Artworks have appeared at KC Streetcar stops and bloomed across the sides of a streetcar vehicle; a sense of vibrancy has been infused into Downtown KC, and beginning in July, the excitement continues with a series of public performances taking place all across Downtown. The Art in the Loop Foundation is pleased to present an incredible summer revue of performances. For fans of music, dance, acrobatics, and poetry, we are certain that there will be something engaging for everyone. 

For nine years and nine summers, Art in the Loop has been committed to the project of enriching the Downtown KC area. Each year, a question, idea, or context provides parameters to work within. This year, artists and performers responded to the theme “Sustainable” by questioning the various definitions of sustainability, investigating the intersections between art and sustainability, and imagining the ways we can work together to create a more sustainable Downtown. 

There will be three different performance days, all free and open to the public, and each with its own variety of artists and styles. A closing reception will commemorate the summer festivities this fall. 

On July 20th at Oppenstein Park, expect live theatre, electronica jazz fusion, and puppetry. On 816 Day, aerial acrobatics, jazz saxophone, and a genre-bending musical duo will be an exciting spectacle for anyone walking through the City Market. And September 14th, join our guided Art Walk and prepare to break into improvisational dance or enjoy a multi-instrumental one-person band. 

The following is a list of this summer’s performance artists and days. More information about each can be found at our website: www.artintheloop.com.   

Art in the Loop Performance
Wed., July 20, 5:30 – 8:00 p.m. in Oppenstein Park, 12th & Walnut, Kansas City, MO

• Alber: A musician that fuses the styles of synth-heavy electronica and down-tempo modal jazz to create rich soundscapes that describe the multifaceted industrial and musical culture of Kansas City. 
• b.hive theatre: A theatre troop specializing in Playback Theatre, a kind of improvised storytelling technique that reenacts real-life events as told by audience members. Incorporating song, dance, and thoughtful performances to reimagine these stories and to give a platform to express their emotional content.  
• Pollinators Parade: A puppet show of hand-made puppets from playwright, educator, puppeteer, and artist Lavinia Roberts. This specific performance will focus on the loss of managed honey bee populations over the past decade and how, as stewards of our environment, we can help protect our local pollinators. 

816 Day Celebration
Tues., August 16, 5:30–8:00 p.m. at the City Market, 20 E 5th St, Kansas City, MO 

• The Black Creatures: A musical duo whose inspirations range from Robert Glasper to Da Brat. Their blending of genre creates soundscapes as engaging as they are harmonious, and the complex lyrics narrate stories of science fiction as often as they comment on everyday life. 
• Circus Scorpius: A dynamic display of breathtaking physical acrobatics, Kelsey Aicher is an aerial acrobat whose background in screenwriting is expressed in the rich narratives she infuses into her performances. 
• Kyle Jones: A jazz saxophonist who will be performing two compositions by musicians whose artistic ethe are concerned with righting social injustices through music. 

Art Walk + Performances
Wed., September 14, 5:30–8:00 p.m. along the KC Streetcar Route in Downtown KC

• Dancers of a Certain Age by Jeramy Zimmerman: A spontaneous series of dance performances all across the Streetcar stops. Jeramy Zimmerman will be breaking into improvisational dance in response to the different artworks at the different stops before rebounding the Streetcar to do it all over again at the next stop.
• Jass: A singer, multi-instrumentalist, and poet who has been writing, producing, and performing her own music since 2019. Creating a distinct musical sound that is sometimes retro, sometimes contemporary, but always impactful.
• This event will include a tour of the artwork installed at KC Streetcar shelters and on vehicle #806 by the 2022 Art in the Loop visual artists.

All this art and performance will end with our closing reception on November 3rd at the Kansas City Public Library – Central Library. This event will include two more performances: 

• FlamenKCMO will delight and entertain with both traditional and cutting-edge flamenco.

• Natasha Ria El-Scari will present a spoken word performance with drummer Kevin Church Johnson.  

Click here to register for the events. For more information about our first performance day at Oppenstein Park and to register visit www.artintheloop.com. 

The performing artists are selected for the annual program through an online application process open to artists in the Kansas City metropolitan area. A selection panel consisting of local artists, producers, performers, and community members reviewed over 30 applications and selected 11 artist teams.

The 2022 Art in the Loop Project is provided artistic guidance by Kyle Mullins, who is serving in his second year as art director for Art in the Loop. Mullins is a dance artist living and creating in Kansas City, MO. He is the artistic director of his company Cerca Trova, where he creates works of dance theater, and producer of Making Moves, a monthly dance performance series he founded in 2019. He also works as an Artists Services Program Officer at Mid-America Arts Alliance. He is a former Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident. Mullins danced in NYC for ten years before relocating home to Kansas City. He holds an MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

The 2022 Art in the Loop Project is made possible through the generous support of the KC Streetcar Authority, Stinson LLP, UMB Bank, JE Dunn Construction, Academy Bank, and other corporate partners. This project is funded in part by the City of Kansas City, Missouri Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund, as well as by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council, ArtsKC, and the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts – Commerce Bank Trustee.

Project partners include the Downtown Council, Downtown Community Improvement Districts, KC Streetcar, Kansas City Public Library and the Kansas City Art Institute.

For more information about the project and the artists, visit www.artintheloop.com, www.facebook.com/artintheloop, or twitter.com/ArtintheLoop. 

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Contacts:

Art in the Loop
Ann Holliday, Program Director, ann@downtownkc.org, (c) 816-718-1355

Kyle Mullins, Art Director, kylewmullins@gmail.com,  (c) 913-230-0311

 

KC Streetcar

Donna Mandelbaum, Communications & Marketing Director, dmandelbaum@kcstreetcar.org,  816-877-3219

You may have noticed something if you’ve been traveling around Downtown KC today!

The KC Streetcar stops have been ignited with images of the world, the city, a bouquet, and other incredible artworks. An entire KC Streetcar has bloomed, thanks to a young crusader’s green thumb, and a series of public performances are slated for the rest of the year—it is summertime in Kansas City, and Art in the Loop has once again transformed Downtown into a public gallery of art and performance. For nine years, Art in the Loop has been engaged in a mission to “infuse the center of Downtown KC with innovative and engaging temporary art that will refresh, intrigue and entertain our audience of Downtown workers, residents, and visitors.” And this year is no different.

Last night, 150 guests attended the 2022 Kick-Off Event at the Kansas City Public Library – Central Library, and Ann Holliday, the director of Art in the Loop, spoke about the organization’s mission in detail. Art in the Loop creates “an opportunity for local emerging and established artists to increase their audiences and extend their practices.”

Many such artists were in attendance that night, and two of them gave riveting performances. Amado Espinoza and his Junkyard Orchestra gave us a musical tour around the world, both stylistically and with the instruments he used: a classical Arabic flute made out of a broom, an Andean pan-flute made from dried-up markers, a Bolivian guitar made from a cookie tin, and a didgeridoo made out of a vacuum tube. The other performance was by poet Vanessa Aricco, who read from her manuscript On the Cusp of Air and Water, written during her studio residency at the Charlotte Street Foundation. A compelling selection of poetry exerted the necessity for a more conscientious relationship to our natural world. These performances bookended the program, which detailed the new works of art at the streetcar stops, the newly wrapped 806 Streetcar, the public performances this year, and this year’s theme: “Sustainability.” We hope everyone that made it enjoyed the evening, and we hope that everyone will be able to attend the other performances this year.

Continue to check the Art in the Loop website for more details about this year’s upcoming events, as well as information about all of our artists and performers.

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The 2022 Art in the Loop Project is made possible through the generous support of the KC Streetcar Authority, Stinson LLP, UMB Bank, Copaken Brooks, JE Dunn Construction and other corporate partners. This project is funded in part by the City of Kansas City, Missouri Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund, as well as by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council, ArtsKC, and the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts – Commerce Bank Trustee.

Project partners include the Downtown Council, Downtown Community Improvement Districts, KC Streetcar, and the Kansas City Art Institute.

For more information about the project and the artists, visit www.artintheloop.com, www.facebook.com/artintheloop, or twitter.com/ArtintheLoop.

 

The Art in the Loop Foundation invites you to our  Kick-Off event for the 2022 Art in the Loop Project:  Sustainable, on Wednesday, June 22 at 5:30 p.m. at the Kansas City Public Library – Central Library, 14 West 10th Street. The public is invited to join us for an evening of art, music, and dance as we introduce the 2022 visual artists.  We will also announce the 2022 Art in the Loop Performance Series at the kick-off event.  The event is free and open to the public; click here to RSVP.

This year marks the ninth year for the Art in the Loop Project and includes artwork based on photography, painting, digitized illustrations and paintings, and more. The Art in the Loop Project is a curated outdoor exhibition of temporary artworks presented in partnership with the KC Streetcar Authority.  Artists responded to the 2022 theme of “Sustainable” and addressed questions about how one defines sustainability, what are the intersections between art and sustainability and what a sustainable Downtown Kansas City looks like.

The following artists’ works will be displayed at streetcar stops and on one streetcar vehicle from July through October.

Artist and Art Installations:

• Devin Edwards, Darrius’s Garden, on KC Streetcar 806
• DINKC Galicia, Generations, at the Power & Light Southbound Streetcar Stop
• David Wayne Reed, Mother, at the Kauffman Center Southbound Streetcar Stop 
• Jennifer Lapka with A.P. Visual, The Dieynaba Dress, at the Metro Center Northbound Streetcar Stop 
• Raffaela Malazarte, Mahalaga, at the Library Northbound Streetcar Stop  
• Dave Loewenstein, You Are Here, at the Union Station Streetcar Stop
• Sol Anzorena, Take Care of Who Cares For You, at the River Market West Streetcar Stop 

Visit www.ArtintheLoop.com to learn more about the artists and their artworks.

Artists are selected for the annual program through an online application process open to artists in the Kansas City metropolitan area. A selection panel consisting of local artists, curators, educators, and community members reviewed over 40 applications and selected 7 artist teams.

The 2022 Art in the Loop Project is provided artistic guidance by Kyle Mullins, who is serving in his second year as art director for Art in the Loop. Mullins is a dance artist living and creating in Kansas City, MO. He is the artistic director of his company Cerca Trova, where he creates works of dance theater, and producer of Making Moves, a monthly dance performance series he founded in 2019. He also works as an Artists Services Program Coordinator at Mid-America Arts Alliance. He is a former Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident. Mullins danced in NYC for ten years before relocating home to Kansas City. He holds an MFA in Dance from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

The 2022 Art in the Loop Project is made possible through the generous support of the KC Streetcar Authority, Stinson LLP, UMB Bank, Copaken Brooks and other corporate partners. This project is funded in part by the City of Kansas City, Missouri Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund, as well as by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council, ArtsKC, and the Richard J. Stern Foundation for the Arts – Commerce Bank Trustee.

Project partners include the Downtown Council, Downtown Community Improvement Districts, KC Streetcar, and the Kansas City Art Institute.

For more information about the project and the artists, visit www.artintheloop.com, www.facebook.com/artintheloop, or twitter.com/ArtintheLoop.

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Contacts:

Art in the Loop
Ann Holliday, Program Director, ann@downtownkc.org, (c) 816-718-1355
Kyle Mullins, Art Director, kylewmullins@gmail.com,  (c) 913-230-0311

KC Streetcar
Donna Mandelbaum, Communications Director, dmandelbaum@kcstreetcar.org,  816-877-3219

The 2022 Art in the Loop Project: Sustainable call for artists is now available. Visual artists working in two or three dimensions, as well as social practice, are encouraged to apply. Please join us on Tuesday, February 22, at 5:30 for an online information session.

Click here to register for the meeting.

Read the full call for artists at https://www.artintheloop.com/opportunities/

The application requires a written description of your proposal and a short narrative about your goals for public engagement. Stipends will range from $600-$2,500 depending on the category. The deadline for submissions is Monday, March 7, 11:59 CST. Applications must be made online via the application portal.

Questions may be directed to Art in the Loop Art Director, Kyle Mullins, kylewmullins@gmail.com, or Program Director, Ann Holliday, ann@downtownkc.org.

The Kansas City Streetcar Authority is seeking visual artists to engage the community through an exhibition of public artwork along the KC Streetcar route in Downtown Kansas City. In recognition and celebration of Black History, Women’s History, and Black Women’s History months.

The artwork should respond to one or all of these questions:

• What does Black History Month mean to you?
• What does Women’s History Month mean to you?
• What does Black Women’s History Month mean to you?

Through a competitive, open-call process, the KC Streetcar Authority will select local artists to create temporary, two-dimensional artwork to be displayed on 3-5 streetcar station stops. This artwork will be viewed by thousands of KC Streetcar riders and downtowners daily. Selected artists will receive an artist stipend of $500, plus project support to bring the artwork to the streetcar route for this outdoor program.

The deadline to apply is January 31 with the goal to have artwork up by the end of February, early March.  Follow this to learn more and apply: https://kcstreetcar.org/call-for-art-2022/

Additionally, stay tuned for the 2022 Art in the Loop Project Call for Art which will open later next month!