Spectrum Fantastic Art: Live! and Active Culture
For the past four years I’ve been attending Spectrum Fantastic Art Live in Kansas City, MO. This year was the first year I was not participating as an exhibitor. I’ve made a firm decision not to exhibit at all for a full year while I develop a new body of work, push paint and listen to the changing voices in my head. I thought I might not get to enjoy the same exchange of conversation with other artists if I wasn’t representing my work. As it turned out, I very much enjoyed being on the other side of the table.
I was able to visit with new people, spend time chatting with some favorite mentors and watch demonstrations without the stress of getting back to my table. A more relaxed immersion in art and creative culture was definitely what the creative coach ordered.
I learn something every time I get to watch Greg Manchess paint. In past years I’ve had to run back and forth from my table to keep up on the progress. This year I was able to watch and even chat with other artists about their process and unconventional materials.
Manchess has a wall of small originals that sell out within a few hours. The helmet studies are exciting to see, the bats were new this year but I particularly would like to see the “Metropolis” on my wall next to a Palumbo painting from the “Nymph” series I bought a few years ago.
George Pratt at the Illustration Academy booth, took the time to show me some of his most recent work and a new video demo he had done to show his process of discovery with pastel, watercolor and tar.
It was an awesome surprise to see Eric Velhagen exhibiting this year. I’ve got a few of his prints in my foyer from IlluxCon. The way he paints action and atmosphere, especially water, just drives me up the wall. If I could get that kind of speed in my strokes I’d be halfway to where I think I’m headed.
While visiting with Velhagen, George R.R. Martin showed up.
I am ever so grateful he was cool with me geeking out over a selfie with him. He might have caught a little hell for being out playing instead of finishing the book we’re all waiting for, but everyone was pretty excited he made an appearance.
Forest Rogers’s work is just gorgeous. She took home the Gold award in the Dimensional category. I’m just in love with everything beautiful and creepy about these pieces.
Having the time to discover artist’s was really great. I’ve never had a chance to visit every booth and find out what’s inside. Some really gorgeous effects I’d like to emulate in my own work, luminosity is one I toy with often. Though digital, this piece nailed it while keeping a painter’s hand.
Being untethered also meant I could leave the convention. A friend of mine, Pamela Smith, opened her dream shop a year ago in Kansas City called Noir Arts and Oddities which I was dieing to see. She had been to New York a few months earlier and stayed with me while picking up an artifact from Mike at Obscura.
Her new shop did not disappoint. Pamela personally curates local and known artist’s work, scientific and historical artifacts along with natural specimens.
She also organizes art related events in the area and otherwise has helped create a curious and creative culture in Kansas City.
What’s most amazing about Spectrum, the artist’s and it’s culture, is the cross pollination of genre, subject and techniques. Spectrum offers a place where it all comes together, in close quarters, to inspire any and all. In what might otherwise be a very isolated profession, artists working in their individual corners of the world, publishing quietly behind closed doors, get a place to build a community. “You can’t design in a vacuum” my boss often says, you should be in the world. Without Spectrum, IlluxCon and communities like them, we all would be in a vacuum.
Spectrum creates a place to reconnect with mentors and friends, make new connections and to facilitate emerging ideas like no other community. I look forward to seeing it’s ripple effect as a result of many members tossing the first stone, years ago.
