1, 2019
Media\_ Multimedia, immersive installation
Grid-Rid : grease the release is the seventh temple in a series of ten temples by Ari Fish. Evoking an uncertainty and infatuation of the post-mortem experience while simultaneously emulating the release of pain and suffering, Grid-Rid is a three month meditation on release and relief. Patrons of the Crossroads Hotel are invited to experience this temporary multimedia, multi sensory temple in its many facets. The temple stands to evolve in the three months that it is on view. Music and performative programming within the temple will correlate to the themes of release, transcendance, and transformation.
The Ten Temple Series by Ari Fish began in 2010. Her temporary temples have been exhibited from coast to coast in the United States, with the anticipation of her eighth temple to be installed in the desert of Twentynine Palms, California in the summer of 2020. Each temple regards community programming of the utmost importance. Having multi-disciplinary programming in each temporary temple that centers around the theme of the temple enriches the viewer’s experience and gives integral visibility to regional communities. Each temple has considered tenets of experience, with innovative and symbolic seating arrangements, visual projections or lighting, and a soundtrack tailored-made, each temple and each viewer’s experience is an original one. All temples are accessible to the communities in which they reside, are made with consideration of all ages to engage with, and strive to leave the viewer with a lifelong memory.
Ari Fish received her B.F.A. in Ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute. Her work spans many media, from sculpture and photography, to clothing design, drawing, writing, music, and large scale multi-media installation. Fish’s work integrates elements of sacred ritual, religious study, multi-sensory saturation and deprivation, and stresses an emphasis on both survival and spiritual necessity. She is the recipient of the prestigious Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and the two time recipient of the ArtsKC Inspiration Grant.
Artist Statement \_
Ari Fish creates spiritual works of art that are of service to people and the space they reside within. A key component to her art practice is the construction of non-denominational temporary temples in public exhibition spaces. Each temple is themed around the numerological significance of the sequence in which it was constructed. A focus on inclusive human centered transformative experiences within these temples is of greatest importance. This theme of spiritual transformation carries throughout all Fish’s clothing design and the construction of her ceremonial jackets, her writings, music, drawings, and even her graphic design work.
Crossroads Hotel Kansas City 2101 Central Street Kansas City, Missouri 64108
www.arifish.

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