Meet our artists

Elaine McMilian

Elaine McMilian's instrument is her voice, consisting of flesh, air, and spirit. There's physicality to one's voice, a set of muscles, a literal anatomical structure to the singing voice. Singers know this even if they don't know it.

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Paul Anthony Smith

Paul Smith is one of those artists whose figurative paintings are of a style that examines the rituals and hierarchy of our society. It takes a sharp mind to see something interesting in the ordinary.

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Diallo Javonne French

Diallo Javonne French dwells upon composition, writing scripts, and meeting people. His art calls for observation, not in a judgmental way, but in an open way, with eyes wide open and an engaging smile. He reminds himself often that filmmaking is fun..."we're making movies, people!" It's important to "be nice", he believes, for his art is about people, after all.

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Jane Gotch

What's it like to be human? How does it feel to be human? Artists ache to define this sense for themselves and as a result something happens to an audience when they do. Jane Gotch dances and choreographs others. She often begins with space; spaces you and I walk by, or sit near.

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Cory Imig

Cory Imig's current studio work is a process of organizing and categorizing information. Meticulously noting everyday situations, Imig allows the viewer, and herself, to reconsider the mundane and imagine the infinite possibilities of association.

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Calder Kamin

For the past 2 years, Calder Kamin has acted as the Gallery Coordinator of Red Star Studios. In June, 2011 she accepted a position with the career services office at the Kansas City Art Institute. She is responsible for the professional practice lecture series and professional development workshops. Calder spends much of her time online to promote her work and ideas.

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Erin McGrane

Erin McGrane grew up in Spencer Iowa and continued her growing in Kansas City, graduating from the University of Missouri in Kansas City. She kinda lives in Kansas City now when she's not in Chicago. She and Jeff Freling masquerade as Victor and Penny now. Masquerade's probably the wrong word here. They are Victor and Penny. Erin sings, Jeff sings, Erin plays ukulele (the one her Dad gave to her). Jeff plays guitar. Together, they create a sound that sounds as if it's drifting out of an old Zenith radio. See Erin act in the upcoming films "Nailbiter" and "Two Sisers". Hear Erin sing and watch her move with the difficult-to-genre-label musical sort-of cabaret theatre ensemble called Alacartoona which I hear will reprise their vexing shtick in October 2011.

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Cheryl & Heinrich Toh

Ever since she was child, Cheryl Toh always had a knack for creative problem-solving. She came from a family of "creative do-it-yourselfers" and was influenced and encouraged to become handy with tools and construction...Heinrich Toh also came from a fine arts and crafts background. A painting major in his native Singapore, Heinrich arrived in the United States in 1997 with just 2 suitcases.

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Tony Ladesich

Tony was born and bred in the Kansas City area. He graduated from Center Senior High School in 1991 and from UMKC in 2000 where he designed his own film studies program before there was a program. He is the owner of Mile Deep Films and Television in Kansas City. You can also find him on musical stages around town singing his songs and telling stories...as he does.

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Meredith Host

For ceramacist Meredith Host, funky = function. Through her daily practice, Host has figured out how the gross and the everyday are fodder for design and longevity.

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Ann Reckling

For Ann Reckling, rust never sleeps. The onetime television writer of the hit drama "St. Elsewhere" has turned her talents to finding the beauty in rusted detritus. Ann makes art that glorifies the wisdom of age and finds a second life in deterioration.

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Stanton Fernald

As an artist, industrial designer and medical illustrator, Stanton Fernald's interactive disciplines bridge the scientific community with the creative arts.

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Jeff Harshbarger

Voted KC's Best Bassist by Pitch magazine in 2007, Jeff has had quite an eclectic career. Jeff has recorded and performed across the globe with such varied groups as Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Bobby Watson, Curtis Fuller, Forever Tango, Eugene Chadborne, Milt Abel, Tango Lorca, Jimmy Carl Black, Angela hagenbach, Krystle Warren, Snuff Jazz, Brad Cox, Nathan Granner, Ghosty, The People's Liberation Big Band of the Greater Kansas City Area, Jazz Discharge and Forrest Whitlow. He is a co-founder of Tzigane Music, an artist-run collective and record label, and is the curator of Jeff Harshbarger Presents: An Alternative jazz Series, promoting new improvised music in Kanas City. Jeff has recieved numerous grants, and awards, including tThe Kennedy Center's Bett Carter Fellowship, the Steans Institute Fellowship and the Professional Development Grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. Most recently, he was an Artist-in-Residence for Escape to Create, in Seaside, Florida.

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Jose Faus

Jose Faus doesn't limit himself to just one discipline or idea. Committed to his community and his art, Jose brings the two together to integrate his work as a painter, poet and writer.

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Heidi Van

Heidi Van – Actor/Creator, Co-Founder/Curator of Fishtank Performance Studio, Producing Artistic Director of HYBRID: a theatre collective, dubbed The Queen of Dead Art Forms by Alan Schuerstel – is best known for performing and creating pieces in the red nose clown style. Van is a 2010 recipient of the MASTERMIND AWARD, a Charlotte Street Outstanding Generative Performing Artist Finalist and a ArtsKC Fund Inspiration Grant recipient. Van's most widely produced original clown play is The Coppelia Project: A Clown Ballet in Three Acts that debuted at the 2008 Kansas City Fringe Festival.

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John Davis Carroll

John Davis Carroll is a multi-faceted artist whose disciplines include painting and video construction. Creating work that touches on how Man interacts with his environment, it is a keyhole to the way we often get caught up in occupying ourselves.

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Lisa Cordes

Lisa Cordes has been a member of the Kansas City arts community for 25 years, working as an artist, administrator, and educator. For the past decade she has served in administrative leadership positions at Mid-America Arts Alliance, Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey, and Heart of America Shakespeare Festival. She is currently a resident artist at the Fishtank Performance Studio where she performs, curates and consults. In 2009-10, Cordes created the “We Read It So You Don’t Have To” series of book readings, debuted an original work, “American Alphabet” in collaboration with Damian Torres Botello, and developed “Prop 8 On Trial” for which she received a Rocket Grant from the Charlotte Street Foundation, and an ArtsKC Inspiration Grant. Cordes' collaboration with visual artists began with Lester Goldman in the 1990s creating performances for two Goldman exhibitions. She has been guest lecturer in performance at the Kansas City Art Institute and taught for their high school summer residency program. As a professional playwright, she has written several plays commissioned by The Coterie Theater, including scripts for their award-winning Dramatic AIDS Education Project. As a spoken word artist, Cordes has opened for musicians John Cale and Jello Biafra, and journalist Molly Ivins. Cordes has served on panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council and the Charlotte Street Foundation, and has consulted for the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

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Maria Creyts

Maria Creyts, known professionally as mariaurora, is a multi-media artist whose disciplines cover painting, sculpture, illustration and digital design, to name a few.

Mariaurora is learning how an artist can continue making interesting, provocative work and get it to galleries and in front of the public – wherever that may be - using the latest technologies and strategies.

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Robert Quackenbush

Robert Quackenbush is a painter, printmaker, and sculptor working full-time in the Kansas City area. Since coming to the mid-west four and a half years ago his work has been exhibited in twelve one-man shows and numerous group shows. In 2006 he was invited to join the Hand Print Press, a group of printmakers working out of UMKC. One of his prints has been curated into an exhibition “The Hand Print Press at 15,” which will be hosted by the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art beginning in December, 2009. In 2007, SPACES Magazine did a full length artists profile article about Robert and his work. The Kansas City Artists Coalition will host a one-man exhibition of Robert’s newest work in their Mallin Gallery beginning in March, 2010. On the immediate horizon is a collaborative effort with the sculptor Reilly Hoffman to create a body of work focused on images common to both of their styles...namely, feathers and wings.

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Lisa Lala

Known for her luscious, expressive oil paintings on glass and canvas, Lisa Lala became well known for her Birds on a Wire series. Other series include the Hill series, Ferris Wheel series, and most recently, the List series, all which often include her doodles, drawings and stream-of-conscious writings sketched into the paint with a carpenter’s pencil.

With over ten sell-out shows since her launch in 2003, Lala’s work is now in many notable public, private and museum collections. Lala is represented by galleries in six cities: Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, LA/Laguna Beach, Little Rock, and her hometown Manhattan, KS. She has also exhibited in Belizian Arts, Central America, and Anthem Gallery in NYC.

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Lisa Marie Evans

Lisa Marie Evans' work is shown internationally and varies in form from feature length documentary to short animation to public art installation. Evans currently works as an instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute, the University of Missouri Kansas City and Artists, INC, a professional development course for artists. She has been a selected artist for Creative Capital's Professional Development Workshop for Artists, the Arts Council of Metropolitan Kansas City's Inspiration Grant, Avenue of the Arts in Kansas City and Boynton Beach, and Charlotte Street Foundation's Urban Culture Project Studio Residency Program For Visual Artists.

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