Artspeak Radio with Booth, Herrero, & AKA AS KNOWN AS

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

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes artists Jane Booth, Annie Herrero, and Artists Adrian Halpern, Xavier “Omni San” Fleming, Rich “JKR70” Lester, and Densil James Allan Malabre (DJ), present AKA: As Known As.

JANE BOOTH: Earth Water Sky
November 3, – December 23, 2023
I start each morning in the studio, sitting on a sofa looking out big glass doors to the southeast, overlooking a field of mixed grasses with a small spring fed pond in the center. The pond is a constant, but different every day. Sometimes the wind blows across, rippling the water. When it’s still, the water is reflective. It freezes, sparkles in the sun and thaws. Eagles fly over nearly every day. In March a cacophony of migrating blackbirds
comes in droves, landing on the cattails that surround the pond. Ducks fly into the wind, cup their wings and touch down on the water feet first. Many deer move east to west in the mornings and reverse in the evenings and a hawk family hunts the south meadow every day. The field greens up, frogs start singing, an occasional coyote lopes by. In late summer the prairie grasses rise and begin to turn, sunflowers bloom, winds shift, migrations
begin again.
In this way, all my work emerges from the earth, water and sky.
– Jane Booth
Jane Booth built her studio on the rural Kansas prairie sited to overlook the landscape and sky that inspire her. Booth paints from the inside out, from her meditation of life experiences then out, through the physical activity of pouring, pushing, and brushing paint. Her painting begins with raw canvas on the floor of her studio or outside on the concrete, where paint and water can be poured, pooled, and pushed with a broom. The atmosphere of the painting begins with color, vast and saturated or thinned and fog like. A calligraphy of gesture akin to dance informs the composition. Only later, once the canvas is up on the wall, do gestures and forms emerge evolving in conversation forming a visual language that is Booth’s alone. Large scale paintings are the norm for Booth often ranging upward of 15′.
Jane Booth’s paintings are in public collections throughout the country including: Kansas University Hospital, Kansas City, MO; Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Cisco Systems, H& R Block World Headquarters and Hilton Hotels, as well as the Daum Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO.

ANNIE HERRERO-From the Ground, Up
I’ve always considered myself a homebody, but in truth, much of my adult life has been nomadic. Like many people, the variety of places I’ve lived has been near panoramic, from a garage studio in California, to a pine paneled room in Norway, to every iteration of apartment in Chicago and New York. Perhaps the immediate impulse to personalize my living spaces provided enough continuity to create a self perception more domestic than my history attested. In any case, this impulse offered a counterpoint to my peripatetic existence. Driven by the search for something, be it skill, opportunity, or fullness, the actual constant was movement. I was born and raised in California but I spent at least part of each summer in the Midwest. My Mom’s family is from Kansas City and every time I left I had a deep longing for its intimate hedgerows and big skies. During the pandemic, when I landed in the old familial lake cabin, that I visited while growing up, the decision to permanently relocate was an obvious one. My roots here are deep and I have found the landscape of my heart. That nomadic tendency has abated, the stillness now allowing for the growth I once found only in movement. The natural world— its cycles, its patterns, its fields and gnarled trees—is the wellspring for my current body of work. Two figures continually appear in these images, that of myself and that of my dear friend, Lissa. We have known each other a long time, having met when we lived in the Bay Area. Lissa and I reconnected in entirely serendipitous circumstances, having each independently moved to Missouri in 2020. As our friendship deepened, so did my relationship to the land and my perception of this place I call home. This body of work takes our likenesses to explore different aspects of life in Missouri, from post-Roe trigger bans to the softness of a more earth-based lifestyle.
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art 2004 Baltimore Ave. KCMO www.sherryleedy.com

ProdoLAB, a bi-monthly experimental platform produced by musician/composer Eddie Moore and Charlotte Street, returns on Thursday, November 30, 7:30-9:00 PM at
Charlotte Street’s Stern Theater. Artists Adrian Halpern, Xavier “Omni San” Fleming, Rich “JKR70” Lester, and Densil James Allan Malabre (DJ), present AKA: As Known As, an audio-visual experience invites you to step outside of the physical world and into the spiritual.
PRODOLAB | AKA: AS KNOWN AS
Thursday, November 30
Charlotte Street Stern Theater, 3333 Wyoming Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
7:30-9:00 PM | Performance followed by Q&A
November’s ProdoLAB performance readies viewers for a spontaneous and unpredictable rhythm of visuals and sounds. About the show, artists write, “AKA: As Known As was developed in mind with committing ourselves towards a free-flowing metaphysical collaboration. AKA: As Known As is an ode to the drum, the original human made heartbeat. AKA: As Known As guides colorful visuals that morphs analog and digital textured melodies. AKA: As Known As produces rhythms in unison, interpreting that we are all related.”
ProdoLAB is a recurring event platform featuring Kansas City time-based artists – including musicians, theatre and spoken word artists, animators, film artists, designers, engineers, and producers – paired together to create a new hour-long performance presented in Charlotte Street’s state-of-the-art black box theater. The program aims to expose Kansas City’s art community to new work and new artists, as well as foster a sense of community and belonging by cross-pollinating a variety of artists and audiences, using the new Charlotte Street campus as an anchor site for a wide range of work from disparate disciplines.
www.charlo2estreet.org
There is a broad community of talented media-based artists in the Kansas City region with limited opportunities to properly present new works to the public as intended. Adequate technology required for time-based projects is often unavailable, overlooked, or too costly to fit into artists’ project budgets. Additionally, artists experimenting with media need access to advice on advanced and DIY approaches and techniques. ProdoLAB provides the resources, knowledge, and collaborators needed for local artists to successfully debut high-quality, experimental new work to a growing contemporary art audience in the Kansas City region.
This event is FREE and open to the public. To schedule an interview or for other press inquiries, contact Hope-Lian Vinson, Charlotte Street Marketing + Communications Manager, at [email protected].
ADRIAN HALPERN
Adrian Halpern has been interested in art since he took his first art class at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art at the age of 6 where he was selected to display his artwork. His career is reaching close to 100 art shows. Halpern uses a variety of disciplines ranging from highly detailed ink drawings, video, digital art, laser cutting, screen printing, mixed media, and collage works to name a few. He hopes to continue collaborating with sound and visuals to create and explore different multimedia environments.
XAVIER “OMNI SAN” FLEMING
Xavier ‘Omni San’ Fleming is a music producer and performance artist. His work is inspired by his upbringing steeped in the performing arts and his experience as a life-long student of music. Versed in styles including hip- hop, jazz, and that of the West-African diasporas, Omni San is a genre-stretching musician whose mission is to
serve your mind and senses. He attended high school at the Paseo Academy of the Fine and Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO, where he earned awards for solo performances in district and state competitions. Omni San earned his Bachelors in Instrumental Performance at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a Masters in
Music from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. His experience includes performing with numerous locally and nationally known artists from the East coast and Midwestern regions. Omni San is an active stage musician performing in jazz, Reggae, hip-hop, and funk music circuits. He has played in bands that have opened up for artists including Trombone Shorty and Sly and Robbie. He is a music producer, publisher, and owner of Sound Shift Music Labs.
RICH “JKR70” LESTER Rich ‘JKR70’ Lester is a Kansas City, MO based artist and a self-taught music producer of over 25 years. He has produced 7 solo projects as JKR70 and 6 projects under the moniker Human CropCircles. He has a deep love of music, drawing, video, poetry, and collaboration. Rich has worked with local, national, and international artists such Sage Francis, MilkDrop, Romy of Macromantics, Cas One, Sike Style Industries, Son of Saturn, Clay Hughes, Ces Cru, MK12, and Flavor Pak Brand. He has appeared on radio shows including The Black Steel Brothers (KKFI),
Artspeak Radio (KKFI) and the podcast Neandertalk. Recently, Rich has shown his artwork at the George R. Schlegel Gallery in Roeland Park City Hall. He collaborated on two solo art shows with local artist Adrian Halpern showcasing a sound installation at The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center Underground 2 Gallery, and at Golden Stag
Gallery where he presented music he created for an animation. With numerous music tracks, remixes and video works, Rich ‘JKR70’ Lester has proven to be a versatile force showcasing at ProdoLAB.
www.charlo2estreet.org
DENSIL JAMES ALLAN MALABRE (DJ)
Densil James Allan Malabre (DJ) is a percussionist from Kansas City, KS. He was a student and now a teacher at the Traditional Music Society in Kansas City, MO. He has studied under some of the greatest percussionists like Bird Fleming and Bill Summers. Densil has played in numerous live events and you may find him performing with
his band mates in Stranded In The City.
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street centers Kansas City’s most forward-thinking visual artists, writers, and performers—acting as the primary incubator, provocateur, and connector for the region’s contemporary arts community, and its leading advocate on the national stage. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $2 million in awards
and grants to artists and their innovative projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
As of 2023, Charlotte Street is no longer referred to as “Charlotte Street Foundation.”
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