“GET WILD” - Rachelle Gardner Roe & "Beyond the Void" - M. Willie Garcia 

Rachelle Gardner-Roe

 

GET WILD presents the Kansas City debut of select paintings from Rachelle Gardner-Roe’s recent solo museum exhibition. Referring to “rewilding,” a form of ecological restoration, here the artist suggests that a rewilding of the human spirit is a vital step to reposition our sense of being of nature, rather than separate. Influenced by her meticulously-detailed fiber work, the paintings represent a rewilding of her own artistic practice, generating the freedom to explore color and form with gestural spontaneity and immediacy.

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Artist Biography:

Rachelle Gardner-Roe has been working as an artist in the Kansas City area since the mid-2000s. She grew up in the rural countryside outside of Adrian, MO, on the native land of the Osage, Kickapoo, Kaskaskia and Sioux tribes. She received a Bachelors in Interior Architecture from Kansas State University in 2004. This background in design allowed her to explore various media through a lifelong interest in the fine arts. Her emphasis in furniture design influenced her path in sculpture while her family’s fateful adoption of three sheep in the 1990s eventually led her down the road of fibers and a practice rooted in the land.

Gardner-Roe has been commissioned for private and public projects, notably for the Kansas City International Airport, St. Teresa’s Academy, Art in the Loop Foundation and A.I.R Gallery of New York. Her work is in collections such as The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, The City of Overland Park, KS, The City of Kansas City, MO, and American Century Investments as well as various private collections. She is a Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Resident Alumni and a multi-grant recipient from the ArtsKC Regional Arts Council. She has exhibited regionally and nationally, including The Mulvane Art Museum, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, The Bunker Center for the Arts, and The Chautauqua Institution, among others. Having spent many years living on the Kansas side of the state line, she now lives and works in Kansas City, MO, with a studio in the historic West Bottoms.

 

M. Willie Garcia

 

Beyond the Void is a series of works that investigates the unknown, both cosmically and within the self. Drawing on the realms of quantum mechanics, cosmology and astrophysics, I explore the complexity of queer identity and the intricacies of human existence. This exploration allows me to contemplate humanity’s position within the vastness of the universe. This exhibition transformed the gallery into a site of temporal and spatial dislocation, inviting viewers to reorient their understanding of existence as it relates to deep time, approximately 13.8 billion years.

 

Bio: 
M. Willie Garcia, a California native now based in Kansas City, MO. Garcia’s work transcends traditional print media working in screen printing, mokuhanga, projection-mapping, animation, and large-scale installations. Inspired by a blend of science, science fiction, and their queer identity, Garcia explores these themes through color abstraction and nonrepresentational forms. Holding a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and an M.F.A. from the University of Kansas, Garcia has earned acclaim regionally, notably exhibiting at the Nerman Contemporary Museum of Art, Des Moines Art Center and internationally in Japan and Spain. Garcia and recently served as the 2024/2025 Grant Wood Fellow at the University of Iowa.