Charlotte St. Foundation’s Urban Culture Project Hosts THIRD FRIDAY ART DOWNTOWN

Charlotte Street's Urban Culture Project hosts an art-packed Third Friday Art Downtown the evening of Friday October 15. All free and open to the public, the evening features an artist talk; open studios at three locations, featuring 30+ artists and including a series of live performances and one-night activities; a newly commissioned window installation; and exhibitions on view at UCP's Paragraph and Project Space.

MAY TVEIT - ARTIST TALK ABOUT ART OMI INTERNATIONAL STUDIO RESIDENCY PROGRAM
5:30pm at Paragraph / 23 East 12th
The evening kicks off at 5:30, with a talk by Kansas City based artist May Tveit. Tveit, whose work includes ambitious, site-specific, temporal sculptural installations and interventions in the public realm, will speak about her work and experience at Art Omi International Artists Residency Program in Upstate New York, which she attended this summer. Each summer, Charlotte Street sponsors one past Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award recipient at Art Omi for three weeks, where they work alongside artists from around the world, and receive visits from leading New York curators, gallerists, critics, and cultural producers. Tveit will discuss Art Omi and the impact of the residency on her work, career, and creative process.

OPEN STUDIOS
From 6-9pm, Urban Culture Project hosts Open Studios at its three UCP Studio Residency Program facilities, which are currently providing free studios to 32 visual and performing artists and groups. This fall UCP is taking Open Studios to a new level, with MORE studio spaces, MORE artists, MORE activities including live performances, and GUIDED TOURS leaving from Paragraph gallery, 23 East 12th Street, at 6:30 and 8pm. 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.

OPEN STUDIOS OCTOBER 15 FEATURES:
PARTNERSHIP PLACE, 906 GRAND, 13TH FLOOR - featuring Visual Artists Erika Lynn Hansen, Cory Imig, Paul Smith, Nicholas Naughton, David Carlisle, Julie Malen and Luke Rocha. The artists will be present and eager to share their work and processes with visitors.
City Center SQUARE, 1100 MAIN, 5TH FLOOR - featuring Performing Artists Susan Rieger (940 Dance Company), Leralee Whittle, Jane Gotch, Maura Michelle Garcia, and Black House Improvisors' Collective; and Visual Artists Terry Campbell, John Carroll Davis, Christina Dostaler, Abbe Findley, John Hilger, Misha Kligman, Carmen Moreno, Natalie Poserina, Sean Starowitz, Cheryl Toh, Anthony Baab, Clayton Skidmore, Frank Norfleet. With live performances all evening and more than a dozen visual artist residents opening their doors, the City Center Square studios will be teeming with activity.
And NEW STUDIOS AT TOWN PAVILION, 1100 WALNUT, 6TH FLOOR - featuring Visual Artists Brandon Barr, Diane Burchett, Erin Hinz, Katherine O'Hara, David Rhoads, Phil Shafer, Russell Shoemaker, and Jeff Tackett. Right across the street from Paragraph and City Center Square, UCP's new studios at Town Pavilion launch on October 15, with eight artists welcoming the public in.

OPEN STUDIOS LIVE PERFORMANCES + SPECIAL ACTIVITIES AT City Center SQUARE:
6:45pm - Jane Gotch will present a preview of her upcoming SEE SAW performance (running October 22-25 at la Esquina and co-created with Mark Southerland.)
7:30pm - 940 Dance Company will perform an improvisation and new works in progress.
8:15pm - Leralee Whittle and Paul Sprawl share excerpts from WorkArtOut, improvise new work, and share videos, dances and songs from their repertoires.
All evening: visual artist Sean Starowitz debuts The Office, a site-specific alternative studio at City Center Square, featuring the curatorial project co-workers, bosses, and supervisors: a design show.
Other special activities at pARTnership Place and Town Pavilion to be announced.

JUDITH LEVY: PANORAMIC POSTCARDS / City Center SQUARE STOREFRONT WINDOW
(just west of 12th and Main)
On view the evening of October 15 will be a newly commissioned window installation by Kansas City/Lawrence-based artist Judith G. Levy, titled Panoramic Postcards. This postal-themed commission, connecting with the United States Post Office located inside the building, is a project of City Center Square and CSF's Urban Culture Project. Levy was awarded $1000 to complete the work.

Levy's installation features four large-scale digital images resembling old panoramic postcards, which are mounted on Cintra and suspended within the window space. The images are composed from elements extracted from an array of historic picture postcards, recombined and reconfigured to "evoke a new look at the past and arouse some questions about the present." For example, Albertson Square, Hopeland, Mo., suggests that as American cities grew and gathered populations in new and exciting ways, they also struggled to create accessible recreational areas within these cities for working class populations. As part of the project, Levy will distribute free sender-friendly-size panoramic postcards several times over the course of the installation, which will remain on view for one year.

HACK.ART.LAB: YOU COMPLETE ME & MARIA CALDERON: KANSA CITTA PUEBLITA
Paragraph + Project Space / 21-23 East 12th Street
Open Friday October 15, 5:30-9pm
You Complete Me is an exhibition of interactive audio and video installations by HACK.ART.LAB, a Wichita-based multi-disciplinary collective comprised of artists, programmers and engineers. Members are Ann Resnick, Kristin Beal-DeGrandmont, John Harrison, Ivy Lanning, Lauren Hirsh, and Tom McGuire. The exhibition explores relationships between viewers and technology, and the role that cooperation plays in creative endeavors. From Ghost in the Machine, which plays with viewers' temporal and spatial perceptions through a series of live, recorded and delayed playback using a webcam, Pd and a tv; to June, a self-lit, modular, kinetic relief sculpture that references the cinematic experience of riding in the car along Kansas highways-the works by this multi-talented collective offer an immersive environment accessible to audiences of all ages and backgrounds, actively involving viewers in a process of learning and discovery.

With her solo show Kansa Citta Pueblita, artist Maria Calderon presents the community of Kansas City as a pueblo or tight knit community, "where the people, the places, and the atmosphere exist in a unique balance." She portrays this community from her own singular perspective, and in relation to its seasons, permanent and temporal fixtures, nature, architecture, transport, and diverse population. Featuring vivid colors and patterns, works include a large-scale burlap painting installation composed of many parts, a series of paintings on paper, and a brand-new sculpture.

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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