Fancy This
From mid-May when summer is drifting in until it’s only an ebbing memory in mid-October, Fancy This will be moored on a small sand beach in City Market Park.
When her painted sails swell you can daydream a voyage to who knows where – perhaps to St. Lou’… or maybe N’Orleans and then on to Nassau… and across the wide sea to the tip of Africa.
Fancy This cues us in to the Missouri River, out of sight, yet flowing steadily just a couple of city blocks north. From where have its waters come and to where will they take your imagination ?
When I first came upon the idea of a boat such as this, I was reflecting on a model ship in a bottle with sails of African fabric, “Nelson’s Ship…” by Yinka Shonibare – exhibited in Trafalgar Square, London, as well as the richly colored sailboats drawn by Odilon Redon. I thought, too, of a poem my mother read to me when I was a girl about three children who sailed off in a wooden shoe.
Location
City Market Park is located at 3rd and Main Street, directly west of the City Market.
Bio
Maria Ogedengbe is a graduate of Yale University School of Art and her studio is located in Kansas City’s West Bottoms. In 2016 she completed “Heaven’s Net” for the Olathe Downtown Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit, a swinging sculpture titled “Sis !” that was displayed in Roeland Park last summer, and “Love Apple Coloring Test,” a collaborative quilt made with Topeka elementary students. Her work, “Painting Contest: MO real,” was exhibited on billboards in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District in 2015 and the same imagery, presented as a photo diptych, won First Place at the 2016 Missouri State Fair’s Missouri Top 50.
website:
http://www.mariaurora.net
artwork references:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/odilon-redon/the-mysterious-boat-1?utm_source=returned&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=referral
