Art Through Architecture MO Bank Artboards feature Calder Kamin

Be sure to look up this First Friday in the Crossroads!

Photo credit: Jim Walker

On the east-facing billboards of Missouri Bank Artboard in the crossroads district of Kansas City, MO, Calder Kamin presents two images titled Invaders (above). Reading right to left, on the first panel features a sparse flock of flying European starlings. These birds represent the first 100 released in Central Park in by Eugene Schieffelin, a drug manufacturer, who hoped to introduce every bird mentioned by Shakespeare to North America. On the second panel the few have flourished into a dense swarm, representative of the masses of starlings we see on our skyline today. After 150 years the European Starling has come to dominate our skies and cities with populations ranging to all parts of the United States. Kamin’s series of invasive species illustrations serve as reminder of how culture, including the behavior and decisions of specific individuals, affect the natural world.

About the Artboards:

An Art through Architecture “Art Achievement” project, the Missouri Bank “Artboards” launched fall 2008, when the building’s existing double-sided billboards were renovated and converted into a highly visible site for work by area artists as part of the bank’s purchase and renovation of the building to house its Crossroads Branch, completed by Helix Architecture + Design. Art through Architecture, a partnership of Charlotte Street Foundation and American Institute of Architects-Kansas City, administers the programming of the Artboards in collaboration with a panel of Missouri Bank representatives.

Art through Architecture (AtA) is designed to encourage collecting and commissioning work by Kansas City area artists through architectural practice. Through AtA, new architectural projects may earn Gold, Silver or Bronze levels of Art Achievement by dedicating a percentage of the total construction budget to collecting artworks, commissioning temporary or permanent artworks, and/or including artists on design teams.

Resident, Calder Kamin’s Invitation to Open Studios This Weekend

Urban Culture Project Introduces Monthly Monday Meetings

Urban Culture Project residents will be responsible for attending monthly meetings this year. Last Monday was the inaugural gathering.
Every meeting will begin with resident presentations. Returning residents Molly Kaderka, Hunter Long and Calder Kamin were the first group of artist talks. For some residents, these meetings will be their first time speaking about their work in front of an audience.  There was time for questions and discussion.
Coming together once a month to discuss issues and inspiration in the studio will hopefully spark stronger relationships amongst the residents. Calder would like to thank vistors Theresa Bembnister and Emma Kisiel for attending!

Reviews for Resident Calder Kamin’s Exhibition at the grayDUCK Gallery in Austin

Tamed Territory
grayDUCK Gallery, Austin
July 20- August 19, 2012
featuring Calder Kamin, Casey Polacheck and Areca Roe

See the exhibition online: http://www.grayduckgallery.com/exhibition_Tamed_Territory.html

‘Tamed Territory’

Three artists take on the Animal Kingdom and document wildlife with great creativity

REVIEWED BY WAYNE ALAN BRENNER, FRI., AUG. 10, 2012

Roadkill Armadillo, by Calder Kamin

‘Tamed Territory’

grayDUCK Gallery, 608-C Monroe, 826-5334
www.grayduckgallery.com
Through Aug. 20
Good things come in threes, they say, and that’s especially true at grayDUCK Gallery, where the exhibitions tend to feature three artists. “Tamed Territory,” the latest show in this right-off-South-First gallery, provides evidence of that (the goodness and the triplicity) with works by Calder Kamin, Casey Polacheck, and Areca Roe.

Kamin sculpts animals in ceramics, “some that resemble kitsch figurines and others rendered slightly more realistic.” A pair of tigers, part-white, part-orange, prowling atop a pedestal. A brief suite of endangered species on one white shelf. A sweet array of bats – Austin’s own Mexican free-tailed variety and the adorably kawaii flying fox among them – hanging on a wall. There’s a pair of road-killed creatures, too, poignant testament to the sadder intersections of wilderness and civilization: an armadillo and a rabbit. (Poor dear dead and bloodied bunny, realistically rendered and already sold.)

Polacheck’s paintings of animals-in-nature and animals-in-dioramas use oil on canvas to bring a sort of Twilight Zone slant to the depictions. Just what is it that those canines have discovered through digging, in The Coyote Diorama? The solo monkey snacking on the contents of a termite mound in The Chimpanzee Diorama looks as if it might beg your pardon and request some Grey Poupon. And that pair of carrion birds in The Vulture Diorama … you know, they’re somehow less threatening if you’re reading this review in our printed edition.

Roe’s photographs of animals, reproduced here as large archival pigment prints, are as lovely as some of what you might see in the pages of National Geographic, but these creatures aren’t shot in the wild. Roe’s done a tour of several national zoos and captured their caged and unnaturally accommodated denizens in that context. “Are we protectors, exploiters, or compatriots?” asks the accompanying grayDUCK literature. Whatever the answer, it’s certain that we – at least, Roe and Polacheck and Kamin – are creative documentarians of animals. Which is what this exhibition is about, really. As Kamin’s endangered-species group says via its arch title: Collect Them All Before They’re Gone.