Artspeak Radio with Albrecht-Kemper Museum, Andrew Ordonez, & Jon Brick

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, April 20, 2022, noon – 1pm CST, 90.1FM KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes Jill Carlson with Albrecht-Kemper Museum, artist Andrew Ordonez, and filmmaker Jon Brick.

JILL CARLSON, Marketing/Communications Manager Albrecht-Kemper Museum
The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of welcomes three new exhibitions this spring. Works will be on view at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art from Saturday, April 23 to Sunday, June 12, 2022. An opening reception will be held on Friday, April 22 from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. Light refreshments and a cash bar will be available.
In the Academic Tradition: Connections between the Artist’s Work and his Art Collection featuring art by Stephen T. Johnson
A survey of Lawrence, Kansas – based artist Stephen T. Johnson’s figurative work that spans a 38-year career. Beginning with an academic charcoal figure study made in the mid-1980s at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, France, this exhibition includes personal works and commissioned illustrations for nationally published magazines, record companies, and award-winning children’s books. These works are compared and contrasted with artwork from his personal collection.
Among the works on view are a 17th-century portrait of King Charles II from the studio of Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674), important drawings and paintings by Symbolist artists Eugène Carrière (1849-1906) and Otto Greiner (1869-1916), works by two Guggenheim Fellows, John Theodore Johnson (1902-1963), the artist’s grandfather, and the iconic 20th-century caricaturist David Levine (1926-2009), plus present-day masters of interpreting, depicting, and rendering with paint, the human form.

Piece Work/Peace Work featuring art by Karen Matheis
Karen Matheis is an oil painter inspired by the landscape near her home in Lawrence, Kansas. Matheis’ work is abstracted bird’s eye views of the land. Her work focuses on how human-made infrastructure reflects the patterns of the natural world. Her artwork can be seen in private and corporate collections nationwide.
Of her series, Piece Work/Peace Work on display in the exhibition, Matheis writes, “I created the paintings in this exhibition in response to the stress associated with the pandemic and essential work status. Patchwork landscape evolved with the concept of a quilt as a source of comfort and symbolic of home and family.”

National Undergraduate Juried Exhibition
The 6th annual National Undergraduate Juried Exhibition is open to students enrolled in undergraduate programs in the United States during the 2021-2022 academic year. This year’s 34 exhibiting artists selected for participation come from 19 universities in 11 states. All artwork must be the original work of the submitting artist and created within a year of submission. This juried exhibition will feature a Best of Show award after all submissions have been received and reviewed by a panel of judges.
The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art aims to enrich the community through the collection and exhibition of visual arts by providing education, creating unique experiences, and promoting emerging artists. The museum is open Tuesday to Friday from 10 AM to 4 PM, and Saturday and Sunday from 1 PM to 4 PM. Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for seniors, and $1 for students. Museum members and children under age 6 are free. To become a member, visit Albrecht-kemper.org. For more information about the exhibitions, call 816-233-7003.
About AKMA: A work of art itself, the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art houses one of the finest collections of American Art from the Colonial period to the present. The former William Albrecht home provides the perfect backdrop for works by artist including Mary Cassatt, Thomas Hart Benton, Gilbert Stuart and Jaune Quick-To-See Smith. A wide variety of special programs complement the museum’s collection, including temporary exhibitions, art classes, gallery talks, and special events.
Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art
2818 Frederick Ave.
Saint Joseph, MO 64506
www.albrecht-kemper.org

ANDREW ORDONEZ, Charlotte Street Foundation presents Sweeping the Chimney through the Mantle of the Earth, an exhibition of nine contemporary artists, on view from April 8th-May 21st, 2022, curated by Charlotte Street Studio Resident Andrew Ordonez. The exhibition examines the physiological extension between the body and the Earth through the lens of social and environmental unrest. Through works of artists Pia Bakala (Kansas City, MO), Kevin Demery (Kansas City, MO), Juan Molina Hernández (Chicago, IL), Jada Patterson (Kansas City, MO), Xime Prieto (Ciudad de México) Donald Pruitt (Kansas City, MO), José Villalobos (San Antonio, TX), Fred Vorder-Bruegge (Kansas City, MO), and Rachel Youn (St. Louis, MO) the exhibition presents new interpretations and recordings of nature, human nature, and naturalistic observation specifically in the North American Central Time Zone region.

“ ‘Every hundred feet the world changes,’ said Florita Almada. The idea that some places are the same as others is a lie. The world is a kind of tremor.” ― Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Uprooting generational histories and lived experiences, the nine artists featured in this exhibition use objects of labor, landscape, and shelter as a means to navigate shifting geographical and cultural milieus. Politically nuanced, the survey of work alludes to Earth-related material such as dirt substances, terrains of tropics and drought, decorated floral material, plant-based environments, industrial rubble, objects of infrastructure, and composite grain. Emotionally charged in their relationship to the idealization of nature, these works draw surprising comparisons to the do-or-die attitudes of art historical movement known as Romanticism. The works obtain a highly expressive subjectivity of thought, consider the elements of the psychologically charged landscape, and entertain the spiritual realm. Fast-forward the horizon line two hundred years, these works lean more to a Mendieta-esque model featuring a livelier, more diverse, queer-centric North American landscape to explore.
Contextualizing the exhibition further, Ordonez expressed an interest in “experimental and visceral works that address a haunting relationship between interior and exterior spaces. The parallels between a crashing housing market and an environmental climate crisis in the 2020 Global Pandemic accelerated this visualization. A ticking clock upon the fireplace mantel became synonymous with a ticking clock upon the Earth’s mantle. Perhaps, even on what feels like a decaying planet, these work samples are more concerned with matters of creation rather than destruction.” On January 23, 2020, prior to the global pandemic, the ​​Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists officially moved the Doomsday Clock Countdown to 23:58:20, declaring that the global demise now reads 100 seconds till midnight. Later that fall, artists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd reprogrammed the Metronome Digital Countdown Clock at Union Station in New York City, reinterpreting the 100 seconds as an approximate seven-year deadline.
Shifting the clock between 100 seconds, seven years, and 200 years in the past, selected artists present new signifiers of the alarming and decaying landscapes upon the horizon. Reinterpreting the landscape’s deadline, Pia Bakala quite literally sets an alarm in her figurative painting, T4M: 6:00AM. Through the employment of archetypal figures such as the siren, nymph, and naiad, Bakala contextualizes the Trans body as a native to nature, vulnerable and present in the canon of Art History. Donald Pruitt’s Selected Drawings forecast our seasonal rituals through media consumption and alert information. Using the drawing paper as a composition television screen, Pruitt writes, “BAD WEATHER EVENT” and “LIVE” in front of illustrated weather graphics, blurring the realm between meteorologist and poetic cosmologist. Other works, including Fred Vorder-Bruegge’s installation titled cheeky regulator, consider the value of repurposed earth-based material, as a method to challenge industrial and commercial development. Referencing his experiences in the Jackson Country region, Vorder-Bruegge presents a fictional and flawed history of objects and places through absurdist interpretations of land regulators and infrastructure development.
The nine artists featured in this exhibition embody a collective consciousness of the natural, supernatural and spiritual world, boldly using the North American landscape as the subject and the medium.

Charlotte Street Foundation 3333 Wyoming Street Kansas City, MO 64111
Contact: Call 816.221.5115 or email [email protected]
Building hours: Tuesday-Friday 12:00-5:00 PM; Saturday 11:00 AM-5:00 PM

Andrew Ordonez is a visual artist living and working in Kansas City, MO. He received a BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2013. His studio practice currently explores the tension between cultural erasure and conservation using aggregate stone materials such as sand, gravel, cement, and paper. Simultaneously, his sculptures explore the queer macabre through the lens of historical artifact culture. Ordonez has been a visual artist resident at the Charlotte Street Foundation since 2019. He completed an artist residency at Casa Lu in Mexico City in the summer of 2021. His work has been featured in multiple galleries in Kansas City, the Midwest, and across North America, including Monaco, Leedy-Voulkos Contemporary Art Center, H&R Block Artspace, Kiosk Gallery, G-CADD, Casa Lu Gallery, and the Mexic-Arte Museum. In addition to his studio practice, he is a visual arts instructor, and a QIDP and site supervisor at Imagine That KC.

JON BRICK, Class of COVID-19 explores the challenges facing educators, students, and families during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Issues such as the inequities of school resources, student activism during the pandemic, and struggles with mental health come to light.

This film introduces us to Nicole, a teacher battling severe health challenges who continued to teach from her hospital bed, and Stephen, a high school history teacher helping students navigate the complex issues of racial and social justice.

The film also follows three Black, female-identifying high school students who take on leadership roles in the Black Lives Matter movement. Clarke, a high school junior, began kneeling at her volleyball games, facing punishment from her school’s administration. Aggie shares her determination to fight for social justice, even during a health crisis. The film then shows Kolbi’s journey from high school senior to community activist and the difficulties of organizing during a pandemic.

Class of COVID-19 also includes the voices of university students, policymakers, school nurses, and historians. All share their personal stories, challenges, and triumphs. 

​Ultimately, this is a hopeful film, filled with examples of empathy, humanity, and courage.
Edited & directed by Jon Brick
Produced by Donna M. Davis, Ph.D.
Director of Photography David Brick
Original music by Erin Tomkins

www.classofcovid19movie.com
www.uncommonallies.com
www.jonbrick.com

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