Joplin Art Exhibits Now Showing

About the artist:

About this exhibit: Sponsored by EaglePicher Technologies, LLC, ArtWorkers: Creativity and America maybe the most unusual and exciting exhibition Spiva has ever tackled, and its success may well depend on your willingness to add to it!
 
Simply stated, ArtWorkers examines how Americans view themselves and the country they live in – through art. Combining an exhibition with performances and hands-on activities in Spiva’s first floor galleries, Kansas City artist Hugh Merrill is setting out to create a dialogue about America, inviting many, many voices to the conversation.
 
Merrill’s work provides the exhibition’s themes: politics, American monuments, environment and ecology, family and diversity. With these topics as backdrops, visitors will encounter America as envisioned by “art workers” from several disciplines and, at the same time, have the opportunity to join the discussion by using their own creativity.
 
Make your mark on ArtWorkers!
 
Everyone who visits ArtWorkers is invited to add something to the exhibit. Bring photocopies of your favorite family photos for Stories:Place and Family, on display in Spiva’s Third Street window gallery. Contribute small red, white, or blue items to the evolving three-dimensional U.S. flag.Take your picture with a “diversity mask” and see how it feels. Create your own American 'zine, design a better President, or pose with the Statue of Liberty banner and leave a note about what you’d like to be liberated from.
 
Merrill, the avowed “ringleader for community arts actions,” will be Spiva’s artist in residence on Saturdays during ArtWorkers, encouraging visitors of all ages to add their voices to the exhibit.
 
Joining Merrill as curators are MSSU faculty members Josie Mai, art; Dr. Stacey Barelos, music; and Dr. Joey Brown,poetry.In addition to Merrill and Mai, visual artists include Gene Arehart, Sandra Conrad, Jacque Moody McDonald, Kyle McKenzie, Jason Stamper, Michael Steddum,and Michael Strahan

About the artist:

About this exhibit: To most people in the Joplin area who know his name, Jim Bray is an accomplished artist and teacher. With twelve years as chair of MSSU’s art department, 40-odd years as a painter, and 20-plus years of international teaching behind him, Bray concedes that even those who appear to have mastered an artistic medium need a challenge. 

“For the last ten years I have been doing workshops and in those workshops I have been experimenting with ‘wet into wet’ painting. These watercolors represent workshop paintings that were done with a more spontaneous and calligraphic technique. When you paint this way you get soft edges, and for me this has been my greatest challenge for the last forty years.” 

The result of Bray’s countless demonstrations will be exhibited in the Upstairs Gallery during May. The exhibit will also include some of Bray’s new acrylic work as well as landscapes painted from memory and “made to conform to particular design elements.”

“I will include some larger paintings with some familiar subjects,” he says, “but the subject is less important than the composition and design I employed.”