Sculpture

www.wickersonstudios.com 
http://wickerson.blogspot.com/

Karen McCoy’s primary work for the last two decades has been large-scale, sited environmental sculpture. McCoy focuses on the relationship between nature and culture, creating work based on extensive research into the geological, cultural and social histories of each site. She also works in video and photography and makes drawings and prints. Her most recent installations have been for the 125th anniversary of the Kansas City Art Institute, a piece commissioned by the Spencer Museum at the University of Kansas; Sculpture Key West; and Guandu Nature Park in Taipei, Taiwan. In 2007 she received a three-month grant from the Asian Cultural Council to conduct research in Japan on the relationship of culture, landscape and built form. In 2003 she was selected as the lead artist for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial ArtCorps project, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. In her work for this project, McCoy and her collaborators paid tribute to the Native Americans who had inhabited the area at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Other grants and commissions have allowed her to create work Japan, France, Denmark, Lithuania and in the United States in California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Wyoming.

McCoy has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the Andy Warhol Foundation (under the auspices of the Camargo Foundation), the Asian Cultural Council, Artslink and the Art Association and Land Trust of Jackson, Wyoming. She has had numerous residencies, including the Tokyo Wonder Site and Youkobo Art Center in Tokyo, Japan; the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; the Kala Institute in Berkeley, Calif.; the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming; and the Djerassi Foundation in Woodside, Calif., where her residency was awarded the Pritzker Foundation Endowed Fellowship for a distinguished residency.

She has had solo exhibitions at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Mass.; Pindar Gallery in New York; the Camargo Foundation in France; and the Jan Weiner Gallery in Kansas City, Mo. She has participated in many group exhibitions, including shows at the Allandale Farm in Brookline, Mass.; theYerba Beuna Arts Center in San Francisco; Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, Calif.; Youkobo Artspace in Tokyo, Japan; Project Space at Paragraph with the Urban Culture Project in Kansas City, Mo.; the H&R Block Artspace in Kansas City; and Northern Illinois University Gallery in Chicago.

McCoy’s work is included in “Earthworks and Beyond” by John Beardsley, “World of Art” by Henry Sayre, “Gardens without Boundaries” by Paul Cooper, “Landscape Narratives” by Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton, “Krakamarken: Land Art as Process” by Jørn Rønnau, Sculpture Magazine, Land Forum Magazine, The New York Times art section, The Dallas Times Herald Art Review and the Philadelphia Enquirer.

She is an associate professor of art in the sculpture department at Kansas City Art Institute where she has taught since 1994, serving as chair of the department from 1994 to 2003 and as acting chair in 2010-11. Born in Missouri, McCoy earned an M.F.A. degree at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978.

Contact: 816-802-3413

Larry Buechel graduated in the sculpture department at KCAI in 1986 and received his M.F.A. degree from the University of Delaware.  Larry has been working as both a full- and part-time instructor and has served as a sabbatical replacement for the entire sculpture faculty since 2004. Buechel has focused on teaching the major students at the sophomore level and has prepared them for communal and safe studio practice.

Beyond his educational experience, he assisted professional artists at Grand Arts in Kansas City from 1994 to 2002, and he also served as an art director on several large-scale projects in Las Vegas between 2002 and 2004.  Specifically, he has worked with artists such as Dennis Oppenheim and Alice Aycock and organizations like the Rio and the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas. As a professional artist in his own right, Larry has worked on large-scale projects and temporary/kinetic works in many locations all over the United States.