An Optimist’s View: Open Spaces KC

Shawn Bitters’ Burn Out in Swope Park (photo: Mo Dickens)

Sometimes we’re in such a hurry to see all the art that we don’t see any of the art. It takes

several days to see everything in Open Spaces, spread across the Kansas City metropolitan

area, running through October 28.

I’ve seen Michael Rees’ inflatables at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, site-specific

installations by Ebony G. Patterson (…called up) and Shawn Bitters (Burn Out) in Swope

Park, Nick Cave’s psychotropic installation, Hy-Dyve, at Linwood and Benton, Joyce Scott’s

bronze tribute to Harriet Tubman at Union Station (Araminta), and outdoor projections and

sculptures at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, by

Anila Quayyum Agha (This is NOT a Refuge) and Jennifer Steinkamp (Retinal), respectively.

I don’t know if I’ll make it to everything. But I’m trying.

Mo’s neighbor Ike, and Sike Style’s mural on the east side of the Drugstore (photo: Mo Dickens)

I’ve set aside Sunday mornings for Open Spaces treks. Most of them involving Nick’s church.

I finally found a church that I want to attend on Sunday mornings. My neighbor Ike (age 10)

and I get pastries most Sundays in our Waldo neighborhood and then take an art-related

photograph somewhere to post on Facebook. We’ve been to Ted Riederer’s Never Records

at 1611 Oak, Nick’s Church, and Sike’s Wake Up And Live mural on the side of The

Drugstore artists studios at Westport and Main. Last Sunday, September 30, I finally caught

some of the free performances at The Pavilion in Swope Park. Every Saturday and Sunday

afternoon there have been performers out there, but I work on Saturdays. I’m glad I made it.

KC Rumba Collective performance documentation (photo: Mo Dickens)

There were three performances that afternoon, the KC Rumba Collective, which put their

own spin on some popular tunes; BCR, a crazy, local music collective that always delivers

the goods; AND Chicago’s Mucca Pazza. How do you describe Mucca Pazza? They are like

a bunch of ninth-graders who joined a high school marching band, but the band director died,

so the kids came up with their own music and marching routines themselves and had so

much fun they decided to continue as adults. I’ve been to a lot of musical events in my life,

but I had never witnessed a rocking tuba solo performed by a guy standing on a bench

directly in front of me while a cheerleader held the bench steady grinning from ear to ear.

The cheerleader was grinning, not the bench. So was I.

Debra Smith in Lucia Koch’s The Call, Calling (photo: Mo Dickens)

One of the best aspects of Open Spaces for me has been experiencing these

events/artworks with fellow travelers. I hiked the Shawn Bitters trail with Irene, a retired

neurologist. I visited Lucia Koch’s colorful transparent canopy (The Call, Calling) near the

Gem Theater at 18th & Vine with Debra, an artist. I visited Nick’s church with Meg, one of

the principals of Metalabs, the art conservationists. A friend from the Bay Area, Kris, joined

me for the Mucca Pazza performance, and while we were there I showed her Dylan

Mortimer’s pink tree (Tree, Broken Tree). You know, the one that was dead, so Dylan painted

it pink (and added gold glitter) to represent his new lungs via double transplant last year.

And now new growth has sprung out across this once dead tree. Yeah, it’s kind of

goosebumpy. The next day Kris and I walked from my house on Charlotte Street to

University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC) where we saw a beautiful bronze sculpture by

Flávio Cerqueira of Brazil (Any Word Except Wait), and a wrap-around projection (handdrawn

animation) of the colonization of North America by Federico Solmi of Italy (The Great

Farce).

View from Jill Downen’s An Architectural Folly From a Future Place (photo: Mo Dickens)

My wife and I took one Sunday morning to visit Nick’s Church (I’ve been five times!) and

more of the Swope Park installations, which are spread over hundreds of acres. We

especially loved Jill Downen’s installation (An Architectural Folly From a Future Place) at the

Swope Memorial, which offers an incredible view of the whole park. We had never been to

that site and as we wandered around the parking lot of the Swope Memorial golf course I

asked a couple of golfers if they knew the location of the Memorial. One said, “I’ve always

heard there was something on the other side of the clubhouse, but I’ve never walked around

there.” His loss. Jill’s massive white sculpture trimmed in blue lapis sitting on a green hill is

visually stunning, and the view just down the hill from there is something every Kansas Citian

should experience.

Waterfall as Cinema by Leonardo Remor and Denis Rodriguez at the Belger Arts Center (photo: Mo Dickens)

We’re hosting an Open Spaces installation at the Belger Arts Center, where I work four days

a week. We have a large projection of an “urban waterfall” that was shot on 35mm film by

Brazil-based artists Leonardo Remor and Denis Rodriguez (Waterfall as Cinema). I’ve been

able to sit on a bench and enjoy the waterfall with visitors from Berlin, New York, and other

far flung places. I’ve shared Waterfall as Cinema with bus loads of people from Naples,

Florida, Salt Lake City, and Cincinnati; plus, classes from KCAI, KU, Benedictine College,

Washburn University, Johnson County Community College, and more. They come in with

their Open Spaces apps, or the guide books, and they tell me what they’ve seen so far and

where they plan to visit next. While they are here they take in our expansive Renée Stout

exhibition, which includes 93 pieces, all from the Belger Collection. One visitor, artist Rina

Banerjee of New York, told me that Renee was one of her heroes and she was thrilled and

surprised to see so much of Renée’s work in one collection in Kansas City. I think a lot of the

out-of-towners have been surprised by all the art they have found here. That was one of the

reasons we got involved. In addition to hosting “Waterfall as Cinema”, Belger Cartage also

helped out with some of the hauling and installing of the larger pieces of sculpture for the

festival. Whether it’s installing, promoting, sharing, hosting, or some other way of helping out,

some locals have jumped in to help make this project a success. What do I do? I Witness. I’ll

be back in (Nick’s) church soon. Can I get an Amen?

Nicks Church featuring the classic mofoto pose (photo: Guy McKee)