JESSICA KINCAID . TRACY KRUMM . MARCIE MILLER GROSS . SONIÉ JOI RUFFIN . DEBRA SMITH

People in cities across the nation are beginning to realize what many of Metropolitan Kansas City’s more than two million residents have known for years — that our city has cultivated one of the most vibrant and interesting arts cultures in the United States. This notion has been helped recently by positive articles about Kansas City’s art-scene in several high-profile, national periodicals as well as evidence of real progress on the ground.

Since 2007, a $5 billion renaissance has transformed the cultural infrastructure of Kansas City with projects such as the recently opened Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the Kansas City Ballet Bolender Center, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s Bloch Building expansion, Johnson County Community College’s Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Sprint Center, and the Power & Light Entertainment District. The arts run deep within Kansas City’s bloodstream, however, and at the core of this ecosystem is a community of more than 6,000 artists

working in a (largely) non-competitive environment of mutual support across media and disciplines.

It is also the city’s rich history as a place of legendary jazz, culinary BBQ lineage, infamous outlaws, a Hallmark Cards creative workforce, and its former role as a national garment industry hub that help to make this such a fertile place for the imagination.

The fact that Kansas City was second in size to New York City in the commercial garment industry of the early 20th century remains significant, even as evidence of this is sometimes difficult to find. (The factories have long since closed, but this building stock later made the city’s residential loft-conversion and gallery-district booms possible.)

The legacy of this industry also lives on in a series of new and ongoing projects: an oral-history archive spearheaded

JESSICA KINCAID . TRACY KRUMM . MARCIE MILLER GROSS . SONIÉ JOI RUFFIN . DEBRA SMITH

“You clearly live in a land of amazing artists…

all of the Kansas City finalists are first-rate.”

— Kathryn Wat, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

GREATER KANSAS CITY AREA COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS 2012 JURORS:• MARCUS CAIN [Artist; Director/Curator Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art]• RACHEL BLACKBURN COZAD [Director/CEO Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Independent Art Appraiser; Juror, 2010 Women to Watch: Painting] KANSAS CITY JEWISH MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART 2012 NOMINATION/SELECTION COMMITTEE:• KATE HACKMAN [Co-Director Charlotte Street Foundation/Urban Culture Project; Curator; Writer]• ANNE PEARCE [Artist; Director of the Greenlease Gallery, Rockhurst University; Art Instructor, Rockhurst University; Finalist, 2010 Women to Watch: Painting]• JASON POLLEN [Artist; Professor and former Chair of Fiber Department, Kansas City Art Institute]• RAECHELL SMITH [Director/Curator of the H&R Block Artspace of the Kansas City Art Institute]• ARZIE UMALI [Artist; Curator; Assistant Director, Women’s Center, University of Missouri-Kansas City]

JESSICA KINCAID . TRACY KRUMM . MARCIE MILLER GROSS . SONIÉ JOI RUFFIN . DEBRA SMITH

“You clearly live in a land of amazing artists…

all of the Kansas City finalists are first-rate.”

— Kathryn Wat, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC

by Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art’s (KCJMCA) own pioneering Founder Sybil Kahn; the Kansas City Museum’s massive 20th century clothing and garment collection; the Kansas City Garment District Museum; the annual 18th Street Fashion Show, which promotes emerging local designers and artists; and the city’s international relationship to the world of fiber and textiles. (Kansas City Art Institute and Kansas State University faculty members organized and launched the Surface Design Association, in 1976, which has grown into an international community of fiber and textiles educators, and Kansas City later served as a regular host of this biennial conference.)

These become compelling reasons for the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) to offer its own fitting acknowledgment of this aspect of our community’s creative culture. Founded in 1981 by Wilhelmina Cole Holladay and her husband Wallace Holladay, and opened in 1987 in Washington, DC, the mission of NMWA is to redefine traditional histories of art, and it is the only museum dedicated to celebrating the diverse artistic achievements of women.

Born from this forward-thinking revision of art history is NMWA’s biennial Women To Watch program, an international exhibition series that focuses on different media and emerging and underrepresented women artists from states and countries in which NMWA maintains outreach committees. Curators from these respective regions are invited to jury a selection of five artists to serve as finalists, from whom NMWA curators select one artist to represent that region in an international group exhibition in Washington, DC.

Our own Greater Kansas City Area Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts enjoys an

especially long and active relationship with “National” as it is affectionately called, through leadership from such visionaries as Jeannette Nichols, Committee Chair Emeriti, Philomene Bennett, 2006 Juror and 1987 Inaugural Exhibition: Group Show participant in Washington, DC, and a host of active members and participating artists. KCJMCA is pleased to organize the 2012 biennial Women to Watch competition, which offers a focus on fiber and textiles. A Nomination/Selection Committee comprised of five local arts professionals identified 24 amazing candidates from which Jessica Kincaid, Tracy Krumm, Marcie Miller Gross, Sonié Joi Ruffin, and Debra Smith were selected as finalists to participate in Women to Watch 2012: Focus on Fiber & Textiles, a group exhibition in KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery. (Additionally, NMWA Curators selected Tracy Krumm to represent Kansas City in NMWA’s international group exhibition this November 2012, in Washington, DC.)

Diverse interpretations of fiber/textiles is just one of the defining characteristics of this Epsten Gallery exhibition, a testament to the broadening of a dialogue beyond the artificial boundary of the art-versus-craft conversation that seemed to dominate this field in the late 20th century. We may find that conceptual concerns and commercial applications are not mutually exclusive, but may comingle within a single work, while artists are just as likely to possess a multilingual capacity to understand many materials and processes.

Using the medium of glass seed beads and silk thread, Jessica Kincaid creates literal swatches of fabric that become jewel-like drawings of optical phenomena as experienced from states of wakefulness and imaginative dreaming. Through these faithful recreations, Kincaid takes us into a realm where life’s delicate balance and a sense

of spirituality are woven together and made manifest in the depiction of ice-covered branches, sunlight dappled autumnal trees, or the moment of a flower’s blossom. In realizing this work, Kincaid also acknowledges the futility of our collective attempts to capture the wonders of the world thus making her work all the more potent.

Tracy Krumm employs a rigorous process and an industrious sensibility in her crocheted sculptures that lend each piece a craft-like sense of familiarity, while simultaneously calling into question just such an interpretation. In her elemental use of metals, and both found and forged objects, Krum explores the balances of power among material relationships while exploring issues of gender, domesticity, physical and mental labor, and what is constituted as the corporeal and essential self.

Informed by systems of organic nature and the built environment, Marcie Miller Gross creates site-specific installations and discreet objects that share a common language with design and architecture, while also acknowledging attempts to locate the human figure within such mediated environments. Whether its through her use of industrial fabrics and mechanical process to create modular building blocks, or in repurposing the sewn seams of deconstructed sweaters to create site-specific and improvisational wall drawings, Gross reminds us that we are both a creator and product of our own world.

The soulfulness of a Sonié Joi Ruffin narrative quilt is infectious — it’s symbolism and artistry gets into your blood and bones until you can’t help but feel part of her tactile universe. Through her use of custom-designed and appropriated textile prints, hand-piecing, and hand- and machine-stitched drawing, Ruffin tells stories about the contemporary African American experience, from her family’s life in the Midwest to universal themes of politics,

religion, and spiritual freedom. Each of her works is laden with a deep personal mythology and reverence for a family tradition of quilt making that reaches back through four generations.

Whether it’s a threadbare handkerchief or richly pigment-dyed kimono silk, fabric possesses an ability to tell a story about its intended owner. Debra Smith coaxes out these emotional discoveries in a series of improvisational patchwork pieces that encompass traditions of drawing, painting and fiber/textiles. Utilizing all manner of found textiles, Smith cuts, pieces and stitches together fabrics that offer clues to different cultures, functionalities, and genders, in variations that become tapestries of fragmented identities.

— Marcus Cain, Executive Director/Curator

Images above, left to right: Jessica Kincaid: icy branches, 2010, glass beads, silk thread, 10 x 14 inches (courtesy the artist); Tracy Krumm: Cone (Sleeve), crocheted metals, found and forged steel, pigments, patina, 34 x 5.5 x 7 inches (courtesy the artist and Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art); Marcie Miller Gross: Slab (6 and 5), 2011, industrial felt, 17.5 x 84 x 6 inches (courtesy the artist); Sonié Joi Ruffin: The Blue Room, 2009, hand pieced variety of African fancy print fabrics, mixed media, 58 x 63 inches (courtesy the artist); Debra Smith: Release of Time Series #3, 2010, pieced vintage silk, 27 X 22 inches (courtesy of the artist)

2012 WOMEN TO WATCH GREATER KANSAS CITY NOMINEES

MIKI BAIRD

DEBBIE BARRETT-JONES

JENNIFER BOE

NEDRA BONDS

SANDY CAHILL

KIM EICHLER-MESSMER

LINDA FILBY-FISHER

JENNIE FREDERICK

MINDY GOODMAN

ERIKA LYNNE HANSON

TANYA HARTMAN

HADLEY JOHNSON

JESSICA KINCAID

TRACY KRUMM

JANET KUEMMERLEIN

KE-SOOK LEE

ANNE LINDBERG

MARCIE MILLER GROSS

EUGENIA ORTIZ

RACHEL ROLON

SONIÉ JOI RUFFIN

DEBRA SMITH

GERRY TRILLING

SUSAN WHITE

(Nominees listed corresponding with images, left to right, top to bottom.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art wishes to thank the five artists featured in this exhibition, all the nominees, and members of the Nomination/Selection Committee for their participation in this competition. KCJMCA would also like to acknowledge the staff of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, Members of the Greater Kansas City Area Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art for their partnership in this program. KCJMCA wishes to thank H&R Block Foundation and the Michael J. Stern Foundation for the Arts for their specific support of this program as well as Herb & Bonnie Buchbinder, Francis Family Foundation, Friends of KCJMCA, Gould Charitable Foundation, Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City, Helen & Sam Kaplan Memorial Fund, Lighton Foundation, Jackie Slutsky, UrbanSuburban Patrons and Village Shalom for their support of programs in 2012.

Front cover image details, clockwise from top left: Tracy Krumm, Sonié Joi Ruffin, Marcie Miller Gross, Jessica Kincaid, Debra Smith (courtesy the artists)

PAST PRESIDENTSSaul Kass (Of Blessed Memory) . Michael KleinRegina Kort . Larry Meeker . Hugh Merrill

FOUNDERSSybil & Norman (Of Blessed Memory) Kahn

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR EMERITUSEileen Garry

BOARD OF DIRECTORSLynn Intrater, President . Sylvia Augustus, Vice PresidentLynn Schweig, Vice President . Paul Sokoloff, SecretaryPeter Beren, Treasurer . Irene Bettinger . Nicole EmanuelSherry Cromwell-Lacy . Ginny Epsten . James MartinMerry Quackenbush . Barbara Smith . Irma StarrLisa Theiss . Sherman Titens . Shirley White

STAFFMarcus Cain, Executive DirectorBeti Weber Moskowitz, Development DirectorAbby Rufkahr, Administrative Assistant

DONATE | CONTRIBUTE | JOINKCJMCA is a non-for-profit 501(c)3 and a member of the national Council of American Jewish Museums.

Contributions to KCJMCA are tax deductible. Donations may be sent to 5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209.

KCJMCA membership, volunteering and sponsorship opportunities are always available.

www.kcjmca.org

5500 West 123rd Street, Overland Park, KS 66209 Ph: 913.266.8413 | Fx: 913.345.2611 | www.kcjmca.org

Established in 1991, the Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art (KCJMCA) provides innovative art exhibitions and related programming that engage seniors and diverse audiences from all segments of our community to enrich lives and celebrate our common humanity through art. KCJMCA realizes this goal through a cooperative partnership with Village Shalom, an assisted living facility that houses KCJMCA’s Epsten Gallery and through partnerships with local, regional, and national institutions that participate in KCJMCA’s Museum Without Walls exhibition program.

www.nmwa.org