Urban Culture Project Presents Community and Loneliness 5/21-22

Urban Culture Project presents COMMUNITY & LONELINESS Paragraph / 23 East 12th Street KCMO 64105

OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, MAY 21, 6-9PM
With exhibition introduction by curator Angela Lopez at 6:30pm + performances by Charlie Mylie & Drew Roth throughout the evening. Exhibition Hours: THURSDAYS + SATURDAYS, 12-5PM
On view MAY 21-JUNE 26, 2010

+ PUBLIC PROGRAM: SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1PM
Voices of Community + Loneliness featuring "Status Update," compiled/written by Gina Kaufmann, and performed by Gina Kaufmann, Ron MeGee, Rita Brinkerhoff, and Scott Wilson; a talk by Scott Wilson;
& poems by Glenn North, Robert Brown, Taylor Brown, and Camiel J. Irving

Artists: Miki Baird, Amy Casey, AJ Halbrook, Peregrine Honig, Amy Kligman, Michael Lopez, Hugh Merrill, Charlie Mylie, Jason Needham, Anne Pearce, Sean Simone, Drew Roth, Jaimie Warren, Rachel Wetchensky. Curator: Angela Lopez.

Community + Loneliness examines the conflict between the desire for community and the lifestyle and the personal choices that are not conducive to building community. This show features artists whose work expresses a sense of loneliness stemming from isolation from or within a community, as well as works that speak to community identification and attempts toward community building.

Featured artworks include photographs, drawings, paintings, installations, video, and multi-media projects. These range from Michael Lopez's 15-foot felt collage and video that tell the story of a character named Lenny and his inescapable, cyclical lonely existence; to two new portraits by Anne Pierce which use gestural line, pattern and color to portray a sense of interiority and emotional isolation; to a new painting by Cleveland-based Amy Casey, which portrays ideas of anxiety, vulnerability and threats to stability and safety within communities, as clusters of houses and buildings are uprooted and torn apart by winding highways and supernatural forces.

Also included will be a public program, Voices of Community and Loneliness, on Saturday May 22, 1pm. This program will feature Gina Kaufmann's "Status Update," for which a group of performers on soapboxes will shout private / public Facebook updates on the street; remarks by Scott Wilson, Managing Editor of the Pitch, relating particularly to the nature of on-line communities and the impact of anonymity enabled by the internet; and a presentation of spoken word poetry addressing the exhibition theme by Glenn North (Poet-in-Residence at the American Jazz Museum and coach for Kansas City's youth poetry slam team) featuring North, Robert Brown, Taylor Brown, and Camiel J. Irving. Gina Kauffman will also be assembling a group of three non-visual artists to come tell their stories of feeling alone, and of feeling a part of a community, for an additional event to take place at the Brick, 17th & McGee, on the evening of Saturday May 22 as part of her ongoing Storytellers series.

From Lopez's curatorial statement:
"Forces that drive people to want to be a part of a community are desires to be accepted, understood, supported, as well as having an overall sense of belonging. Not having these things is when loneliness occurs. So what is happening when people still feel lonely within a community? Often there are hindrances that keep people feeling left out, such as social class, educational background, insecurity, or an inability to meet social expectations. However, it seems that it is often an individual decision as well.

"In American culture, there is a desire for community, but also a lifestyle that does not support building communities. This culture in many ways supports forgetting individual roots. Americans expect and encourage children to not only move out of their parents' house as soon as possible, but also out of state. The cultural links of mobility with success has average Americans moving about 11 times in their lives. This separates them from long term relationships, friends, and family. This also applies to changing jobs for advancement, instead of remaining tied to a specific business. The first solution to "Starting over" is to move. The marketing of convenience also seems to pull people apart in more ways than it brings them together. The appeal of convenience is that it promises more time to spend with family, friends, relaxing, etc. However, at the same time and in many ways, it takes away the possibility of neighborhood communities... In a transient culture, it is difficult to maintain stable reliable relationships.

"Miranda July wrote a short story called 'This Person.' The main character in the story, referred to as 'this person,' is suddenly overwhelmed with acceptance and love from everyone she has ever known, either well or hardly at all. They all surround this person at a picnic. This person wavers back and forth from being overwhelmed with joy and denial that it is actually happening. Stunned by fear of it ending and by force of habit, she leaves to check her post office box, then her e-mail, then phone messages. When no messages are left anywhere, she is saddened and goes home. 'This person realizes that staying home means blowing off everyone this person has ever known. But the desire to stay home is very strong. This person wants to run a bath and then read in bed,' writes July. While talking to one friend about the subject, she explained that she knows several people who feel lonely because they can't fit into the communities of their choosing. However, they turn their back on communities where they would be accepted. This tension of wanting something you can't have and taking for granted what you can have is a common human trait that often works to our disadvantage."

About the curator:
Angela Lopez is a mixed media artist whose works addresses many political topics. Her artwork has been featured in group exhibitions at H&R Block ArtSpace, The Dolphin Gallery, and Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City MO, as well as Buenos Aires Argentina at Proyecto' ace Studios and at the Beasley gallery in Arizonia. In 2008, she was awarded an Avenue of the Arts temporary public art grant and was chosen to participate in the Creative Capitol professional development program. In 2009 she curated her first exhibition "Together We Can Try" at the Base Gallery in Kansas City Mo and premiered her first solo show at the Urban Culture Project Space. Angela recently relocated to Chicago IL where she continues with her various artistic pursuits.

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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