Women to Watch 2012: Focus on Fiber & Textiles by Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art

JESSICA KINCAID . TRACY KRUMM . MARCIE MILLER GROSS . SONIÉ JOI RUFFIN . DEBRA SMITH

“You clearly live in a land of

all of

amazing artists… the Kansas City finalists are first-rate.”

— Kathryn Wat, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

People in cities across the nation are beginning to realize what many of Metropolitan Kansas City’s more than two million residents have known for years — that our city has cultivated one of the most vibrant and interesting arts cultures in the United States. This notion has been helped recently by positive articles about Kansas City’s art-scene in several high-profile, national periodicals as well as evidence of real progress on the ground.

working in a (largely) non-competitive environment of mutual support across media and disciplines.

Since 2007, a $5 billion renaissance has transformed the cultural infrastructure of Kansas City with projects such as the recently opened Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the Kansas City Ballet Bolender Center, the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art’s Bloch Building expansion, Johnson County Community College’s Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sprint Center, and the Power & Light Entertainment District. The arts run deep within Kansas City’s bloodstream, however, and at the core of this ecosystem is a community of more than 6,000 artists

The fact that Kansas City was second in size to New York City in the commercial garment industry of the early 20th century remains significant, even as evidence of this is sometimes difficult to find. (The factories have long since closed, but this building stock later made the city’s residential loft-conversion and gallery-district booms possible.)

It is also the city’s rich history as a place of legendary jazz, culinary BBQ lineage, infamous outlaws, a Hallmark Cards creative workforce, and its former role as a national garment industry hub that help to make this such a fertile place for the imagination.

The legacy of this industry also lives on in a series of new and ongoing projects: an oral-history archive spearheaded

GREATER KANSAS CITY AREA COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS

2012 JURORS:

• MARCUS CAIN [Artist; Director/Curator Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art] • RACHEL BLACKBURN COZAD [Director/CEO Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Independent Art Appraiser; Juror, 2010 Women to Watch: Painting]

KANSAS CITY JEWISH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

2012 NOMINATION/SELECTION COMMITTEE:

• KATE HACKMAN [Co-Director Charlotte Street Foundation/Urban Culture Project; Curator; Writer] • ANNE PEARCE [Artist; Director of the Greenlease Gallery, Rockhurst University; Art Instructor, Rockhurst University; Finalist, 2010 Women to Watch: Painting]

• JASON POLLEN [Artist; Professor and former Chair of Fiber Department, Kansas City Art Institute] • RAECHELL SMITH [Director/Curator of the H&R Block Artspace of the Kansas City Art Institute] • ARZIE UMALI [Artist; Curator; Assistant Director, Women’s Center, University of Missouri-Kansas City]

by Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art’s (KCJMCA) own pioneering Founder Sybil Kahn; the Kansas City Museum’s massive 20th century clothing and garment collection; the Kansas City Garment District Museum; the annual 18th Street Fashion Show, which promotes emerging local designers and artists; and the city’s international relationship to the world of fiber and textiles. (Kansas City Art Institute and Kansas State University faculty members organized and launched the Surface Design Association, in 1976, which has grown into an international community of fiber and textiles educators, and Kansas City later served as a regular host of this biennial conference.) These become compelling reasons for the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) to offer its own fitting acknowledgment of this aspect of our community’s creative culture. Founded in 1981 by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her husband Wallace Holladay, and opened in 1987 in Washington, DC, the mission of NMWA is to redefine traditional histories of art, and it is the only museum dedicated to celebrating the diverse artistic achievements of women. Born from this forward-thinking revision of art history is NMWA’s biennial Women To Watch program, an international exhibition series that focuses on different media and emerging and underrepresented women artists from states and countries in which NMWA maintains outreach committees. Curators from these respective regions are invited to jury a selection of five artists to serve as finalists, from whom NMWA curators select one artist to represent that region in an international group exhibition in Washington, DC. Our own Greater Kansas City Area Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts enjoys an

especially long and active relationship with “National” as it is affectionately called, through leadership from such visionaries as Jeannette Nichols, Committee Chair Emeriti, Philomene Bennett, 2006 Juror and 1987 Inaugural Exhibition: Group Show participant in Washington, DC, and a host of active members and participating artists. KCJMCA is pleased to organize the 2012 biennial Women to Watch competition, which offers a focus on fiber and textiles. A Nomination/Selection Committee comprised of five local arts professionals identified 24 amazing candidates from which Jessica Kincaid, Tracy Krumm, Marcie Miller Gross, Sonié Joi Ruffin, and Debra Smith were selected as finalists to participate in Women to Watch 2012: Focus on Fiber & Textiles, a group exhibition in KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery. (Additionally, NMWA Curators selected Tracy Krumm to represent Kansas City in NMWA’s international group exhibition this November 2012, in Washington, DC.) Diverse interpretations of fiber/textiles is just one of the defining characteristics of this Epsten Gallery exhibition, a testament to the broadening of a dialogue beyond the artificial boundary of the art-versus-craft conversation that seemed to dominate this field in the late 20th century. We may find that conceptual concerns and commercial applications are not mutually exclusive, but may comingle within a single work, while artists are just as likely to possess a multilingual capacity to understand many materials and processes. Using the medium of glass seed beads and silk thread, Jessica Kincaid creates literal swatches of fabric that become jewel-like drawings of optical phenomena as experienced from states of wakefulness and imaginative dreaming. Through these faithful recreations, Kincaid takes us into a realm where life’s delicate balance and a sense

of spirituality are woven together and made manifest in the depiction of ice-covered branches, sunlight dappled autumnal trees, or the moment of a flower’s blossom. In realizing this work, Kincaid also acknowledges the futility of our collective attempts to capture the wonders of the world thus making her work all the more potent. Tracy Krumm employs a rigorous process and an industrious sensibility in her crocheted sculptures that lend each piece a craft-like sense of familiarity, while simultaneously calling into question just such an interpretation. In her elemental use of metals, and both found and forged objects, Krum explores the balances of power among material relationships while exploring issues of gender, domesticity, physical and mental labor, and what is constituted as the corporeal and essential self. Informed by systems of organic nature and the built environment, Marcie Miller Gross creates site-specific installations and discreet objects that share a common language with design and architecture, while also acknowledging attempts to locate the human figure within such mediated environments. Whether its through her use of industrial fabrics and mechanical process to create modular building blocks, or in repurposing the sewn seams of deconstructed sweaters to create site-specific and improvisational wall drawings, Gross reminds us that we are both a creator and product of our own world. The soulfulness of a Sonié Joi Ruffin narrative quilt is infectious — it’s symbolism and artistry gets into your blood and bones until you can’t help but feel part of her tactile universe. Through her use of custom-designed and appropriated textile prints, hand-piecing, and handand machine-stitched drawing, Ruffin tells stories about the contemporary African American experience, from her family’s life in the Midwest to universal themes of politics,

religion, and spiritual freedom. Each of her works is laden with a deep personal mythology and reverence for a family tradition of quilt making that reaches back through four generations. Whether it’s a threadbare handkerchief or richly pigmentdyed kimono silk, fabric possesses an ability to tell a story about its intended owner. Debra Smith coaxes out these emotional discoveries in a series of improvisational patchwork pieces that encompass traditions of drawing, painting and fiber/textiles. Utilizing all manner of found textiles, Smith cuts, pieces and stitches together fabrics that offer clues to different cultures, functionalities, and genders, in variations that become tapestries of fragmented identities. — Marcus Cain, Executive Director/Curator

Images above, left to right: Jessica Kincaid: icy branches, 2010, glass beads, silk thread, 10 x 14 inches (courtesy the artist); Tracy Krumm: Cone (Sleeve), crocheted metals, found and forged steel, pigments, patina, 34 x 5.5 x 7 inches (courtesy the artist and Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art); Marcie Miller Gross: Slab (6 and 5), 2011, industrial felt, 17.5 x 84 x 6 inches (courtesy the artist); Sonié Joi Ruffin: The Blue Room, 2009, hand pieced variety of African fancy print fabrics, mixed media, 58 x 63 inches (courtesy the artist); Debra Smith: Release of Time Series #3, 2010, pieced vintage silk, 27 X 22 inches (courtesy of the artist)

MIKI BAIRD DEBBIE BARRETT-JONES JENNIFER BOE NEDRA BONDS SANDY CAHILL KIM EICHLER-MESSMER LINDA FILBY-FISHER JENNIE FREDERICK MINDY GOODMAN ERIKA LYNNE HANSON TANYA HARTMAN HADLEY JOHNSON JESSICA KINCAID TRACY KRUMM JANET KUEMMERLEIN KE-SOOK LEE ANNE LINDBERG MARCIE MILLER GROSS EUGENIA ORTIZ RACHEL ROLON SONIÉ JOI RUFFIN DEBRA SMITH GERRY TRILLING SUSAN WHITE

2012 WOMEN TO WATCH GREATER KANSAS CITY NOMINEES

(Nominees listed corresponding with images, left to right, top to bottom.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209 Ph: 913.266.8413 | Fx: 913.345.2611 | www.kcjmca.org

Established in 1991, the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) provides innovative art exhibitions and related programming that engage seniors and diverse audiences from all segments of our community to enrich lives and celebrate our common humanity through art. KCJMCA realizes this goal through a cooperative partnership with Village Shalom, an assisted living facility that houses KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery and through partnerships with local, regional, and national institutions that participate in KCJMCA’s Museum Without Walls exhibition program.

The Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art wishes to thank the five artists featured in this exhibition, all the nominees, and members of the Nomination/Selection Committee for their participation in this competition. KCJMCA would also like to acknowledge the staff of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, Members of the Greater Kansas City Area Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art for their partnership in this program. KCJMCA wishes to thank H&R Block Foundation and the Michael J. Stern Foundation for the Arts for their specific support of this program as well as Herb & Bonnie Buchbinder, Francis Family Foundation, Friends of KCJMCA, Gould Charitable Foundation, Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City, Helen & Sam Kaplan Memorial Fund, Lighton Foundation, Jackie Slutsky, UrbanSuburban Patrons and Village Shalom for their support of programs in 2012.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Lynn Intrater, President . Sylvia Augustus, Vice President Lynn Schweig, Vice President . Paul Sokoloff, Secretary Peter Beren, Treasurer . Irene Bettinger . Nicole Emanuel Sherry Cromwell-Lacy . Ginny Epsten . James Martin Merry Quackenbush . Barbara Smith . Irma Starr Lisa Theiss . Sherman Titens . Shirley White

www.nmwa.org Front cover image details, clockwise from top left: Tracy Krumm, Sonié Joi Ruffin, Marcie Miller Gross, Jessica Kincaid, Debra Smith (courtesy the artists)

PAST PRESIDENTS

Saul Kass (Of Blessed Memory) . Michael Klein Regina Kort . Larry Meeker . Hugh Merrill

FOUNDERS

DONATE | CONTRIBUTE | JOIN KCJMCA is a non-for-profit 501(c)3 and a member of the national Council of American Jewish Museums.

Sybil & Norman (Of Blessed Memory) Kahn

Contributions to KCJMCA are tax deductible.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR EMERITUS

Donations may be sent to

Eileen Garry

5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209.

STAFF

KCJMCA membership, volunteering and sponsorship opportunities are always available.

Marcus Cain, Executive Director Beti Weber Moskowitz, Development Director Abby Rufkahr, Administrative Assistant