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KCUR (Kansas City’s NPR Station) previews America: Now and Here

REPOSTED from KCUR’s site.

Stop by to listen to the radio preview.

“America: Now and Here” is a two-year national project combining poetry, theatre, film, visual arts and music. It launches Friday, May 6, in Kansas City, Missouri before traveling to Detroit in July and Chicago in October.

by Laura Spencer

Kansas City, Mo. “America: Now and Here” is a two-year national project combining poetry, theatre, film, visual arts and music. It launches Friday, May 6, in Kansas City, Missouri before traveling to Detroit in July and Chicago in October.

The goal is to start a conversation about the American experience in a new way: through ART.

America: Now and Here
May 6 – 28, 2011
Kansas City, Mo.

Launch: Friday, May 6, 2011, 7 – 9 pm with DJ Spooky
Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
2012 Baltimore
Kansas City, Mo.

May 6, 5:30 – 9:00 pm — AC: KC Opening Reception
Cocoon Gallery
115 W. 18th Street
Kansas City, Mo.

KC Studio Preview

KC Studio Previews America: Now and Here’s opening in Kansas City.

America: Now and Here was also conceived as a way to foster a new civic relationship with the arts, and engage audiences who might otherwise see the arts as irrelevant to their daily lives or be disinclined to visit a museum, gallery, theater, or concert hall.

“Where art sometimes divides individuals, America: Now and Here is finding a way for art to unite us, to strengthen our nation’s communities through the shared cultural experiences that define us,” said Abby Sims Beckloff, External Affairs Director of the Mid-America Arts Alliance. “We are so pleased to be a part of this inaugural experience in Kansas City, and we can’t wait to see what great things will happen across the country as the America: Now and Here conversation grows.”

Dorothy Dunn, Director of America: Now and Here, said, “The need to engage with each other is at the very heart of our being as Americans. Art is often the shared experience that brings us together to discuss and debate, and this journey seeks to use the power of art to expand the conversation.”

Read the full Article at KC Studio

America: Now and Here overview and interview

Julia Halperin over at Art Info has a great interview with Eric Fischl that overviews the America: Now and Here project from dream to process to future.

A quick excerpt:

When I did the shout-out to these artists, I wasn’t about to tell them what to do, other than in the most general sense of it. I had no idea what I was going to get back. It could have been a highly politicized, polarizing visual diatribe — “America’s Inequities,” or something. It was a crapshoot. I was very surprised by all the work that was suggested. It was kind of self-organizing. It became very clear that there were three broad topics that the work fit under. One was “America as Icon,” one was “America as People,” and one was “America as Place.” “America as People” was about a sense of community, a sense of family and relationships, different interest groups. For “America as Place,” it was connected to the history and tradition of landscape in America, that sense of the vulnerability to what was once considered majestic, powerful, and entitled to us. And “America as Icon” was represented by things like Jasper Johns’s “Flag” — images that recreate a sense of forward-looking America against the backdrop of Depression-era soup kitchens. Some of it was pretty straightforward, but there was also a lot of humor, irony, and cynicism.

Check out the full article.  Very interesting.

America: Now and Here makes its first stop right here in Kansas City May 6th.  Come down to the Leedy-Volkus Gallery in the Crossroads and experience this one of a kind, cross-discipline arts dialogue.  It is a great blend of national and local art and artists.

America: Now and Here will be installed here in Kansas City through May.  The gallery will be open from 11-7, Wed-Sun.  Come join us!