The Wichita art community is making a shift — celebrating First Friday rather than Final Friday. Newman University’s Steckline Gallery will follow suit with its shows.
The first show of the season, titled “Cone In The Tree” by Tim Stone, will be presented Sept. 6 from 5 to 7 p.m.
Stone graduated from Wichita State University (WSU) in 2012 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting. He is a prominent local artist who was included in the book “Wichita Artists In Their Studios” by Sondra Langel and Larry Schwarm.
He has studied at the New York Studio School of Painting and taught courses at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas, and currently teaches at WSU.
Stone works with local galleries such as Mark Arts and the Wichita Art Museum, teaching art to people of all ages. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree at WSU while teaching.
Stone said, “My work consists of depicting spaces that are inspired by the ordinary and triggered by the mundane. I paint scenes, or the places where incidents in real life or fiction occur.
“My work questions, ‘What is realism and what is fiction?’ and depicts the spaces in which they converge. There is a constant tension between the ordinary and the superlative and between natural and artificial color. This occurrence is true in real life so it is truthful in the scenes I paint. I am both investigating and celebrating my experience of liminal spaces.”
His show is mostly paintings and was inspired by a traffic cone on top of a tree. To Stone, it was a visual example of when things don’t go according to plan or are used in a way that is not intended.
“This show is all about experimentation. I wanted to allow the process to unfold in the same way I drew inspiration for the work by allowing for the failure of intention and celebrating the result of something unintentional.”
There will be an Art for Lunch presentation from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10, in the gallery. A light lunch will be served on a first-come, first-served basis. Guests are also welcome to bring their lunch. This event is free and reservations are not required.
The Steckline Gallery is located inside the De Mattias Fine Arts Center on the Newman campus, 3100 McCormick. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., or by appointment.
For more information, email Director of Steckline Gallery Shannon Johnston at [email protected].
