2022 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards opens at the H&R Block Artspace
October 5 – December 10, 2022
Kansas City, Mo. (September 22, 2022) The H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is pleased to present the 2022 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards, featuring new work by 2022 CSF Fellows: Andrew Mcilvaine, Harold Smith Jr., and Johanna Winters.
The Artspace will host an opening reception on Wednesday, October 5, from 6:00-8:00 p.m., and the exhibition will remain on view through December 10, 2022.
Since 1997, Charlotte Street’s Visual Artist Award has supported outstanding visual artists living and working in Kansas City through annual, unrestricted cash awards distributed directly to the artists. These competitive awards recognize local artists who are creating exceptional artwork by providing financial support, critical attention, and an exhibition with the aim of fostering their continued artistic and professional development.
The Artspace celebrates a long-standing partnership with the Charlotte Street as it serves as host for the ninth time in the award’s 25-year history.
Learn more by visiting the Kansas City Art Institute page.
The 2022 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award Fellows were selected through a competitive process that started with an open call for applications from artists based in the five-county Kansas City Metro Area.
Applications were reviewed by a panel of nationally esteemed arts professionals, including Alexsandra Mitchell, Manager of Education and Public Programs at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles; Rica Maestas, a burqueña artist, author, arts worker, and social practitioner based in Albuquerque, NM; Hallie Ringle, Hugh Kaul Curator of Contemporary Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; and Raechell Smith, Director and Curator of the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute, who will serve as the exhibition curator for the Artspace.
Public programs and Events
Wednesday, October 5 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Opening reception with the artists
Wednesday, October 26 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Artists in Dialogue Harold Smith, Jr. in conversation with Kevin Demery, artist and KCAI Visiting Assistant Professor and AICAD Fellow
Wednesday, November 9 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Artists in Dialogue Andrew Mcilvaine in conversation with Risa Puleo, independent curator based in Chicago, IL, and 2022 Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Research Fellow
Thursday, December 1 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Artists in Dialogue Johanna Winters in conversation with Lilly McElroy, artist and Assistant Teaching Professor in Photography at the University of Kansas
About the 2022 Charlotte Street Award Fellows
Harold Smith Jr. is a visual artist, filmmaker, writer, educator, and activist who is known best for his works in painting and mixed-media collage. From this broad practice, Smith continues to center the black male experience in America through an evolving series of paintings that serve as witnesses to our world. Smith’s paintings provide a space for his figures to represent the impact of perceptions of Westernized representations of black masculinity.
Smith received a BS in Computer Science from Union College and a MAT in Multidisciplinary Studies from Webster University before teaching for 20 years, primarily in Kansas City area schools. In addition to his 2022 Charlotte Street Foundation Award, Smith is also the recipient of a 2022 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, a 2022 MacDowell Colony Residency, and a Studios Inc, three year studio residency in Kansas City, MO. He has exhibited nationally and regionally with solo exhibitions at the American Jazz Museum and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art and in group exhibitions at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, H&R Block Artspace, and Charlotte Street.
Andrew Mcilvaine is a visual artist and educator whose works in painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation explore cultural and personal memory and his Mexican-American identity. Mcilvaine mines materials such as bandanas, horsehair, tin milagros, rosary beads, wheel rims, and sports shoes to yield references to a rich familial mythology while binding together individual identity and cultural collective in complex narratives.
Mcilvaine earned his BA in Studio Art from the University of Missouri in Kansas City. After receiving his BA, Mcilvaine moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he attained his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis. Mcilvaine has exhibited regionally with recent solo and group exhibitions at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum, UMKC Gallery of Art, H&R Block Artspace, plug, 19 Below Gallery, and Art Saint Louis. He currently lives and works in Kansas City and serves as Visiting Lecturer in Foundation at KCAI.
Johanna Winters is an artist and educator who engages printmaking, puppetry, video, performance, and sculpture to address issues of aging in a female body. Winters’ work is both a dispatch of the anxieties she shares with women about the shame, disappointment, and pleasure of aging, and a confrontation of inhabiting a body that will be rendered socially invisible.
Currently based in Iowa City, Winters is the 2022 Grant Wood Fellow Visiting Faculty, Advanced Printmaking, University of Iowa School of Art & Art History, Iowa City, IA. She holds an MFA from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and a BFA from the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay. Her work has been exhibited and performed nationally – recently at the Drama Club, Chicago, IL, Coop Gallery, Nashville, TN, and Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN. Prior to her artistic pursuits, Winters trained as a professional cross-country skier and competed on an Olympic- development ski team based in the upper Midwest.