ARTSPEAK RADIO with David Cunningham, James Heiman, Laura Nugent and Rachelle Gardner-Roe

Wednesday May 22, 2019 noon – 1pm CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org

Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes musician/educator David Cunningham and children’s choir from Center Elementary, author James Heiman, artists Rachelle Gardner-Roe & Laura Nugent.

DAVID CUNNINGHAM is a music educator and performing/recording artist, based out of Kansas City, MO. He has taught K-5 music in Kansas City for 13 years, and performs frequently with Trio Aztlan, Maria the Mexican, and Mundo Nouvo Salsa Orquesta.

Wednesday David will have his children’s choir with him, an honor’s ensemble composed of Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd Grade students. Center Elementary has one of the city’s most active elementary music programs in the country. Their student ensembles have most notably performed on KCTV5, KKFI Community Radio, and for the United States Department of Homeland Security. They also perform regularly at Union Station, Crown Center, The Country Club Plaza, and several senior living communities across the city.

LAURA NUGENT & RACHELLE GARDNER-ROE are exhibiting new works at the Bunker Center for the Arts in June of 2019. An artists- hosted reception will be held on a special night, Saturday, June 8 from 5 PM – 10 PM. The public is invited to attend. Laura Nugent is premiering works created since relocating her studio to the Bunker Center in 2018. “Not Everything Will Be Replaced” includes eight non- representational paintings in the Center’s galleries. Nugent’s works embrace traditions of minimalism and soft-edge geometric abstraction and are part of an ongoing consideration of color as subject matter. Her current palette choices glow brighter and, combined with an expanded scale, signify an optimism and drive to continue her practice in spite of significant life changes. Additionally, an installation of small works on a variety of surfaces will be on display in Nugent’s Bunker studio during the course of the exhibition.
A full time artist for nearly two decades, Nugent’s work is in many public and private collections including Black and Veatch, Hallmark, Inc., St. Lukes Hospital and sculptor Tom Corbin. In Kansas City, Nugent is exclusively represented by Weinberger Fine Art. Nugent serves as the board president of the Kansas City Artists Coalition and a mentor for Charlotte Street Foundation.
Rachelle Gardner-Roe continues her non-traditional explorations of lace in her exhibition, “A Certain Kind of Armor.” Using 3D printing pens to preserve the core acts of drawing and writing, Gardner-Roe references shield and body forms that, while alluding to systems of protection, deny a literal translation. The open lacelike network of this body of sculpture begs the question, “What is being protected?” Can we protect the childlike exuberance with which we first picked up a crayon? What do we each use to shield ourselves from the vagaries of the world? What psychological armor do you carry with you or perhaps even physically don when you engage the outside world? A former Charlotte Street resident and three-time ArtsKC Inspiration Grant recipient, Gardner-Roe is represented in Kansas City by Weinberger Fine Art.
Her work is in the public collections of the City of Overland Park, KS, and St. Teresa’s Academy and has exhibited regionally and nationally, including The Mulvane Art Museum, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center and The Chautauqua Institution.
Located in the East Crossroads of Kansas City, Missouri at 1014 East 19th Street, the Bunker Center for the Arts houses both gallery and studio space in a unique 10,000 sq.ft. building. Its regular gallery hours are Thursday-Saturday, noon – 6 PM and by appointment.
For more information on these exhibitions, additional images and more, please contact the artists: Rachelle Gardner-Roe: 660-424-0999 [email protected] Laura Nugent: 913-271-5644 [email protected]

JAMES J. HEIMAN, author-The Story Center at Mid-Continent Public Library is proud to announce the upcoming release of Front Lines to Headlines: The World War I Overseas Dispatches of Otto P. Higgins, written by local historian and author James J. Heiman and published by the Library’s publishing division, Woodneath Press. The narrative review, which covers the complete collection of overseas World War I dispatches from embedded divisional correspondent Otto P. Higgins, released on April 20, 2019―the 100th anniversary of Higgins’ return to Kansas City.
“We’re very proud to be able to bring such a unique and important work to readers in Kansas City and beyond,” said Dr. Mark Livengood, Director of The Story Center at Mid-Continent Public Library. “Front Lines to Headlines will not only be of interest to those who enjoy Kansas City history, but anyone who enjoys a good story!”
In addition to the dispatches, the work includes 42 field photographs, which were also taken by Higgins and published in The Kansas City Star between May 1918 and July 1919. Descriptions of the dispatches are presented in narrative form in the book and organized sequentially in monthly installments by date of composition, followed by a representative sampling of photographs and intact articles.
“The Great War came home to me in a personal way when I read some of the stories Higgins wrote, stories stored since the war in an old steamer trunk,” said Heiman, who is also the author of Voices in Bronze and Stone: Kansas City’s World War I Monuments and Memorials.
Higgins wrote 218 dispatches, beginning in the cemetery where the Lusitania victims are buried in Ireland; continuing to the headquarters of the American Navy in London; and ending with the fight in France and the occupation in Germany. Behind the lines, Higgins reported from the salvage, supply, transport, and repair operations in support of American doughboys on their way to the front lines. Along with other journalists headquartered in Paris, Higgins ventured forth to provide his readers at home with a sure sense of the support their boys were receiving “Over There.”
A launch event for Front Lines to Headlines was held April 20, 2019 at MCPL’s Woodneath Library Center where Heiman discussed his work and shared stories of Kansas Citians in the Great War as seen through the eyes of Kansas City Star reporter Otto P. Higgins. Heiman will give a similar presentation at the National World War I Museum and Memorial on Wednesday, May 22, at 6:30 p.m.
Since it was founded in 2014, Woodneath Press has published a total of six books, ranging from memoirs to children’s books, all written by authors in the greater Kansas City area. In September 2017, the imprint released The First Beverly Hillbilly, a posthumous memoir by Ruth Henning, wife of esteemed Hollywood screenwriter and Independence, Mo., native Paul Henning who created such hits as The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres.
Front Lines to Headlines is available for purchase anywhere books are sold. Learn more at mymcpl.org/WoodneathPress.

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