Our 63rd Year!
ART
LAST CALL
See these artworks before their exhibitions close.
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n Acid Wash: Playing With Consequences, Lynn Benson fashions cut-up, acidwashed denim into collages. "Cloud Stew," above, is the best of the bunch. It’s good design, pure and simple: Benson accomplishes much, using very little, with repurposed materials. The artist keeps them identifiable (note the Levi’s patch), which contributes to the visual wit. Cartoonish shapes (the puffy clouds), a whimsical situation (puffy clouds in a stew pot) and the retro fabric add up to an image that's satisfying as both visual joke and art. —THERESA BEMBNISTER Lynn Benson Acid Wash: Playing With Consequences Through April 28 at Leedy-Voulkos Art Center (2012 Baltimore, 816-474-1919), open 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
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he Todd Weiner Gallery presents strong, typical examples of work by some of Kansas City’s better-known artists in What Makes You, You … . Works by Tom Sciacca, Hugh Merrill and Kevin McGraw balance well with others. A new “So . . . What Holds Up Your Sky” canvas by Robert Quackenbush complements a classic steel-and-glass sculpture by Stretch. Lenticular room views by Mary Ann Strandell play off the benchlike “Fragment,” in which John Northington has embedded concrete with shattered tempered glass, as if a car’s windshield and a chunk of sidewalk had fused together in a physics experiment. A large, glitter-decked canvas by Mike Xenos stands out, as does Barry Osbourn’s 7-foot-square “How,” for their bold deployment of color and pattern. But if there’s just one reason to see this exhibition before it closes, it might be Steve Pistone. Building on E R MO his Wired show back in December, this Navy veteran and self-taught artist T seems able to take on any medium A E IN ONL .COM with ease. Here, his series of loopedPITCH wire guns gets a wall of its own, where nine pieces are balanced in groups of three, including meticulous pen-and-ink drawings of guns filled with precise patterns. The effect is playful rather than violent, with the arrangement of threes repeated in each drawing: one rendition of the gun on the transparent paper’s surface; one drawn in reverse on the back; and one underneath, showing through the vellum. It’s a clever peek into an imaginary realm and a hint of things to come from this relatively unknown artist. — TRACY ABELN
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What Makes You, You … Through April 30 at the Todd Weiner Gallery (115 West 18th Street, 816-984-8538), open 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. Wednesday–Friday and 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Saturday 18
the pitch
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n Mélange, Emily Connell dips pages taken from thick, heavy volumes (such as dictionaries, a Bible or an encyclopedia) into liquid clay before firing them in a kiln. The process transforms the paper and binding into flaky, ashen specters of their previous forms, as in "Dante's The Divine Comedy (Telephase)," above. Connell provides a lot to ponder — connotations of book burning and censorship or memorializing print material in the digital age, for example — but her beautiful, delicate works captivate on a purely visual level as well. —THERESA BEMBNISTER Mélange Through April 28 at the Late Show Gallery (1600 Cherry, 816-474-1300), open 11 a.m.–6 p.m. pitch.com
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