KC Studio Honors

Karen Brown, now assistant professor of dance at UMKC Conservatory, began dancing professionally at the age of 17, hired by the legendary Arthur Mitchell for Dance Theatre of Harlem. She danced with DTH from 1973 to 1995 as principal ballerina. Her career evolved into a variety of positions in leadership, instruction and administration, taking her around the country, and she’s never stopped dancing. In her first semester at UMKC, she introduced Reinforced Motor Function, developed by Sean McLeod, an emotional-based technique that is scientifically grounded to create healthier dancing for longer careers.

Elizabeth Stehling is one of 10 awardees of the Charlotte Street Foundation’s “Art Where You’re At: Socially Distant Art Projects” grant created in response to the lockdowns due to COVID-19. In “PAUSE,” created for Art Where You’re At, Stehling examines her own experience and explores the idea of “What if?” A former Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident, Stehling has created works for Art in the Loop, Plug Projects and the Kansas City Art Institute. Previous honors include the Robert Altman Emerging Artist Award and the KC FilmFest International 2020 Best Heartland Documentary Award.

Since graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2016 with an emphasis in painting, Bo Hubbard has been going with the flow while making key shifts in his art practice. With more than a dozen tufted rugs under his belt, Hubbard began showing and selling them in group exhibitions at Plug Projects and Charlotte Street Foundation’s La Esquina gallery. His rugs got him noticed by Bruce Hartman at The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, who would host “queer abstraction,” a groundbreaking exhibition originated at the Des Moines Art Center from November 2019 to March 2020.

Independence-based poet Maryfrances Wagner was the recipient of a 2020 Missouri Arts Award — an honor that recognizes individuals, organizations and communities that have made significant contributions to the state’s cultural and artistic life. “Poetry has always been the way for me to express myself best,” said Wagner, whom William Trowbridge — former Missouri Poet Laureate — praised for poems that “consistently engage with their insight and compassion.”

David Wayne Reed might best be described as a genre-busting conceptual artist whose work defies easy classification. Playwright, actor, filmmaker, storyteller — he wears these hats and others. A founding member of Late Night Theatre, in recent years, Reed has worked as a solo creative artist, charting his own path and defining his own unique sense of aesthetics. In early 2019, he was one of two people to win a Generative Performing Artist Award from the Charlotte Street Foundation.

Kansas City spoken word pioneer, educator and minister Sheri “Purpose” Hall is a recipient of a 2019 Charlotte Street Generative Artist Award. She is author of three books, including poetry, epistles and a collection of writings titled “Black Girl Shattered.” A dedicated social activist, Hall has been a steady and consistent fixture in Kansas City’s vibrant spoken word scene, receiving numerous awards and accolades along the way. Hall was the 2016 ArtsKC Inspiration breakfast featured artist and a 2017 ArtsKC Inspiration Grant recipient. She has been a founder of and worked with many local organizations, including Arsyn Press, East of Red ArtHouse, KC Poet Tree, poetry for Personal Power and For the Win slam team.

Born in Russia and raised in KC, award-winning violinist Maria Ioudenitch appeared as featured soloist in the Kansas City Symphony January 2019 “Russian Romantics” program. Ioudenitch first played with the Kansas City Symphony when she was just 16 years old, as winner of the 2012 Young Artist Competition. To this day, she remembers it was one of her fondest musical moments, performing Aram Khachaturian’s Concerto for Violin and Concerto.

 In 2011, Ben Gulley walked onto the stage of the Muriel Kauffman Theatre at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and sang the first notes that ever graced the finished space. He performed “Nessun Dorma” from “Turandot” with then Lyric Opera of Kansas City artistic director and conductor Ward Holmquist, accompanying. Since that day, Gulley has become a tenor in demand. His singing has taken him all over the globe, from Germany, to Italy, to Egypt, to Carnegie Hall.

 In January 2018, Angelica Sandoval’s porcelain sculptures were showcased in a site-specific installation at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Her “Empyreal,” encompassing roughly four-dozen individual slip-cast porcelain sculptures suspended from the ceiling, is included in “Women to Watch | Metals,” an exhibit presented in cooperation with the Kansas City Chapter of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). A Kansas native, Sandoval has taught sculpture and ceramics for 13 years at Johnson County Community College. She has received two ArtsKC Inspiration grants, one in 2012 for “Celestial Bodies,” an installation at BNIM’s 10@10 Exhibition Space, and the other in 2014, for Brazin’ Mavens, a traveling welding workshop for young artists.

Over the past decade and a half, Vanessa Severo has emerged as one of the hardest-working actresses in Kansas City, appearing in “Lot’s Wife” and “Cabaret” at KC Rep, “Venus in Fur” at Unicorn Theatre and “Annapurna” and “Blackbird” at The Living Room. And much more. Severo played in “The Miracle Worker” at The Coterie, “Black Pearl Sings” and “West Side Story” for Spinning Tree Theatre, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” with Kansas City Actors Theatre and “Twelfth Night” with the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. In February 2017, Severo, in association with KC Rep, was awarded a Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship for Exceptional Merit.

In March 2017, the Charlotte Street Foundation announced its selection of eight artists to create works for the 2017 Missouri Bank Crossroads Artboards, a pair of double-sided billboards at 125 Southwest Blvd. One of the eight artists was Michael Converse, a veteran KC artist known for his signature collage style of mixing cartoon drawings and abstract painting into artworks that are rarely in a fixed state. The Michael Converse artboards were on view from June through August 2017.

Kansas City has been a special place for jazz for nearly 100 years. Since its inception in 1997, the Charlotte Street Foundation has noticed and honored this heritage, most recently by awarding a 2016 $10,000 Generative Performing Artist Award to pianist, composer, educator and band leader Eddie Moore. Moore is a popular and well-known presence in Kansas City, regularly performing with his band, Eddie Moore and the Outer Circle, at notable local venues including The Blue Room, Green Lady Lounge, and Yardley Hall at Johnson County Community College.

Carol Zastoupil has developed an enthusiastic following for her rhythmic fantasy landscapes. And no wonder. With their bright colors and verdant vistas of undulating natural forms, they seem to hold a promise of peace and happiness. Sales were brisk from Zastoupil’s exhibit, “New Paintings,” at The Brick in 2012. They continued steadily with her second one-person show, hailed by critic Elisabeth Kirsch as “dreamy, gentle, even seductive,” at the Steeple of Light Gallery in 2014. In December 2015 the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art purchased Zastoupil’s Hidden Lake Road from her solo exhibit at Todd Weiner Gallery. The acquisition followed the museum’s earlier purchase of one of her “bonsai” paintings from a June 2015 group show at Main Street Gallery.

From PorchFestKC to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, Amado Espinoza and Karen Lisondra have boldly enlivened KC’s cultural and arts scene since moving here from Bolivia in March 2014. In that same year, Espinoza was named an Artist in Residence in the Charlotte Street Foundation’s Studio Residency Program. Espinoza plays a myriad of instruments, including all types of flutes, guitars and drums. He excels in styles ranging from traditional Andean to rock, opera and African and Arabic rhythms, which he studied in Argentina and Peru. Espinoza also won a scholarship to the 2015 Folk Alliance International Conference, where he and Karen also performed.