By Abby Hoover

Come and meet the artists in their creative spaces! Northeast Arts KC is offering a free self-guided tour of artist studios located in the Northeast Kansas City community. There will be brick-and-mortar studios to visit and guest artists at seven gallery spaces.

“This event is offered for the benefit of our local artists,” organizer Rebecca Koop said. “We want to bring awareness and promote our own diverse artist community by offering an event that brings the patrons to the artists.”

On Saturday, April 30, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., local artists will open their studios to the community. All studios are within a 10 minute drive or less of each other. The event will also be a grand re-opening of the Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s EGG (Economic Growth Gallery).

“Our mission is to provide, enhance, fund, market and support cultural events, which bring the visual and the performance arts to the public in the Historic Northeast community, without regard to race, religion or ethnic group,” the Northeast Arts KC mission reads. “We create programs that beautify and increase the viability of the Historic Northeast. We inspire neighbors to infuse art into practical work and everyday living. We nurture appreciation of the arts within our own community.”

The self-guided Open Studio Tour has stops spread throughout the Historic Northeast, and visitors can browse in any order. Artists of all mediums, ages and cultures are participating.

The EGG at 2659 Independence Avenue, will host a variety of artists like Sheila Rekdal, mixed media; Margarita Friedman, portraiture in oils and encaustic; and artists from Northeast Middle and High Schools and KC Girls Preparatory Academy.

KC Society for Contemporary Photography at 2360 Independence Ave., in the Pendleton Arts Block, is a photographic organization promoting and exhibiting local and regional artists. They are the only gallery dedicated to the art of photography.

The PAB Gallery, also at Pendleton Arts Block, will feature ceramic works by Shellie Rose Kacillas and mixed media works by Sierra Faust.

At the Schliefkevision Painting Studio, 104 Askew Avenue, artist Michael Schliefke will show his large oil paintings satirizing and critiquing modern society using techniques and traditions he finds in his love of art and history. While you’re there, check out the mural he painted at St. John and Askew of a 1940’s map of Historic Northeast!

Rebecca Koop’s Back Door Pottery is located at 3922 St. John Avenue. The majority of Koop’s pottery is functional kitchenware in stoneware and porcelain. Koop, who has been teaching professionally since 1980, offers specialty classes in mosaics, wood fired RAKU, and Egyptian paste faience. Regular pottery classes are held in the evenings, and children’s workshops and individual group sessions are held by appointment.

Phyllis Hernandez opened Sala de Arte last year at 4828 E Ninth Street. The gallery focuses on helping multicultural and multi-generational artists grow. They feature not only visual artists, but musicians and poets as well. Hernandez said they want to help the hidden talent of Kansas City.

Stone Lion Puppets, located at 2400 Truman Road, is in its 30th year. Founded in 1992, StoneLion Puppet Theatre is a professional not-for-profit theater company dedicated to expanding the horizons of the young and young-at-heart through the art of puppetry in an interdisciplinary community of ethnic and cultural diversity. 

Kate Barsotti will show her ink and watercolor paintings, mixed media and fiber art at her studio, The Growlery, in Columbus Park at 516 A Gillis St. A growlery is defined as a place to retreat, alone, when one is ill-humored. And why go there? Because the growlery, like art, is a cure for what ails the soul: a moment of joy, befuddlement, or consternation can cast away the blues. Come and visit a fellow grumbletonian for paintings and fine art. The studio may be accessed from either Gillis Street via a gate or the alley behind Gillis. From the alley, a green building with a burgundy garage door is the right address; the studio is in the house behind the garage. Please come into the yard and to the back door. Yard signs will guide the way.

Visit with local artists and browse their works this Saturday. More information and a map of galleries will be posted at northeastartskc.org.