This year Spiva’s annual showcase of members’ work is celebrating 72 years! What an honor to host this long-running proclamation of our members’ hearts, minds, skills, and passions. That is what is on display. It is brave to share original art with the general public. So this exhibit is honorable, acknowledging ideas, vision, chronicled by time spent and materials purchased. It will surely be a thrill to experience 2019’s reflection of our culture, time, and interests.

Nearly 100 area artists will provide pieces of several mediums, including ceramics, watercolor, wood, oils, metal, photography, and mixed media. Pieces entered in the adult competitive categories are eligible for cash awards totaling $2,400, once again generously provided by Dr. John and Mrs. Barbara Windle. Awards are given for both 2-D and 3-D works.

In addition to the cash awards, an artist will receive the Barrie Hunt Memorial Award for an Emerging Artist in Water Media, and his or her name will join previous award winners on a perpetual plaque in the Spiva lobby. The youth divisions will honor the winners of the Donna Gilbreth Memorial Children’s and Youth Awards with prizes totaling $600, courtesy of the Windles. Awards in all categories will presented at the opening at 6:30pm on opening night Friday, October 11th.

With her current body of work, Lenexa artist Catherine Kirkland answers the question, “What’s the Point?” visually, through her brightly colored, pointillist paintings.

In brief, pointillism is the creation of a visual effect through the application of spots of color that blend in the viewer’s eyes, appearing to the viewer as luminous, brilliant colors and shapes.

Catherine’s paintings are a form pointillism which employs a similar principle of tricking the eye through the application of dots on the painted canvas, visually shifting colors and creating movement and depth.

Each space series painting starts with inspiration, typically a photo of a nebula. This image is then abstracted and sketched  onto the prepared canvas. An under-painting of contrasting colors is applied, then the labor intensive application of various size and color of dots begins.

Using wooden dowels and other tools to apply the spots of paint, Ms. Kirkland embellishes each canvas with thousands of dots, creating the visually exciting works on display.

And that, viewers, is the point!

Opening Reception, October 11, 5:30-7:30pm

Jason Burns lives and farms in SE Kansas. Since he was a young boy, he would often bring binoculars with him on the tractor while farming. At night, he’d lay up on the hood of the tractor and stare into the heavens with those binoculars while waiting for a ride home. The desire to look up never went away.

As a farmer and later a computer consultant and photographer, it was only a matter of time before all these things came together. He now has many telescopes and a small roll off roof observatory in which he images the night skies. His wife Stacey Burns and seven children (Natalee, Jackie, Evan, Karl, Eric, Justice and Quentin) are his die-hard fans and often helpers in his astronomical endeavors.  

Many of these images, which take hours to produce, will be on exhibit in Spiva’s upstairs gallery for the month of October. These stunningly beautiful images display one man’s passion in following his dreams.