Still Life of Men - Brenda Gilliam

January 10 - February 15, 2025

Opening Reception: January 17| 6:30-8:30 pm

Curated Gallery

Over the years Brenda Gilliam has collected thousands of images to use as inspiration for future paintings, grouped by subject matter. These images are comprised of her photos and sketches, images from friends and family, clippings from print material and most recently social media.


The choice of subject matter was not so much about the man as emphasis, but the man as representative of humanity - what we do, how we feel, how we live day-to-day presented in Gilliam’s signature style.


Chaotic and Harmonious - Ladan Bahmani and Brian Patrick Franklin

April 18 - May 24, 2025

Curated Gallery

Opening Reception: April 18 | 6:30-8:00 pm

Chaotic and Harmonious, an exhibition of the collaborative work of Ladan Bahmani and Brian Patrick Franklin, contemplates the role of repetition in mass communication and its influence on the creation and destruction of meaning. Abstract text and short fiction work together to present a narrative leading through the entire mixed-media installation, as patterns and imagery borrowed from illuminated manuscripts in the artists’ Persian and Irish backgrounds instill the language with a weight of meaning, reverence, and authority intrinsic to those historical books. 

Over the course of each paragraph, recognizable letterforms rise and fall from fields of noise to create short phrases just barely decipherable. As the text oscillates between being legible and being illegible, words continually appear, break down, dissolve, and transform into new phrases. Each message stands alone in its ambiguous intent, while at the same time, connecting with the phrases in neighboring works. As viewers move from one composition to another, the phrases they uncover string together to form a unique poetry of their path and point toward the collective power in language and meaning. While the disruptions in each letterform disconnect us from the language that we are familiar with, the repeated structure of the text provides just enough clues to encourage the reader to decode each now-abstract phrase. 


‘living- language- land’ Inspired

April 18 - May 24, 2025

Ramp Gallery

Opening Reception: April 18 | 6:30-8:00 pm

SAQA KS-MO-OK Regional members (primary and secondary) were asked to select at least one word and create one or more art quilts inspired by that word based on their research and creative voice. Works were limited to a dimension combination of 12” and/or 24”, either 2D or 3D. Many people signed up for multiple words. In the end, we collected at least two art quilts per each of the 26 words, resulting in a total of 54 artworks. A total of 20 artists from 7 different states participated.