CSF’s Urban Culture Project Announces THIRD FRIDAY ART DOWNTOWN 4/15

Charlotte Street's Urban Culture Project hosts an art-packed Art Downtown event the evening of Friday, April 15, 6-9pm. All free and open to the public, the evening features open studios at three locations plus special one-night-only dining-related activities in conjunction with exhibitions at UCP's Paragraph and Project Space.

OPEN STUDIOS
The public is invited to visit the studios of the visual and performing artists in UCP's Studio Residency Program at City Center Square, Town Pavilion, and pARTnership Place, where they may meet the artists, view recent work and work in progress, and get a behind the scenes perspective on these artists' working processes. Maps of the studios will be available at Paragraph, sign boards will be placed at each studio building, and hosts at each location will guide visitors up to the studios.

ALL FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, Open Studios April 15, 6-9pm features:

OPEN STUDIOS AT City Center SQUARE, 1100 Main, 5th floor: LIVE MUSIC PERFORMANCE by BLACK HOUSE IMPROVISORS' COLLECTIVE (Matt Otto, Andrew McGhie, Hunter Long, Russell Thorpe, Peter Lawless, Nick Howell, Mike Stove, Jeff Davis, Brian Padavic, Gerald Spaits, Sam Wisman) from 7-8:15pm, including new compositions plus Improv Sliced Four Ways, a new collaborative work with 940 DANCE COMPANY; plus LIVE MUSIC BY HOMINID featuring Hunter Long, 8:30-9pm. Also featured are open studios by Visual Artists Terry Campbell, John Carroll Davis, Christina Dostaler, John Hilger, Misha Kligman, Carmen Moreno, Sean Starowitz, Cheryl Toh, Anthony Baab, Clayton Skidmore, and Frank Norfleet.

OPEN STUDIOS AT TOWN PAVILION, 1100 Walnut, 6th floor: Visual Artists Brandon Barr, Diane Burchett, Katherine O'Hara, David Rhoads, Phil Shafer, Russell Shoemaker, and Jeff Tackett. Including Build & Abrade, a new installation with performance by Jeff Tackett.

OPEN STUDIOS AT PARTNERSHIP PLACE, 906 Grand, 13th floor: Visual Artists Erika Lynn Hansen, Cory Imig, Paul Smith, Nicholas Naughton, David Carlisle, Julie Malen and Luke Rocha.

THE DINING ROOM PROJECT - A Third Friday Smorgasbord of Special Events
Paragraph gallery / 23 E 12th Street
Third Friday April 15: 6-9pm

The Dining Room Project presents an array of special Third Friday offerings, including:
· Andrew William Erdrich: Red Food, Yellow Food, Blue Food - an artistic, edible serving of organic mystery mash exploring the essential, aesthetic, and manufactured facets of contemporary food;
· Aaron Storck: The Wizard's Salad - in the persona of his alter ego, the Wizard, artist Aaron Storck presents a new centerpiece, delivers a poem (7pm), and serves a salad;
· Alberto Aguilar: Mole (sauce) - All Ingredients at Hand - Visiting Chicago-based artist Alberto Aguilar discusses the history of Mexican Mole and presents 50 of the possible Mole ingredients as he prepares the sauce in the gallery. In addition he will be creating a sound work that will incorporate visitors to his station in the space.

These activities are presented within The Dining Room Project, a multifaceted project serving as a platform for the exploration of such issues as consumption, taste, public health, hunger, sustainability, cultural symbolism within various traditions, and food and the meal's usefulness as vehicle for communication, activism, and artistic expression. As a partner and collaborator on this project, which was initiated by the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art, Charlotte Street's Paragraph gallery is serving as a site for research, installations, conversations, and a diverse range of activities, events, performances, presentations, and meals.

The Paragraph exhibition also features works by Andrea Flamini, Melissa Eder, Design Ranch, Peter Warren, PEASANTRY (Jessy Abid, Lee Heinemann, Cheyenne Craig), Meredith Host, Stephanie Kantor, Dame Osaurus, Paul Donnelly, Rain Harris, Abbe Findley, Kerstin Kolbe, and Julie Malen, as well as information and documentation about a range of national and international food-related artists projects.

OVER AGAIN: Alison Brady & Sarah Knobel
Project Space / 21 E 12th Street
Third Friday April 15: 6-9pm

Over Again presents the work of New York-based Alison Brady, and Washington DC-based Sarah Knobel, emerging artists quickly building international reputations for photo- and video-based works that wrestle with cultural expectations, ideas of normality, and feelings of anxiety and isolation related to their experiences as women transitioning from carefree to more careful adulthood The exhibition features a new, collaborative video installation, Over Again, which combines aspects of absurdity and wry humor with a low-tech sensibility to create a surreal, fraught space in which the anxious uncertainty of the everyday is explored. Portraying the activities and imaginings of a housewife within her domestic environment, this work examines issues surrounding aging, work, marriage and motherhood in a manner humorous and disturbing, mundane and cathartic. Individual photo-based works by each artist are also included.

Urban Culture Project is an initiative of the Charlotte Street Foundation, an organization dedicated to making Kansas City a place where artists and art thrive. Urban Culture Project creates new opportunities for artists of all disciplines and contributes to urban revitalization by transforming spaces in downtown Kansas City into new venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming. For more information, visit www.charlottestreet.org.

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