The name of the exhibit is Rural Urban Invitational. Five artists from rural areas and five artists from urban areas have been invited to exhibit their work in this exhibit. The artists were selected because of the high quality of their artwork and were defined as either rural or urban by their current address. As it turned out, many of the rural artists grew up in urban areas, including an artist from Seoul, South Korea, and one from Mumbai, India. Both have chosen to live in rural areas. Likewise, several urban artists grew up in rural areas, one from Hays, KS; one from a family corn farm in Nebraska, who studied in Los Angeles, then returned to live in Matfield Green, KS. Art is a universal language, shared by all cultures, crossing all boundaries, as shown by the artists in this exhibit. Armin Mühsam grew up in Germany. He is an art professor at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO. He lives in Kansas City, MO. (Urban artist) more
Bill McBride, Harvard-educated, architect in Chicago for 25 years, dreamed of being a sculptor surrounded by prairie, and moved to Matfield Green, KS, in 2006. These works are maps of Wabaunsee County watersheds and creeks, created especially for this exhibit. (Rural artist) t more
Caleb Taylor is a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute. He grew up in Kansas City, studied art under Armin Mühsam at Northwestern Missouri State University, received his graduate degree at Montana State in Bozeman (where Mühsam also earned his MFA) They two artists now share studio space in Kansas City, MO. (Urban artist) More
Molly Kaderka is a graduate of the Kansas City Arti Institute and was a student of Laura Berman. Molly is inspired by her deep interest in natural phenomena and in human and earth history. Intrigued by both astronomy and geology, Kaderka searches out and observes moments in the natural world, like the night sky, as well as geological specimens, and human artifacts. Molly was recently granted a Graduate Fellowship and Teaching Assistantship from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she will pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Painting. more
Kelly Yarbrough Frasier grew up in the suburbs of Dallas Texas, and moved to Kansas as a 24-year-old. She fell in love with the prairie and has chosen to call it home. She received her Master of Fine Arts at K-State and lives in Manhattan. She is the founder of the Tallgrass Artist Residency program. (Rural artist)
More Laura Berman was born in Spain, moved around a lot, settled in Kansas City, and has a second home in Matfield Green. She is a printmaker and teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. Her artwork is inspired by nature and the rocks she collects. These are monoprints. (she is part Rural part Urban) Matt Regier grew up on a family corn farm in southern Nebraska, then studied philosophy and theology in Los Angeles before returning to live in Matfield Green, where he is an artist and co-manages The Bank art gallery. These are monoprints. (Rural artist)
Miki Baird grew up in Hays, KS. Her summer visits to grandparents in a tiny rural town north of Hays, where she helped her grandmother and aunts with handwork, influences her art today. She photographs junk mail, then cuts the photos into strips and weaves them into a new construction. (Urban artist)
More Shin-hee Chin grew up in Seoul, South Korea, where her father was a university professor of English literature. Words have always been important to her work. After emigrating to America, she and her husband lived in cities for a number of years. When her husband was offered a choice between a faculty position at a college in Texas or a college in McPherson, Shin-hee advocated for living in Kansas because she immediately connected
to the landscape. She is an art professor at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, and lives in McPherson. (Rural artist) More Shreepad Joglekar grew up in Mumbai, India, and now lives in Manhattan, Kansas. He emigrated to the United States to attend graduate school in Texas. He is now a professor of photography at K-State and lives in Manhattan. Although he grew up in a very large city, he has memories of visiting his grandmother in a small rural village in India where
everyone had the same last name. This is one of a series of photographs he made at Fort Riley, KS in the live fire village. (Rural artist) End