ARTIST ROSTER 2021
Be a Patron of the Arts
First of all, we want to thank you for your generous patronage in 2020! As we look forward, we are happy to welcome 2021 by introducing this year’s Artist Roster. In 2021, Studios Inc will host eight resident artists, as well as two extension artists. These artists are the foundation of our mission Studios Inc continually evolves and changes with each new resident, exhibition, and visitor. Amidst the developing East Crossroads, it is a sentinel of the arts culture that revitalized our city. It is raw and refined. It affords the artists private studio space while hosting exhibitions that are free and open to the public. Studios Inc is unmatched in the size of individual studio spaces, residency length, and exhibition space it offers the artists accepted into the program. It is truly unique. We also believe supporting art is just as important as creating it. That’s why we deeply value our patrons and align with them to transform the lives of our artists. Our patrons are the foundation of a stronger, mutually supportive creative community. Each year, Studios Inc works to match each artist with an Artist Patron. This patron helps underwrite a year’s worth of operating costs for the artist’s working studio space while in residence. It is my hope that you will continue your patronage and support of Studios Inc. We look forward to seeing you at Studios Inc in 2021! Happy New Year!
COURTNEY WASSON Executive Director, Studios Inc
2021 STUDIOS INC RESIDENCY ARTIST ROSTER LORI RAYE ERICKSON (2019) EMILY SALL (2019) JUDITH G. LEVY (2020) KEVIN TOWNSEND (2020) YOONMI NAM (2020) MARIE MCINERNEY (2020) LILLY MCELROY (2021) MANUEL ALEJANDRO RODRÃGUEZ-DELGADO (2021) KATHY LIAO (Extension Program) BENJAMIN ROSENTHAL (Extension Program)
2021 ARTIST ROSTER Lori Raye Erickson was born and raised in
Des Moines, Iowa. She spent her formative years studying at the Des Moines Art Center and then earned her BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute. She’s been awarded the Charlotte Street Grant, the Avenue of the Arts and Liquitex Award of Excellence, among others. Erickson’s work can be found in various collections around the world. Erickson addresses the political, cultural and economic landscapes through humor. Mediums such as painting, drawing, installation, and sculpture are a part of her repertoire and she allows her message to manifest freely within the artwork. Erickson states that “to be a part of something so lasting and encouraging of mid-career artists in Kansas City is just incredible. I look forward to being productive in the space, producing larger works as well as multiple pieces simultaneously. I intend to utilize this opportunity to tighten my career focus and build a portfolio that creates new opportunities previously unavailable to me.”
Emily Sall received her BFA in painting from
KCAI in 2005. She has shown both locally and nationally. In 2007 Emily was awarded the Charlotte Street Foundations Visual Artist Fellowship, and was commissioned to create work for Missouri Bank Artboards in 2009. Emily lives and works in Kansas City and recently completed a large scale mural for the Plaza Academy. Sall’s mediums of choice are paintings and drawings with various materials; centered on the relationship between structure and shape. Sall states that “My work has always been architecturally influenced. I am interested in creating shifting, mounting, teetering landscapes of tension, balance, imbalance and harmonious visual landscapes” Sall describes herself as a “builder of these ideas.”
Judith G. Levy is an interdisciplinary artist whose
work explores the complexity, commonality and contradiction in personal stories, historical narratives, queer identity, and socio-cultural issues. Levy received a BA in Drawing and Painting from Hunter College and a Masters in Social Work from Adelphi University. She has been awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Rocket Grant, a Lilly Foundation Creative Renewal Grant, a Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowship, a Vermont Studio Residency Fellowship, a KC Arts Inspiration Grant, and the 2012 Kansas City Artopia award. She has attended artist residencies including Art Omi International Artist Residency, The Vermont Studio Center, The Millay Colony for the Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Escape to Create. She will be attending the Elsewhere Museum and Artist Residency in Greensboro in 2021. Levy has been a judge for the Andy Warhol Rocket Grant awards, and serves as a mentor for the Charlotte Street artist residency program.
Kevin Townsend is an interdisciplinary artist
and professor currently living and working in the suburbs of KC. He earned his BFA from the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University and his MFA in Art Practice from School of Visual Arts. Emerging from an expanded drawing practice, Townsend’s time-based work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and centers around the intersection of time, space, mark-making, obsession, and duration. His current work brings together elements of sound, video, installation, and performance to produce drawings on the scale of architecture. Townsend, a mid-career artist and an educator with 18 years of experience, doesn’t allow a single exhibition or institution to define his artistic practices. He seeks to refine his craft, engage new communities, and cultivate a new modularstructure based body of work in order to push his practice to the next level.
2021 ARTIST ROSTER
2021 ARTIST ROSTER Yoonmi Nam is a mid-career artist that is
interested in the fleeting nature of the present moment and the common and extraordinary way we structure our surroundings within it. Nam shares “I observe the things around me. I am deeply aware of the presence of these objects and things that we use, handle, display, and discard. I am drawn to them especially when they subtly suggest a contradicting sense of time that seems both temporary and lasting. There is truth and honesty in time, as all of us share the fate of impermanence. But the way we surround ourselves with collections of things, it is as if we feel a sense of permanence through these comforts and arrangements. In my work, I make images and forms that highlight everyday events, spaces, and objects, that while insignificant and mundane, allow us to notice both the stillness and the passage of time.”
Marie Bannerot McInerney is a mid-career
artist and Asst Prof. of Fiber at the KCAI. McInerney shares “I am interested in positioning the viewer on an edge of sorts—outside the given associations of a system and looking in. Unlike boundaries or borders, which are meant to divide and separate, edges are places where two surfaces or forces meet. Edges are precarious places, defined by a material reality. They exist at earth’s crust, on the surface of our skin, at the throat of a volcano, or at an ecotone where habitats meet, and they provide a vantage point to look at both what is above and below, what
is behind and possibly ahead. I intend to challenge traditional methods of viewership by collaborating with the sun or clouds, engaging edges and apertures, and re-framing material conversations as a means to distill universal, timeless systems into tangible, present experiences. These experiences are meant to recognize the tension between our own physical insignificance and the absolute necessity of human agency, understanding, and empathy.”
Lilly McElroy is a mid-career artist and recent
recipient of the Charlotte Street Studio Residency Program (2017-2019). The artistic projects she pursues are a reflection of her complex relationship with the American West and explores what it means to be an American in a time of diminished expectations. Her practice utilizes lens-based media and is highly concerned with the correlation between representation and reality as well as the medium’s ability to accurately convey information. Through these projects, she attempts to develop authentic ties to her own experiences, giving the cliché new and personal meaning. The photographs, installations, performances, and videos that McElroy produces acknowledge the possibility of failure, that she will go unnoticed, and be unable to affect any change. However, it is this possibility that keeps things interesting for McElroy as she strives to face the sublime and call its power into question.
Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez-Delgado is concerned with the overlap between the technological landscape and built imaginary environments: assuming the role of an artistinventor who produces objects of an improvised nature. He is interested in the way these objects can be deployed as frameworks for speculative cultural identities and belief systems, and how they behave (or could behave) as units of cultural production. Rodríguez-Delgado states, “The Studios Inc Artist Residency Program represents for me a unique opportunity to continue my practice and develop connections with artists, cultural producers and art institutions in Kansas City. Exposure is the one aspect of my practice that I have struggled with since moving to the mainland US from Puerto Rico. I intend to spend long days in my studio cultivating the central ideas of my work, embed myself within the local arts scene, and gain access to cultural & exhibition venues in Kansas City.”
2021 ARTIST ROSTER
2021 ARTIST ROSTER Benjamin Rosenthal holds an MFA in Art Studio
from the University of California, Davis and a BFA in Art (Electronic Time-Based Media) from Carnegie Mellon University. His work has been exhibited internationally in such venues/festivals as the Stuttgarter Filmwinter, High Concept Labs at Mana Contemporary, ESPACIO ENTER: Festival International Creatividad, Innovacíon y Cultural Digital, FILE Electronic Language International Festival, Vanity Projects, Locomoción Festival de Animacion, the LINOLEUM Festival of Contemporary Animation and Media Art, and SIGGRAPH Asia, among others. He has been in residence at the Fjúk Arts Centre, Signal Culture and the Ox-Bow School of Art, the Charlotte Street Foundation, and is currently in residence at The Studios Inc. His work across media explores what he theorizes as queer “technosexuality” and challenges the supremacy of physical contact in a technocultural age. Rosenthal is Associate Professor of Expanded Media in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas, where he has been since 2012, and teaches video art, performance art, experimental animation, a variety of special topics seminars and interdisciplinary practices.
Drawing inspirations from her diverse cultural background and personal history, Kathy Liao mixed media work is about the intimate yet universal concept of relationships. Liao received her MFA in Painting from Boston University and BFA in Painting and Drawing from University of Washington, Seattle. Liao is a recipient of various awards including the 2020 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award, Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Grant, and artist grants and fellowships from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and Jentel Artist Residency. Her work was shown in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Kansas City, and many other cities nationally and internationally. In the past, Liao was Director of the Painting and Printmaking Studio Art Program at Missouri Western State University, and taught at Boston University, University of Washington, Seattle University, and Gage Academy of Art. She is currently part of the Artist Services team at Mid-America Arts Alliance in Kansas City.
STUDIOS INC PATRON LEVELS Studios Inc believes supporting art is just as important as creating it. Our patrons are the foundation of a strong, mutually supportive creative community.
ARTIST PATRON $5,000 The Artist Patron helps underwrite a year’s operating costs for an artist’s working studio space while in residence. Artist Patrons may choose to receive a gift of artwork from their sponsored artist. Beyond direct financial support, Studios Inc offers multiple Patron events for Patrons and Artists to engage and build relationships. It is a unique opportunity to enrich and directly engage in the arts community of Kansas City. If you would like to be an ARTIST PATRON in 2021, email courtney@thestudiosinc.org with the top 3 artists you’d like to support.
Other Patron Levels include: CO-PATRON $2,500 BENEFACTOR $1,000 CONTRIBUTOR $500 FRIEND OF STUDIOS up to $500 EXHIBITION PATRON $10,000 With gratitude, we ask for your continued support in 2021. More information about the benefits associated with different levels of patronage can be found on Studios Inc’s website or call the office at (816)-994-7134.
PATRON LEVELS
Detail of Meditation Field, 2021, by Susan White
Susan White Studios Inc Alum (2018-2020) “Studios, Inc has had an enormous impact on my career at this point. Most obviously is the encouragement toward expansive thinking and working afforded by the extraordinary space of each of the studios. Upon first moving into my generous studio space the context for my work expanded, exploded really. My first installations in the main gallery were more expansive than anything that I had previously envisioned. Having the space to work with, to experiment, was invaluable for nurturing a broader and more challenging way of thinking. I recently developed and exhibited a piece internationally and I know that the robustness with which I pursued the work and the opportunity was influenced by my presence as a Resident Artist at Studios, Inc. Additionally there is the generous spirit of support that I feel from my sponsor, board members, the staff and interns, and the Executive Director. It’s such a great thing to feel, to know, that there are a group of people behind you, who believe in your work and your career.
Studios, Inc encourages collectors and interested parties/ groups to come for studio visits, encourages commissions and sales, and increases the exposure to a broader community of every Resident Artist. It is a vibrant and enriching experience to be a part of a community of artists such as those at Studios, Inc.”
1708 Campbell St. Kansas City, MO 64108 816-994-7134 studiosinc.org Studios Inc is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization