Listen Live on KKFI
Every Saturday at 4:00pmAbout the Show
Urban Connections
Urban Connections conducts guest interviews covering issues effecting our local, national, international and global communities from a Black perspective. Subjects include current events, trends, history, education, economics, science, political science, health, race, law and more.
PeaceWorks KC Vice Chair Mary Hladky, visual artist Melanie Bolden, and artist and author Rochelle Wisoff-Fields join us to discuss PeaceWorks Art Fair 2023, its 32nd celebration of the intersection of peace and art.
Quoting PeaceWorks’ Ann Suellentrop, “Through the free expression of the inner life and spirit of the artist, we have access to others’ stories, emotions, hopes, and dreams, even their unconscious thoughts.” Ann refers to Dostoevsky’s Prince Myshkin, in The Idiot, ‘The world will be saved by beauty’. “Hate, fear, and violence distort our thoughts and actions. Art reveals our deepest selves”, says Suellentrop. And further, “Solidarity, mutual aid, and love in action are necessary to prevent violence from evenring our thoughts”.
Melanie Bolden is the owner of BOLD, the multi-media arts company and a visual artist originally from Lawrence, Kansas. She has flourished through art since her childhood years. Bolden’s body of work includes collaborative murals, handmade beaded jewelry, canvas paintings, mosaic tile work, graphic t-shirts, and custom benchwork paintings. One of her paintings was commissioned by Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison. Melanie is inspired by nature, spiritual energy, and a bold color pallet. Her medium of choice is acrylic paint on stretched canvas with accents of rhinestones hidden within her work.
Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, an award-winning artist and author who studied painting and lithography at the Kansas City Art Institute. Wiseoff-Fields” enjoys working in pencil or pen and ink. Her preferred media is watercolor, stating “There’s a freedom to it that I never found with any other media.” Adding, “…painting is an intuitive adventure where I allow my brush to lead.” Books by Rochelle include an historical trilogy Please Say Kaddish for Me, From Silt and Ashes, and As One Must, One Can. The books are loosely based on her grandparents, Russian Jewish immigrants who settled in the Midwest at the turn of the twentieth century. Rochelle lives in Belton, Mo, and publishes a weekly blog, “Friday Fictioneers”.
Host/producer: Donna Morrow Wolfe
Co-host: Karen E. Griffin
Engineer: Jay Hawkins
