Get Ready for Art in the Loop’s KC Streetcar Celebration and Ride!

Event Details | July 17, 5:30 p.m. | Starting at Union Station Streetcar Stop

Join us to celebrate the “Art Car” KC Streetcar #806! Wrapped with artwork by Julia Morris entitled “EPH 4:2”, Morris refers to moments of grace and compassion, and the inevitable moments of friction as portrayed in her digital design. The fluid movement and overlapping colors in the design emphasize harmonious relationships, while rigid forms invite viewers to consider how to engage with people who seem adversarial, needy, or marginalized. 

This event will include a high-energy performance by Jamogi and the Jammers at the Union Station Streetcar Stop and remarks by the artist. Guests are invited on board the streetcar to enjoy the Andean and Amazonian instruments, rhythms, and songs of Amado Espinoza and Pedro Calderon and see more of the artwork installed along the streetcar route.

Artist Statements

Julia Morris

Julia Morris is a multidisciplinary illustrator and designer based in Kansas City, Missouri. Her work ranges from digital illustration to hand-painted murals to printmaking, but through it all runs a common thread of movement, elegance, and vibrancy. Julia grew up in Washington, DC, and earned her BFA in illustration at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Jamogi and the Jammers

I have my very first EP called, “Celebration” which is about celebrating all the victories that we often shy away from sharing. My goal is to make people feel validated, celebrated, and liberated. This was inspired by my therapist when she told me that we should feel good about all our victories, and we should tell people about them.

I always go by the three ‘I’s: Innovate, Inspire, and Invent.

Those three ‘I’s are what drive me to pursue my quest of music creation and collaboration.

Amado Espinoza and Pedro Calderon

The goal of this concert is to develop the Andean indigenous values of Ayni and Ayllu – reciprocity and community – through an interactive presentation of Andean and Amazonian instruments, rhythms, and song. Transporting the listener to the magical world of the Andes, Amado and his guest will share how musical instruments have been fundamental in human beings’ relationship to each other and to the environment, and in the well-being of our communities. 

By returning to the spiritual origins of music, I reciprocate in a fundamental relationship to the planet– the primordial breath of the oceans, the sounds of the rainforests; the construction of flutes using the clay of the earth, the fire to transform them and give them purpose, the offerings of music for rituals of Thanksgiving. However, my music is more than folkloric. My spirit is not bound by frontiers or genres. My community is urban, my art is inventive, many of my tools only work if I plug them in. I collaborate with artists of different genres so my mission to promote the dignity of native instruments reaches new ears, cultivating an organic root from the modern to the antique and diversifying our local musical landscape. Embracing technology does not make my intentions less “indigenous”. It enables me to create environments and musical textures familiar both exotic and familiar. I have journeyed throughout indigenous communities in South America to understand the cultural contexts of the instruments I play and use in my compositions. This resonates in my compositional work. There is joy, lament, prayer, nostalgia, empowerment in the songs that I compose. They are introspections on cultural mythologies and injustices of being colonized people. In collaborations rehearsals become journeys to transmit unified intentions more clearly.