Artist-Run KC: Tom Gregg and the Old Post Office

Tom Gregg is a quiet presence in the Kansas City art scene. And like his still life paintings,

Tom understands how the art world is manifested through the unification of all its

components. Background, foreground and authenticity are all assets of his practice that don’t

rely on trick or trend. Like many of the art settlers in the West Bottoms (insert Old West joke

here), all the art spaces during that time abide by authenticity and drive. With little to no

reliance on external hand holding, simply, the willingness to learn and a place to make work,

is all they needed and everything they wanted.

Tom’s own work is a study in classical painting. You can see how the larger cultural oeuvre is

the basis for his subjects. There is a challenge to get past the immediate read of these

objects. Fruit, glassware, American flags, guns, pills and grenades are all engagements of

our societal concerns. Because they are all familiar to us, when we take a more nuanced

approach we can better understand the authority in his painting.

With all seriousness of purpose aside, Tom and his contemporaries in the West Bottoms

understood the importance of enjoying themselves while making time and space for their

peers. They managed to do everything at once and their selflessness allowed for plenty of

room to build their own trajectory.

Blair Schulman: Tell us about your own Charlotte Street Foundation award and your art space.

The Old Post Office (OPO) was at 1229 Union in the Bottoms and was open from 1998

through 2001.

Tom Gregg: I received my CSF award in 2000 for $2,000. Not a lot of money but there were six

artists who received it. At the time there were no residencies, Rocket Grants, or other awards. It

was all done under the radar, no application. There was a panel committee that probably

rotated. Maybe someone from out of town, too, that always judged. The community back

then was much smaller and more concentrated than it is today. Everybody knew what was

going on back then. It was not hard to keep track of happenings.

BS: Did people look for out of town money to help?

TG: The alternative scene was concentrated in the West Bottoms and the Crossroads was much

more established. Dirt (Gallery) and Fahrenheit (Gallery) were the coordinated spaces.

Everyone coordinated on their shows. They were more organized than the Old Post Office.

Davin Watne (of Dirt) had a network to promote. That gallery was the home base with huge

openings, he would get Boulevard Beer to donate beer; they would shut down the street,

sometimes there was a DJ.

BS: What was the start of the Old Post Office like?

TG: Kendall Kerr is an artist that lived in NYC and then moved back to KC. She rented the bottom

floor of the Old Post Office. It was never on the circuit along with Dirt and Fahrenheit, at first.

Kendall was asked to be and she said no, but they asked me and I said yes. That first show

was a big event. It drew from outside the art scene and included all the people from the

music scene in KC. Then, a month after, the participating artists said let’s do it again and

everyone coordinated. That’s how it started to become an actual gallery. I immediately did

another show about three months later.

The entire building was 4,000 square feet. Old Post Office’s front space was maybe a quarter

of that, 1000 square feet. It was a really nice space, very big, white walls, the west side of

the Old Post Office was mostly big windows. There is some glass block right around the

sides of the main door on the north side. There was a front space, a dividing wall, past that a

rather cavernous back space.

Originally, Ika (who owned the building) rented to Kendall, who was charging her only the

cost for rent. At the time no one cared about the Bottoms. I never charged rent, either.

Kendall liked having shows there and eventually she moved out, back to a living space, but I

stayed on.

I did everything myself to get the space running. I painted, ran clamp lights. and used award

money for equipment and making panels. No other money went into the space. The only

thing that really cost money was buying a keg for openings.

BS: What were some memorable shows there?

TG: There was an annual event: Culture Under Fire, in response to Jesse Helms-era Culture

Wars of the 1990’s. (Helms was a five-time Republican senator from North Carolina and a

leader of the conservative movement in America). Anne Winters was a big force in that event. She

ran Recycled Sounds record store and was good friends with lot of art people. It was the kick

off for Old Post Office to become an actual gallery space. It was happenstance and totally

organic.

In September 2001 I curated I Love America, but because of the September 11 attack, it

was postponed to October. A critique of corporate America, it was a show about scale and I

showed two panels of a Big Mac and a Whopper. My work had taken a political stance. But

it’s so overwhelming; the political situation. It’s a tsunami wave and what are you going to do

about it? Not surrendering, but being outraged at the same time. At this point I decided I was

going to concentrate on something meaningful and beautiful before it perishes.

In 1999, I went to the Venice Biennale and it blew my mind at how it hung together and the

energy that went with it. Selfishly, almost, it gave me the ability to contextualize my own

work. Because I would put my own work in the show, too. Yes, it sort of broke taboos, but no

one cared if it broke any rules. Overall, it was fun. A few criticisms, but mostly it was nice to

contextualize the work in one show; including photography, sculpture, everything. And these

shows included David Ford, Andrew Wells, Kati Tovien, Neal Wilson, Mark Cowardin, Ika,

Jimmy Lane, Michael Converse, James Trotter and Jennifer Field.

David Ford was painting realist paintings atop traffic signs he stole. Neal Wilson did random

plotting of landscapes, tight conceptual parameters, and executed these scenes. Providing a

platform (for these artists) rather than showing names, rather than known people that might

draw a crowd, still drew a crowd, thanks to the whole scene. We made little flyers, dropped

them all over, at KCAI, coffee shops, etc.

Dolphin and John O’Brien (who founded the late Dolphin Gallery in the Crossroads) was an

example of someone more established who was showing and supporting local artists, which

was rare then. John was supportive of the scene in the West Bottoms, in a general sense,

but had no presence there early on. The Dolphin didn’t move down there until 2007 or so,

long after The Old Post Office and the Dirt Gallery were gone. And there always seemed to

be a divide between the North Bottoms and that area around the Livestock Exchange.

BS: Were sales ever a part of the space’s operations?

TG: Sales? Not really. We maybe sold one or two things. If there was commission, it was very

minimal. Over the 3-4 years we had maybe a dozen shows. But they were big shows; large

scale installations, with a dozen artists at a time.

Some general rules I had were: 98% of the work shown was all local artists who worked in

the Bottoms or midtown, wherever, and I (also) started serving artists who were doing

interesting work, but had no place to do it. Dirt Gallery did great shows and they were the big

player in Bottoms at that time; it had a more defined focus. The Old Post Office was more of

a salon thing with rotating cast of characters. No one was established.

BS: What was your biggest takeaway from the OPO?

TG: Contradicting myself, no faculty or established artists, I wanted artists being bypassed by the

systems I was a part of (having taught at KCAI). Working with Junior and Senior Painting

majors, I told students to find community that you can feed off of and be a part of

something. And the peer group – not a lot of art infrastructure – was mentioned maybe

occasionally. That was the biggest takeaway and how it influenced my own work – more so

than showing in NYC. A lot of interaction with others, bouncing off one another, it was a

rolling cast of characters. There really was a cross pollination, an energy.

There is today more a sense of having a national presence and that reminded me of a

Richard Florida book about city planning, The Creative Class. He handed out free copies of

the book in KC. It was about how the arts regenerates cities and is responsible for growth.

BS: What sort of support did you receive back then?

TG: Back then no one wanted to be a part of the art scene, but there were a lot of artists. Mike

Miller (the late founder of Kansas City arts publications, Review, Art Tattler and Cupcakes in

Regalia) was hugely supportive. Alice Thorson, art critic at the Kansas City Star, was very

supportive and also needed to do feature articles, so the mainstream discussion was scant.

Reviews at Byron Cohen or more established galleries; museums were the norm and the

Bottoms were the scrappy start-ups. There was nothing to be gained back then. No goodies,

people did it to just do it, to be a part of some kind of energy. Nowadays people do things for

a reason. Before social media, artists did it because it was an energizing experience.

Thinking about grants and residencies might shade how people are doing the work, but

there’s no way to take that out of it, and it shouldn’t be removed, but nonetheless…

BS: Was burnout ever an issue for those involved?

TG: Socially, it was the most fun I ever had as an artist!

Artist Run KC is a print publication from Informality that encapsulates a partial history of

artist-run spaces in Kansas City.

Artist-Run KC features interviews with former Charlotte Street Foundation Artist Award

Fellows who have managed spaces or contributed in a meaningful way to Kansas City’s

artist-run scene. This zine was produced by Informality in collaboration with PLUG Projects

and commissioned by the Charlotte Street Foundation for their 20th anniversary celebration,

Every Street is Charlotte Street. Artist Run KC features interviews with David Ford, Tom

Gregg, Peregrine Honig, Mike Erikson, Madeline Gallucci, Erica Lynne Hanson, Garry

Noland, Glenn North, Dylan Mortimer, Sean Starowitz, Caleb Taylor, Heidi Van, Jaimie

Warren, and Davin Watne.

Artist Run KC launched at PLUG Projects on NOVEMBER 12th 2017 alongside their revised

PLUG book! If you are interested in a copy email editor@informalityblog.com