Puff Puff Puff Pass: SunYoung Park | Meg Howton | Liz Stensland | Caro Burks

We hope you’ll join us on 3rd Friday, April 19, as Kiosk Gallery presents Puff Puff Puff Pass, an exhibition including collaborative ceramic and mixed media works by SunYoung Park, Meg Howton, Liz Stensland, and Caro Burks.

EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Stumbling through the hazy fog. Hanger 9 terrace next to Carbondale Station puff puff puff pass,a typical summer night in Carbondale in a hazy fog. Sticky, sticky, skin-to-skin, puff puff, and puff pass. Meg, Caro, Liz and SunYoung. Puff. Candlelight and Blue Gatorade. Homemade pickles and Kimchi. Puff. Sitting on tan carpet, spilling seltzer. Puff. Fire and Bugs fly in my ears, sweating and giggling as things crawl in the darkness. Pass. Kiln Dust and pink spray paint. Swinging drinks and glitter slime. Staring into potholes, thinking about the future, Bubble tea… Pumpkin pies from Alabama, creamy whites, crispy chicken, wild overalls from West Virginia, extra kindness and barefoot from South Dakota, and loud laughter, spicy from Masan. They just puff puff pass puff puff pass. Today, they are in Kansas City. Camel puff puff… wait a sec,SunYoung refuses the smoke. Let’s switch to…

The exhibition’s introduction sets the stage for a collaborative and playful exploration of creativity among Meg Howton, Liz Stensland, Caro Burks, and SunYoung Park. Their intellectual bonds, which originated from their meeting at the MFA program at Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, have evolved into a delight-ful friendship. Puff Puff Puff Pass presents a unique collaborative project in which bisque objects travel between Minneapolis, MN, Kansas City, MO, Tuscaloosa, AL, and Richmond, VA, passing from one artist to another in a whimsical relay. SunYoung initiates the journey to Caro, who passes it to Liz, continuing until Meg brings the cycle full circle. In this creative exchange, artists add their personal touch, shaping the pieces with their unique perspectives and styles. The result is a harmonious blend of artistic expression, reflecting the joys of collaboration and the power of shared creativity.

ARTISTS’ RECEPTIONFriday, April 19, 2024, 6-9 pm CSTKiosk Gallery1600 Genessee, Suite 133Kansas City, MO  64102OPEN HOURSSaturdays 12-4 pm & by appointmentShow runs through June 8, 2024HOLIDAY CLOSURESSaturday, May 25 (Memorial Day Weekend)

ARTIST BIOS

SunYoung Park SunYoung Park explores the space between imagination and reality. The use of diverse materials represents her visual language as she explores contrasting surfaces, emphasizing ceramics and mixed media. Park earned her BFA and MFA from Hong-Ik University, Seoul, Korea, and an MFA from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale (2021). She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Park was the resident artist at Clayarch Gimhae Museum in the Ceramic Creative Center (2017). She has participated in Jingdezhen International Ceramic Art Biennale, Jingdezhen, China; 7° Salon international Art Résilience, Musée de Peinture de Saint-Frajou, France; and the Women to Watch exhibition at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO. SunYoung is a 2023 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award Fellow and Awardee of the Byron C. Cohen Award. She is currently a resident artist at Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City, MO.park-sunyoung.comMeg HowtonMeg Howton began her young career making mud pies in the iron-rich Alabama clay. Howton received an award at the ripe old age of 6 for showing creativity by spinning a Q-tip® while painting a plate of the paper variety. This set her sights on a career in the art field, so she attended The University of Alabama where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Ceramics and Photography in 2015. She then relocated to Gainesville, Florida where she completed her post-baccalaureate at the University of Florida in 2018. Meg attended Southern Illinois University where she received her Master of Fine Arts. She now is a full-time Instructor of ceramics at The University of Alabama. Meg recently led a workshop at the 2024 Alabama Clay conference. meghowton.netLiz Stensland  Liz Stensland is a mixed-media artist living in the Twin Cities area. Liz works for Textile Center, a national fiber art center, and is a studio artist working at Northern Clay Center. Her work focuses on nuances within domestic spaces through lighting, mechanisms, and space. Liz works with textiles and ceramics in her sculptures as she enjoys the duality that they share together physically as well as metaphorically. Her work has been shown in exhibitions nationally as well as internationally at the XIV International Biennial of Ceramics of Manises in Valencia, Spain.elizabethstensland.comCaro Burks  Caro Burks uses mixed-media sculpture and installation to explore themes of sentimentality, storytelling, and symbolism in decorative culture. Caro received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015, held a post-baccalaureate position at the University of Arkansas from 2015-2017, and received her MFA from Southern Illinois University in the Spring of 2020. Burks has been awarded residencies at Penland School of Crafts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center and the New Harmony Clay Project. She has participated in solo, juried and group exhibitions nationally. Her work is currently on display at the Marvin Cone Gallery as a Kocher Visiting Artist Fellow, in the two-person exhibition Dusty Old Darkness.caropradosburks.com