Charlotte Street Foundation Announces Biennial THE FASCINATORS Showcase

Charlotte Street Foundation is pleased to present The Fascinators: The Inaugural Charlotte Street Biennial of Regional BA/BFA/MA/MFA Candidates. This biennial is a new effort designed to showcase the work of outstanding artists emerging from colleges and universities within a 200 mile radius of Kansas City, and to connect these up-and-coming artists with Kansas City's arts community.

The exhibition opens with a free public reception on Friday, September 2, 6-9pm at Charlotte Street Foundation's la Esquina gallery, be followed by a panel discussion with the jurors, artists, and project advisors on Saturday, September 3 at noon.

Rather than a broad survey, this exhibition provides a substantive view of the work of six promising young artists who are either 2011 Bachelor of Fine Arts degree recipients or candidates (completing their BFA degrees this fall), or are currently enrolled in Masters of Fine Arts programs. They are: Jacob Banholzer (BFA, University of Kansas), Matthew Blache (MFA, University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Monica Dixon (BFA, Kansas City Art Institute), Marie Dougherty (BFA, Kansas City Art Institute), Neil Griess (BFA, University of Nebraska -Lincoln), and Marcus Miers (BFA, University of Missouri-Columbia).

These artists-to-watch were selected from nearly 100 applicants by jurors Katherine Pill, Assistant Curator, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, and Francesca Wilmott, Co-Director, Los Caminos, and Assistant Registrar, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO. The selection process included online application reviews followed by in-person studio visits by the jurors to a shortlist of 13 semi-finalists from Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska.

"We saw no end of engaging work in a variety of media, and selecting the final six artists was no easy feat," write Pill and Wilmott in their juror's statement. "It was not our goal to provide a theme that encompassed the intricate concepts of each exhibited artist, but certain parallels could not be ignored," they note. "The artists included explore ideas of function, the role of personal narrative in their art, and the draw of everyday, accessible materials. The result is works that deftly bridge material and concept into unique visual vocabularies."

The exhibition's title makes reference to the fascinator's meaning as decorative headpiece-delicate and frivolous; its function not to protect the head, but rather to draw attention to it. "The work here is not frivolous by any stretch of the imagination," write Pill and Wilmott, "but many of these artists grapple with ideas of functionality and the use-value of their chosen, rather alluring, materials. All share a keen awareness of the properties of their chosen medium."

 

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