Studios Inc welcomes four new artists into the Residency Program
Studios Inc inducted 4 new residents into the Artist Residency program in 2023. A big welcome to Hadley Clark, Kate Clements, JT Daniels and Leon Jones!
Featured from left to right are: Medium, Curtain Motorcycle Jacket by Hadley Clark (2020), Stain by Kate Clements (2016), Lift, Weight, Thrust, Drag (At Rest, The Eternal Search for Peace series 1 & 2) by Leon Jones (2023), and Untitled (headspace 1 & 2) by JT Daniels (2023)
Hadley Clark
Hadley Clark gives presence to absence; gives new purpose to old discards; gives form to thought. With an education in Painting (BFA, University of Kansas 2001) as well as in Garment Design and Construction (BFA Fashion Design with Honors, The New School | Parsons Paris 2010), Clark’s work exists in the middle distance between art and fashion.
Clark designs and constructs her garments according to deadlines set by the work itself. Part painter, part designer, and part sculptor. In 2014, Clark began to rely on textile waste and deadstock fabric as her primary construction materials. The resulting pieces–cut from bolts of donated, repurposed, and meticulously collaged scraps–are documents of dual states; neither new nor used, both art object and wearable garment, dead-come-alive.
This material awareness, and a resulting interest in empowering individuals to fix and tailor garments as opposed to discarding them, led Clark to found her own sewing school in 2017, which she operated out of her studio. In the intervening five years, Clark has logged thousands of hours teaching hundreds of students, eventually expanding the footprint of her classroom to include the textile department at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and The Kansas City Art Institute where she is now faculty.
Kate Clements
Kate Clements received her MFA in Glass from the Tyler School of Art & Architecture in Philadelphia and her BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute. She has been awarded residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, Pilchuck Glass School, S12 Gallery in Bergen, Norway, and the Charlotte Street Foundation. Clements’ work has been exhibited at the Bellevue Arts Museum (WA), Delaware Contemporary (DE), Houston Center of Contemporary Craft (TX), SOFA Chicago, Urban Glass (NYC), and S12 Gallery (Norway.) Her work has been featured in Italian Vogue Gioiello, American Craft Magazine, and New Glass Review.
Clements constructs delicate and ornate large scale paintings. She also creates art consisting of kiln fused glass panels. Working with frit (a type of crushed glass), she sifts, scatters, and pushes the sugar-like substance to form dimensional drawings. The wafer-thin glass panels reference naturalistic designs which explore ideas of beauty, taste, and impermanence. Clements utilizes the allure of glass to draw the viewer in. Upon further inspection, her glass work speaks to the beauty of nature and its fragility.
JT Daniels
JT Daniels is a Kansas City native. He received his BFA from Park University in Parkville, Missouri in 2011. His numerous large-scale murals and public art projects can be seen across the Greater Kansas City area.
Daniels' work weaves together various elements into streamlined designs that represent the heartbeat of the urban community. Overlapping faces and figures within the illustrations are visual representations of people he encounters. These conversations and interactions become the compositions that signify the complexity of the human experience.
Leon Jones
Leon Jones completed his MFA in Visual Arts in 2017 from the Studio Arts College International (SACI) in Florence, Italy. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2013.
Jones was a former artist resident with The Charlotte Street Foundation from 2020-2022. His work has been exhibited in solo shows and group exhibitions in the United States as well as internationally, including the Palazzo Strozzi International Museum of Art, Florence, Italy, the SENSUS gallery, Florence, Italy, Jules Maidoff gallery, Florence, Italy, Fine Arts Design Studios Gallery, The CSF Gallery in KCMO and the H&R Block Space, Kansas City, Mo.
Jones’ work considers the errors in human nature and questions practicality and function of objects with a refreshed visual discernment, all while challenging ideas of conformity. His work recognizes the importance of marginalized cultures and their inclusion in the narrative of American history.