Thomas A. Gieseke
A Gallery Feature
Tom Gieseke has been a freelance illustrator for over 32 years. His work has appeared in advertising, editorial, institutional and other areas, with clients too numerous to list here. "Illustration was all I wanted to do. I drew my inspiration from magazines and album covers, not art galleries. I had no aspirations of joining the gallery art world. At the time, it just seemed so pretentious and silly."
Steve Rimmer
A Gallery Feature
Growing up in the Midwest during the 1950s and 1960s, the prospect of art as a career was considered to be remote at best. I graduated from The University of Missouri at Kansas City and drifted into business along with most of my peers and was relatively good at it although never passionate about it. I continued to draw and doodle in my spare time often doing caricatures during meetings to relieve the oppressive boredom. Inadvertently, I began to formulate my own course of study in art history. I traveled a great deal and constantly carried art histories, monographs and biographies in my bag, using any down time to study what had become my passion. I used my business travel to access museums, galleries, and exhibitions in various cities often dragging along confused colleagues who worried for my sanity. —Steve Rimmer
Robert Quackenbush
A Gallery Feature
When I was twenty-five, I knew that I was supposed to be a painter. Ultimately, it took me another twenty five years to get to a point where I had the freedom to pursue this dream on a full-time basis. During the intervening years I spent my available free time in art school. Wherever I lived I found a place to go to school. It started in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and it continues to this day. Whenever I had a place to use as a studio, I painted. When I didn’t have space, I painted in my head. In 1996, I was able to free myself to paint on a full-time basis. I got into two group shows in 1997, and since then I have had sixteen one-man shows and participated in numerous group exhibitions.—Robert Quackenbush
Gallery Feature Directory
Who's Who In Kansas City Art
We passionately believe in supporting our creative community—its art, artists, and galleries. This directory contains all the artists who have been featured in PresentMagazine.com's Gallery.
Joshua Hoffine
A Special Gallery Feature
Joshua Hoffine, a world renowned horror photographer whose work frequently deals with childhood fears, has a show opening this Friday, December 11, 2009, at Mercy Seat Gallery, 210 East 16th Street, Kansas City, Missouri. Take a preview peek at his work, read about his take on horror photography and read about what's behind the terrifying Babysitter image.
Jackie Denning
A Gallery feature.
Jackie Denning returned to Kansas City in June 2009 from an eight-year journey to New York and Florida. She opened Gallery 111 at 1414 Wyoming, Kansas City, MIssouri 64102 near the Dolphin Gallery and Livestock Exchange building.
Ron Smith
A Gallery Feature
I like to experiment with different colors and mediums, combining them in order to create contrast. Mastering contrast, in my opinion, is the key to making your paintings explode off the canvas. —Ron Smith
Tammy Smith: Homemade Circus
A special Gallery feature and interview.
When Tammy Smith was laid off recently as a corporate art director, she decided her upcoming show of circus-themed art at Krzyz would provide a great opportunity to do some good.
As a result, she has turned her First Friday, October 2, 2009 show, into Canned Good--A Debt Defying Display of Post-Employment Artistic Expression (She retooled and renamed the show after she lost her job.) In keeping with both the show title and the circus theme of Tammy's work, lemonade, popcorn and peanuts will be served at the show and people will be encouraged to leave a cash or canned donation to Harvesters. Canned good donations plus ten percent of all sales will benefit Harvesters Food Network in hopes that it will help others who have also lost their jobs and are in need of assistance.
Tara Dawley
A Gallery Feature
I've heard it said that we can find harmony in spite of the contrasting external issues that surround us. I, however, believe that we find harmony because of the relativity that is given to us. Cool water, warm earth and a human touch combined with the uncertainty and volatility of the flame present us with an object that is pleasing to the eye and enjoyable to use... —Tara Dawley
Kale Van Leeuwen, The Contemporaries
A Gallery Encore
Subtlety has never been my strong point. I create work that is vivid, bold and eye-catching. One consistent thread in all of my work is the use of light and reflections. Whether the subject matter is a mannequin, chairs, marbles or a ceramic horse, the lighting is always a key part of the painting. I also have a great desire for color; the brighter the better. I like the vibrancy of the saturated color next to the deep black shades. —Kale Van Leeuwen
Eric Zener
A Special Gallery Feature
Self-taught as an artist, Eric Zener earned his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His background lends analytical but unpretentious underpinnings to the narrative of the artist's work. His work is currently shown at Blue Gallery, 118 Southwest Boulevard, Kansas City, Missouri.
Josephine DeFrancis
A Gallery Feature
As artists are the mythmakers of their time, my images are creating a new mythology of “becoming” using symbols and archetypes filtered through contemporary popular culture. The spaces I create are irrational, like Alice’s adventure, I am meeting new characters along the way, arising from my subconscious. In a constant state of flux, I am uncovering an abundant transformation of forms: molecular, becoming bodily, becoming nature, becoming spiritual, becoming sexual, becoming woman. All given form in a poisonous garden of internal desires and fears. —Josephine DeFrancis
Jane Pronko
A Gallery Feature
Jane Pronko was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. She has lived in the Kansas City area since graduating from the University of Kansas. Her studio is located in the River Market district of Kansas City, Missouri. Growing up in a small railroad town very near the city of St. Louis and the industrial area of East St. Louis has influenced the kind of images seen in her work. Urban settings and night scenes are the inspirations for her paintings.
Stefan A. Jones
A Gallery Feature
Stefan A. Jones was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. He graduated from Sumner Academy of Arts and Sciences. Currently, he attends the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff where he is an Art Education major. Jones considers himself an “expressive creator.”
Eric Swangstu: A Boxer in Poet's Clothing
A Special Gallery Feature
Our eyes tear with the 35-mile-an-hour air buffeting across our faces. Hulking steel rumbles past. I stand inches from the track where Eric Swangstu has led me: nose-to-freight-train in Kansas City's West Bottoms warehouse district. It is 2 o'clock in the morning, the summer of 1996.
Joe Bussell
A Gallery Feature
These recent works engage in a conversation about pictorial, microbial, and astronomical space while inviting the viewer in a discussion regarding the poetic connections these types of space share.
Deanna Dikeman
A Gallery Feature
Deanna Dikeman photographs her family in Iowa and Nebraska. She has done a series of photographs of interior details of homes. Her Wardrobe project includes photographs of old clothes in a thrift store and the Stephens College Historical Costume Collection. Most recently, she has been photographing ballroom dancers and their clothing in movement.
Patrick Alexander
A Gallery Feature
Patrick Alexander is a self-taught visual artist from Kansas City who also consistently works as a curator and DJ. Alexander is a multi-disciplinary artist that primarily works in the mediums of collage, sound, and installation. He consistently exhibits nationally and collaborates with artists locally on community projects. Alexander operated the Locus Solus Gallery in the late 90’s and currently works as an art gallery and theatre director for the YWCA of Greater Kansas City.
Hannah Hurrle
A Gallery Feature
Hannah Hurrle is an artist and illustrator, currently living in Kansas City, MO. Both abstract and geometric, like a vampire bunny, her work is cute with razor sharp teeth. She attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, majoring in Illustration until 2006. Her work has been up at Ghettogloss Gallery in Los Angeles,The Mercy Seat Tattoo Parlor in Kansas City, and Skinless Productions Gallery in Kansas City. She is currently working on her second exhibition, showing at The Base Gallery in 2010.
Minerva Ortiz
A Gallery Feature
Minerva Ortiz was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and has lived in Texas and California. She considers herself a hybrid of Mexican and American cultures. She believes that the importance of creating diverse imagery, in her current work, stems from an appreciation of her mixed cultural background. Her dual heritage has made her aware that although differences create conflict, they can also work together to create possibility. She is currently finishing her MFA in painting at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
Brent Seevers
A Gallery Feature
Originally from St. Joseph, Brent Seevers is a self-taught emerging artist in Kansas City. He practices his craft in the fine art of drawing, whether it's charcoal, graphite, Conte crayon, or the vibrant colours offered by pastels. Brent creates a sense of peacefulness and harmony in his work. His goal is finding beauty in the things in life. His subjects of focus are traditionally figurative, still-life, and landscapes.
Kaelin Cordis
A Gallery Feature
Using only quality materials, I attempt each time to fashion an item of adornment which combines my interest of the medium of metals with my love for abiding luxury. Thus, each item I create is a unique article of beauty, designed to enhance the unique beauty of the wearer. Even seemingly identical pieces may well have a different connection method, or incorporate a subtle change in nuance in the process of creation. ––Kaelin Cordis
Plus, an interview with Cordis about her process and techniques.
Joanne Schiller, Visual Essays and Pointed Observations
A Gallery Feature
I'm grappling with being human, aware and sane. The fact that individuals remain so in spite of the many pressures (actual and imagined) of daily life intrigues and astounds me. There is so much beauty and strength in that fact. That is why I must paint and draw people. It forces me to examine them, see them. In ways we rarely notice as we go about our own everyday concerns. Hence, I'm involved in portraiture. —Joanne Schiller
Caleb Taylor, Covered
A Gallery Feature
My work develops through the prolific production of paintings, prints, ceramics, and installations. Fragments from these mediums influence my paintings – the bulbous forms of pottery, the flat colors of printing ink, and the monumental scale of installation. In these searches, methods such as cutting stencils and forming clay tied my ideas to the body and its potential to be dissected and manipulated. I note similarities between the malleable qualities of clay and flesh and how paint “skins” over with time. These attributes alter considerations of my own body as I build a union between its physical capabilities and my anatomically-based abstractions. — Caleb Taylor
Shirley Luke Schnell, Subaqueous Notations
A Special Gallery Feature
Underlying the lateral elliptical image dominating an ongoing body of work entitled “Subaqueous Notations” is the idea of continuum; a stream, a canal, a river, a flume….The ‘canvas’ is a record of that which was seen and that which is ordered, a compendium of information accomplished through both incremental and sudden developments in the methodologies of painting with acrylic pigment on polystyrene. As I encounter the idea meditation begins…— Shirley Luke Schnell
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