First Look: Six Kansas City Artists to See on August First Friday
- LaRee Durden
- Jul 28
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 31
KANSAS CITY ARTS • AUGUST FIRST FRIDAY 2026
The first thing to notice is the surface.
Graphite pressed until it shines. Thread crossing fabric. Red wax held upright by a white ceramic branch. A snail almost lost beneath leaves made from the same clay.
On Friday, August 7, Kansas City’s smaller galleries will place six artists within walking distance of one another. These are not all first exhibitions. They are current bodies of work, resident presentations and small-room shows where the artist may still be close enough to answer a question.
The descriptions below stay with what can be seen—material, scale, color, edge and density. Whenever the meaning comes from the artist, the artist’s language is set apart below.
FIRST FRIDAY AT A GLANCE
Bunker Center for the Arts — reception begins at 5 p.m.; 1014 E. 19th Street.
Beggars Table Church & Gallery — opening reception 6–9 p.m.; 2010 Baltimore Avenue.
Belger Crane Yard Gallery — First Friday 6–8 p.m.; artist remarks at 6:30 p.m.; 2011 Tracy Avenue.
Kansas City Artists Coalition — dedicated exhibition page lists 5–9 p.m.; the general exhibitions page lists 5–8 p.m.; 3200 Gillham Road.
BRITTANY NORIEGA
Graphite with the weight of architecture
Brittany Noriega is a Kansas City artist and arts organizer working primarily in graphite and charcoal. Her large drawings can make paper feel structural: black fields, pale figures, fine marks and broad areas where the graphite catches light.
Noriega describes the work as concerned with “growth through and after trauma” and with building “large-scale, intricate and ethereal worlds.”
The visual fact is quieter. The figures emerge gradually. From across the room, the drawing may read as shadow; closer, the labor becomes visible.
WHEN First Friday reception begins at 5 p.m. Friday, August 7. The exhibition remains on view through August 30; regular hours are Wednesday–Sunday, noon–6 p.m.
WHERE Parallel Eudaimonia with Micael Elrod, Bunker Center for the Arts, 1014 E. 19th Street.
ARTIST @bmnoriega • EXHIBITION DETAILS
MICAEL ELROD
Fabric, bone and the shape of a reliquary
Micael Elrod is a Kansas City, Kansas, textile artist and sculptor whose work uses cloth, thread, found objects and hand-built forms. Sacred Universal Reliquary layers pale fabric, stitched edges, small bones, shells and plantlike structures into a vertical object with no single obvious front.
Elrod writes that she began the piece to “honor our connection to Mother Earth.” She describes her creative and spiritual practices as “intrinsically linked” and her process as “a ritual.”
Without assigning a fixed meaning, the work can be observed as an accumulation: soft material carrying hard fragments, cream against brown, the handmade beside the found.
WHEN Reception begins at 5 p.m. Friday, August 7. On view through August 30.
WHERE Parallel Eudaimonia, Bunker Center for the Arts, 1014 E. 19th Street.
ARTIST @micael_elrod • PORTFOLIO
JENNY EICKBUSH
Illustration stepping out of the assignment
Jenny Eickbush is an illustrator and theatrical set painter whose background also includes acting and fronting a punk band. Her new exhibition, Who You Say I Am, gathers ten mixed-media paintings around identity and self-worth.
Eickbush describes the collection as looking at “the lies we tell ourselves” and how a person might know their true value.
The published work is saturated and narrative: faces, flowers, costume, symbols and color arranged with the directness of an illustration, but without the obligation to explain itself in one glance.
WHEN Opening reception 6–9 p.m. Friday, August 7.
WHERE Beggars Table Church & Gallery, 2010 Baltimore Avenue.
ARTIST @jennyeickbush • PORTFOLIO • VENUE DETAILS
ERIN DRAKE
A forest floor the span of two hands
Erin Drake is a ceramic artist with a BFA from Bowling Green State University and an MFA from the University of Missouri. She combines stones, fruit, flower buds and foliage with insects or invented animals that nearly disappear into the surrounding forms.
Forest Floor and Snail measures only a few inches across. Wet-looking greens, berry darks and earth browns gather around a snail that is not centered.
Drake calls the practice the “creation of an invented world.”
The scale does something practical: it makes leaning closer part of the viewing.
WHEN First Friday runs 6–8 p.m. Friday, August 7; artist remarks begin at 6:30 p.m. The exhibition remains on view through September 5.
WHERE Proximity and Practice, Belger Crane Yard Gallery, 2011 Tracy Avenue.
ARTIST @erindrake_art • EXHIBITION
ZOEY MCLEOD
White clay, red wax
Zoey McLeod came to ceramics after growing up around her grandfather’s glass shop and later earned a BFA from Indiana University. Her work stays close to handmade objects and the exchange between maker, object and user.
White Tree with Red Candles stands sixteen inches high. The ceramic branches are chalky white; the candles are narrow and red; wax adds a surface able to bend and melt where fired clay cannot.
McLeod says her utilitarian work is intended to “bring joy to small moments in life.”
The candleholder is domestic in function. Its branching silhouette keeps the object slightly unresolved.
WHEN First Friday runs 6–8 p.m.; artist remarks begin at 6:30 p.m. On view through September 5.
WHERE Proximity and Practice, Belger Crane Yard Gallery, 2011 Tracy Avenue.
ARTIST PROFILE + ADDITIONAL WORK Belger Artists in Residence
WARREN VAN RYZIN
Clay tablets carrying an online dialect
Warren Van Ryzin is an Indigenous ceramic and digital artist with a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and post-baccalaureate study at the University of Arkansas. His biography connects Indigenous ceramic history, early internet culture and family history.
The untitled tablets use ceramic and pigment. Their flattened forms and abraded surfaces can resemble fragments; the marks are contemporary and compressed.
Van Ryzin says the combination of internet culture and Indigenous ceramic history reflects his cultural identity, calling the work a “practical tool to talk about issues of indigenous cultural assimilation and identity.”
The pieces hold the shape of an artifact and the tempo of a screen without asking the viewer to choose one.
WHEN First Friday runs 6–8 p.m.; artist remarks begin at 6:30 p.m. On view through September 5.
WHERE Proximity and Practice, Belger Crane Yard Gallery, 2011 Tracy Avenue.
ARTIST @warren_van_craisin • ARTIST STATEMENT
ONE MORE ROOM: THE SKETCHBOOK PROJECT
The Kansas City Artists Coalition’s Sketchbook Project places finished drawings beside rough studies, notes, experiments and abandoned turns. Kraft covers, page edges, erasures and ink showing through paper make process visible without requiring a polished conclusion.
WHEN First Friday reception is Friday, August 7. The dedicated exhibition page lists 5–9 p.m.; the general exhibitions page lists 5–8 p.m. Confirm the closing time before making it the final stop. On view through September 4; regular hours are Wednesday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
WHERE Kansas City Artists Coalition, 3200 Gillham Road.
EXHIBITION DETAILS The Sketchbook Project
THE ROUTE
Begin at Bunker at 5. Move to Beggars Table after 6. Reach Belger before the 6:30 remarks. Leave the sketchbooks for the end, after the finished pieces. Open one. Look at what someone crossed out.
WHY IT STILL MATTERS
The first important room is rarely the largest one.
Sometimes it is a church gallery. Sometimes it is a ceramic snail beneath a leaf. Sometimes it is a page where the artist changed direction and left the old line visible.
The useful thing is arriving while the work is still close to the person who made it.
IMAGE RIGHTS & SOURCE NOTE
Artwork images remain the property of their respective artists and photographers. Images used here were sourced from official artist or presenting-gallery pages and retain the credit supplied by those sources. AVIA AREE did not photograph the works.
Event information and artist language were checked against Bunker Center for the Arts, Beggars Table Church & Gallery, Belger Arts, Kansas City Artists Coalition and the artists’ official portfolio pages. Interpretation beyond quoted artist language is presented as visual observation, not established meaning.
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