Introducing the Studios Inc 2025-2028 Incoming Artists In Residence: Melanie Johnson & Armin Mühsam
Kansas City, MO - December 4, 2024 – Studios Inc. announces two new artists as the awardees of the 2025-2028 Studios Inc Artist Residency Program: Melanie Johnson & Armin Mühsam. Launched to serve mid-career artists, Studios Inc is Kansas City’s only nonprofit arts organization offering pivotal three-year residencies to mid-career artists who are poised to significantly expand their careers. In tandem with the Residency Program is the Studios Patron Program, which connects artists directly with a patron for a heightened level of dialogue between resident artist and patron through studio visits, exhibitions, and funding opportunities. The Studios Inc Exhibition Series features an annual group residency exhibition each spring and all residents have a solo exhibition as they culminate their residency.
Melanie Johnson
Melanie Johnson is an artist and an educator. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Melanie earned a BFA from Missouri State University (2003) and an MFA from the Henry Radford School of Art at Indiana University, Bloomington (2006). She is currently Professor of Painting and Drawing at University of Central Missouri. Her large scale charcoal drawings recall sensory and emotional connections to animals and the natural landscape. She lives in Prairie Village, Kansas with her son and many pets.
“I am thrilled to be the recipient of a Studios Inc Residency and I am looking forward to being able to focus on the next level of my studio practice in such an amazing space. My recent drawings explore my relationships with animals and Midwestern ecosystems. I am particularly interested in translating my large scale works on paper to iterations in painting and other media over the course of my residency, and I would like to continue researching both narrative structure and the relationship between constructed imagery and dioramas. I am grateful to be provided time and space for this exploration, and I am very excited to be immersed in a supportive community of working artists.”
To learn more about Johnson and her work, go to https://melanielynnjohnson.com/.
Armin Mühsam
Armin Mühsam graduated with a BFA from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany (1994) and with an MFA from Montana State University in Bozeman (1997). Since 2000, he has been teaching at Northwest Missouri State University, where he is currently Professor of Painting. Mühsam is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2014) and has been the subject of nearly sixty solo exhibitions in the United States, Germany, France, Romania, and Hungary. His work has been reviewed and featured in Art Papers and New American Painting; he has completed residencies at 100 West in Corsicana, TX, and Ucross Foundation, WY, and is represented by Haw Contemporary.
“It is with great pleasure that I accept the offer of a residency at Studios Inc and I look forward to joining my fellow artists in February. In my most recent work, I probe how far the dynamic between abstraction and representation can play itself out. The time span as well as the size of this new studio present the long-awaited opportunity to synchronize and synthesize the multiple aspects of my creative output. My objective is to drastically increase the size of the formats I have painted on up to this point, sizes I couldn’t accommodate in my present studio in the West Bottoms. The extensive space at Studios Inc will also enable me to have the works on paper that are such an integral part of my practice side by side on the walls with my canvases. Parallel to this, I plan to make large sculptures in the same location as that in which my paintings evolve – the modest sculptural work I occasionally have done up to this point was created where I teach, two hours north of Kansas City.”
You can learn more about Mühsam at his website, https://arminmuhsam.com/biography/.
Studios Inc looks forward to welcoming these artists into the space in early 2025. For more information, please visit www.studiosinc.org or contact Mallory Edson at mallory@thestudiosinc.org.