La Cucaracha Press has this A M A Z I N G group called The Phresh Print Co-op’s it’s an outstanding group of experimental collaborations between students at Kansas City Art Institute.  They design and make prints for the wonderful community here in Kansas City, MO!  Jessica Selz designed this Phresh design that will be turned into a PHRESH PRINT that will be offered when backing a $30 or more option. 

SBG went to La Cucaracha Press studio and met with the Phresh Co-op artist and told them about (the pie idea), it sounds a little funny with a bit of symbolism and delouses substance qualities but getting to the core concept of sharing the pieces of the pie also the circles we find ourselves in.

 About the print itself: The large symbol is a chaos wheel that symbolizes infinite possibilities and how that makes the world chaotic.  The Smaller symbol embedded in the chaos wheel is called a khanda that symbolizes power, unity, and strength.

Yes, you make it better and if you want to help a little bit more support SBG at by following click this—> link! Thank you.

Spray Booth Gallery brings experimental exhibitions, public art initiative, supports both risk and dialogue by exhibiting new works from young and emerging artist.  SBG is a artist run space and aims to incite conversations on contemporary art in Kansas City area, by animating dynamic relationships between art, artist, and audiences and by supporting challenging work reflecting the diversity of the city.

Please follow the link and suport Spray Booth Gallery!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1923955016/spray-booth-gallery-artist-run-space

If you pledge $50 or more you will receive a print that was hand printed by Andrew Lyles. The images below are 4 of the 12, different varieties of compositional prints that you will be able to get!

Images below are apart of the Kickstart a $500 pledge or more the recycling bin removable table top on wheels.

photo credit: Phillip Wilkerson

If you missed out on the opening XOXO Salon Show, you are more then welcome to come during opening hours through the week.  Tuesday-Friday 12-6:00 P.M. & Saturday 12-3:00 P.M.  The show will have another First Friday event if you feel like hitting the town come out March 4th, 6-11:00 P.M.  118 works for sale, I repeat 118 works for sale! If you have seen the show and know someone that hasen’t bring them with you share this show with other people. Become a patron, take away something awesome, for instance art will fill your life with a smile and happiness.  Think of a gallery in perspective such as, without galleries there would be no museums.  So dont only support Spray Booth but other galleries as well as other Art forms!

Spray Booth Gallery
130 West 18th Street
(inside Volker Bicycles)
Various Artists (XOXO Salon Show)
Art Thoughts of a Salon Show
February 3-March 17, 2012

By BLAIR SCHULMAN

Spray Booth Gallery (SBG) has just heaped a whole lot of attention on what seems to be every single living artist in the Kansas City area. XOXO Art Thoughts of a Salon Show is comprised of 118 works. They run to mostly painting, but with quite a few photos, ceramics and one small, ephemeral piece by Cory Imig (2012, Unreliable System, tape on balloon), that is dying and reincarnating itself as you read this.

Owner Andrew Lyles blurs the distinction between installation and environment. The work is free from any overly-academic curatorial practice that might otherwise regard the work as pretentious. They are things on a wall, look at them. There is no doubt this work is a survey of what Kansas City artists are seeing and feeling, and they are feeling good. Color, shape and movement are the fixed ideas here.

The idea for the exhibition came about as Lyles had never seen a salon show on this scale, excluding the H&R Block Artspace Flatfile exhibition. He began an email chain with his fellow alum at the Kansas City Art Institute. The Charlotte Street Foundation helped bump up that email list and between that, posting relentlessly on Facebook, soon word of mouth took over. The first call went out around Christmas-time and all work had to be in the gallery by January 21. For the most part, everyone delivered on time, a logistical feat in and of itself.

His goal was to get one hundred artists; he succeeded and then some. Lyles encouraged artists to show work from all points of their career, which eventually became a real ladder of some older work (Kelly Clark, Untitled, drawing on inkjet, 2008) to brand new pieces (Neil Todd & Todd Christiansen, A.D. 2000 Year of the Bug, digital video, 2012).

The curating began with everything laid out on the floor as intended to be hung, almost puzzle-like, and accordingly the main wall began to take a shape.

Asked whether a pattern emerged from the work, Lyles said he remained conscious of a color palette that enabled viewers to wander back and forth, going back to sections of the space repeatedly. This hodgepodge of styles and ideas allowed an individual to leave with their own takeaway of the show as a whole. Some standouts include Kahlil Irving, (New York Overload, paper, ink, colored pencil, 2011), Matt Jacobs (Spectrum, sponges, tic-tacs, resin, 2011) and Gabriela Castanedo (Jake, mixed media, year unknown).

They are some of the 118 reasons to visit this show again and again.

http://www.cupcakesinregalia.com/commentarywest18thstreet.html

Reaction to last night’s short, select exhibition-seeing

Jonah Criswell, The Problem, oil on paper, 11″x13″, 2011
Image: courtesy of the artist via curator Andrew Lyles; may not be reproduced without permission

Thanks to Alison, someone I know from her writing when I was at the magazine and from her role with a local gallery, I took up the prompt to download my impressions from the three exhibitions I visited last night. Read her thoughts at The Junk Revival; we went to two of the same shows, and I saw two others she didn’t, and vice versa.

For me and my mate, it was west Crossroads only—and only the block of 18th and Wyandotte.

We went out early, as in 5 o’clock. Just off work, we Started at Spray Booth Gallery and had the luxury of being able to see every single piece (118) unobstructed and up close. The manipulated photocollage motif, as well as the rough, color-block abstract painting-type seemed to be repeated in a number of works. There were amid too many pieces overall to say that such styles dominated, of course, but I know they represent a trend to which I can’t articulate any critical response: I do not see beauty, and sometimes I don’t even see craft; I see Idea. I need more discussions with artists—or for you to point me to some articles/new books.

I do “get” the idea of sculptural installations made of pieced-together bits, I think—I enjoy the voice of cheer I feel in them and in their careful assembly: Cory Imig‘s yellow balloon taped to the wall under stripes of blue, Christina D. Prestidge‘s presentation of a little one of her acrylic, mylar, and monofilament creations, Matt Jacob‘s Spectrum of the rainbow’s colors put together as a prisim wedge with the open end a masonry of white Tic Tac candies.

The 2D items I wished to purchase fall outside my current budget (Lee Piechocki, Caleb Taylor,Paul Anthony Smith, Waseem Touma, Gabrieila Castanedo, Nicholas Naughton, Ryan Haralson), and even Julia Icicle’s crisp charming print, Time Flies like a Banana, at a mere $100, is beyond what I can afford at this time. To be honest, for a lot of us, employment these past four years has been rough!

That’s a shame, though, because Andrew Lyles does a great job with that space—in the back of a bicycle shop—and I want him to be able to continue curating there. Maybe I can let the Visa bill linger a tiny bit longer to ensure he gets some money from me? I’m sure Julia wouldn’t mind the receipt either. Kansas City artists have a well-worn refrain that selling here is difficult.

The list of “faves” above is not complete, please note, and even as I continue, it won’t be: with 118 things to see, a great many of them deserve a critique.

Jonah Criswell‘s The Problem, pictured above, for example, was not for sale, but we were quite drawn to it. Julia Cole‘s attractive sculptural triptych All, Nothing, which is also a DIY instructional for carrying out a wish-making ritual, was likewise unpriced but drew me to covet it. The reason might have been the comforting framed presentation of the Job’s Tears (coixseed), under glass and with what appeared to be embroidery. Textiles apparently attract me. (I sure could use a wish-come-true, too.)

Textiles: Until I had read through the whole exhibition list, it didn’t occur to me that the low, footed ottoman in the middle of the floor was a work of art and not a mere “This is a French salon” prop. Of course it would be made by Ayla Rexroth, an artist and curator whose practice is built around hosting a gallery in her own living space, where works of visual art are “couched” amid furniture and the other quotidian elements of domestic life. And, it would be upholstered in a pleasing light blue fabric that made me fall in love: Alya always wears the most tasteful and put-together outfits. As long as it sounds like I’m gushing, I’ll take a plunge further and mention that it’s time to get tickets to the Subterranean Gallery‘s Hot Tub Dialogues series; the first installment is February 11, but it and the February 25th one are already sold out: your only chance is for February 18.

(full read about Reaction to last night’s short, select exhibition-seeing by Tracy Abeln.) http://saneditor.blogspot.com/2012/02/following-first-friday.html 

XOXO Salon Show & Benefit

Artists Participating

Spray Booth Gallery, would like to thank you the people and the following contributors especially in 2011 and for future shows. Thank you