"After You've Gone Away" Art by Caleb Harman

“After You’ve Gone Away” is an immersive painting exhibit.  A solo exhibit painted by, Kansas City Artist Caleb Harman. History is easy to forget. The demands of modern living can easily draw our attention away from the places we inhabit and have been inhabited by various people for thousands of years. Many lives have come and gone in the streets, buildings, and parks we use on a daily basis. Yet, many people go about their daily tasks without any consideration to those that have walked the same paths decades before. Some locations we interact with are more storied than others yet they all have something to say. Some of the narratives are benign and inform us of a bygone era. Other stories can bend the sense of societal progress revealing terrifying observations.“After You’ve Gone Away” is an installation exploring the viewer\’s relationship with the history of the city surrounding them. Choosing buildings and locations with degrees of historical importance the body of work pushes the viewer to question why these places were chosen and what can be learned by exploring the stories connected to the images.  He takes viewers on a tour through some of Kansas City’s most historical buildings and landscapes. Caleb focuses on retelling the darker and more eerie history of our neighborhoods. ⁠This exhibit starts in the gallery but, is intended to take you on both, an existential, and literal revisiting of the past. ⁠He gives the street addresses or the precise latitude and longitude of each location. You can then go visit these places for yourself, or type them into Google maps.  ⁠⁠The large looming tapestries are paintings of beautifully haunting landmarks such as; Sauer Castle, The Robert Berdella lot, and The Kansas City Workhouse. ⁠⁠These dilapidated houses are surrounded by smaller “fall-scapes” depicting the viny overgrown woods typical to Missouri. ⁠Each landscape is painted at dusk. ⁠⁠This exhibit will be available for viewing through June. ⁠