Kansas City Art Institute

10/15/2026

KCAI Foundation students recently teamed up for “The Big Draw,” a studio viewing that showcased large-scale drawings from three classes in Foundation North.

With assignments lining up across those classes, faculty saw an opportunity to bring their work together. Each class approached the assignments with slightly different parameters, exploring how light and shadow can capture the self, establish depth, and bring a drawing to life.

10/14/2026

Your donation DOUBLES during Giving Week, October 25–30! Thanks to the generosity of the Seidler Foundation, all gifts will be matched up to $50,000.

Visit kcai.edu/givingweek to make your gift.

Your gift directly supports KCAI students, helping them create, learn, and thrive while providing vital resources for health, wellness, and crisis support. It also strengthens KCAI’s long-term sustainability and independence, ensuring the institution can continue serving future generations of fearless creatives.

Watch this page during KCAI’s Giving Week (10/25-10/30) to see the impact of your support 🙏

10/12/2026

NEW TO CAMPUS! 👩‍🚀 Today, workers installed a gigantic new window covering at Café Nerman, transforming the space with a mural-like decal designed by KCAI Illustration senior Hannah Summers (Hannah Summers).

You can admire the new installation from outside anytime, but be sure to step inside Café Nerman to experience the full scene! The café is open to the public and serves Roasterie coffee featuring a special KCAI blend, specialty drinks crafted by experienced baristas, and made-to-order food from the Wylie Dining Grill.

Café Nerman Semester Hours:

Monday–Thursday: 7:30 a.m.–8 p.m.

Friday: 7:30 a.m.–6 p.m.

Saturday–Sunday: Closed

A big thank you to the KCAI Illustration Department, Source One Digital, and Tint Masters (Gladstone, MO) for helping bring this installation to life. And, of course, thank you, Hannah! Your work makes for an incredible welcome to campus. 🚀

10/08/2026

KCAI Illustration senior Hannah Summers (Hannah Summers) conceptualized, designed, and illustrated the brand-new giant partial window covering going up at Café Nerman next week. The piece will serve as a highly visible work of welcoming art at the main entrance to campus.

“I feel like I have a lot of edge in my art, like, edginess. So [it was] finding a really good balance to make something welcoming,” Summers says. Her work often centers on monsters, people in bulky suits, and fantasy settings.

The window covering leans into these strengths, featuring an astronaut and her animal companions exploring a wavy, dreamlike landscape. Drawing from campus iconography, gestural ginkgo leaves form the rising tide, composed in standout shades of purple, pink, orange, and yellow. Summers also considered how those colors would interact with the greens of the surrounding grass and the red brick of nearby Vanderslice Hall.

“I really wanted the water to feel like it was maybe pushing the person. Or maybe they were, like, kind of going against it. I don’t know, people just really like something whimsical and creative, and there’s a sketchbook in [Café Nerman], and sometimes I go through it, and it’s just always full of fantasy. And I feel like fantasy is not something that you usually see whenever you come to the school,” Summers says.

For Summers, bringing an illustration-focused work to such a prominent location on campus was an opportunity to introduce something distinctly fantastical and playful to the KCAI experience.

“ And I’ve never seen my work up on such a massive scale,” she says.

Currently, Summers is working on her thesis project, a comic featuring gargoyles battling monsters. She says there is currently a strong push toward traditional art, which is how she approaches much of her own work, with a focus on big, bold lines and vibrant colors.

“I’ll use acrylic markers to block out shapes. And I’m just so used to line work at this point that it just comes naturally right after. Like, I just know the next steps in my brain,” she says.

We can’t wait to see this installed! Thanks Hannah!

10/07/2026

During a bustling day in , Jedel Visiting Artist Jacobo Alonso (.alonso), alongside Karen Perry Roja (.perry.sculptor), meets with students to discuss their work and creative practices.

👀 Take a look through these photos for a glimpse at the wide range of projects, processes and activities happening in . 👀

Underwritten by the Jedel Family Foundation, a central goal of the Jedel Visiting Artist program is to enhance students’ educational experience through exposure to contemporary ideas, dialogue, critiques and studio visits.

It’s all happening leading up to Alonso’s Current Perspectives Lecture:

📅 Thursday, October 8, 2026
🕖 11:15 a.m.
📍 Epperson Auditorium | Kansas City Art Institute

Free & Open to the Public!

Jacobo Alonso is a Mexican artist whose work explores the opacity and versatility of the concept of the “Body” and its displacements across various contexts and disciplines. His practice challenges conventional boundaries, examining how the body interacts with and adapts to different environments and cultural frameworks.

Alonso’s work has been showcased internationally in countries such as Mexico, Finland, the United States, Iceland, England, Hungary, Italy, France, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Germany, South Korea, Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, and China. He has participated in prestigious artist residencies, including Banff Creative Centre in Canada, MASS MoCA the Studios, ART OMI, Vermont Studio Center and BBAX Gallery in the USA, Viarco and Córtex Frontal in Portugal, SÍM Residency in Iceland, Serlachius Residency and ARTELES in Finland.

Alonso has won a number of international awards, including the Special Prize at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea, the Sally Yunis Award for Innovative Use of Materials at Fibertart International in the USA, and the Career Award for Paper Performance at the Lucca Biennale in Italy.

10/06/2026

French video artist Xavier de Richemont engages with students during a campus visit led by the Nerman Family President of the Kansas City Art Institute, Dr. Peggy Shannon, as de Richemont refines his contribution to “Liberty’s Beacon: An Artistic Light Installation” at the National WWI Museum and Memorial.

The National WWI Museum and Memorial commissioned Xavier de Richemont and three light artists to illuminate the Memorial “into a canvas of light, sound and motion” over seven weeks, through November 11. The installation celebrates the Museum and Memorial’s 100th anniversary and the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The KCAI Professional Practice Center also coordinated a special behind-the-scenes look at the setup for this monumental projection-mapping undertaking. KCAI Photo/Filmmaking Senior Adriana Oberto described the experience:

“We were able to see the infrastructure behind the production, learn about the dozens of projectors and fiber-optic systems involved, visit the museum’s security and control spaces, and then watch the work come to life.”

“Seeing how the moving image, architecture, sound, and storytelling all worked together made me want to pursue projection mapping much more seriously.”

De Richemont also visited students in the Painting department and took in the architecture of Vanderslice Hall and Mineral Hall.

Titled “An Hommage,” Xavier de Richemont’s piece is characterized by lyrical strokes, slow movement and a profusion of texture. Rooted in extensive on-site research, his projections seek to reveal the underlying spirit and history of the architecture and places they illuminate.

De Richemont’s projections have appeared across France, Mexico, Morocco, India, Peru, Germany and the United States, including a long-running installation on one of the oldest Catholic cathedrals in the U.S., in San Antonio, Texas.

At the National WWI Museum and Memorial, the light installation begins each included evening at 7:30 p.m. Each 8- to 10-minute presentation repeats every 15 minutes throughout the scheduled hours, accompanied by a custom-composed score that complements each artistic illumination. More info: https://libertysbeacon.theworldwar.org/how-view

📷:

10/05/2026

Check out this wonderful review from KC Studio of "Twenty-Two Springs: Two Tone Press and KCAI Ceramics" - currently on view at KCAI Gallery until October 18!

This exhibition celebrates a unique, enduring intersection of letterpress printing and ceramics. Since 2005, Two Tone Press—founded by sisters Michelle Dreher (’01 Illustration & Art History) and Angie Dreher—has collaborated with graduating students and faculty of the KCAI Ceramics department to create a custom letterpress poster for each annual juried exhibition.

More info: https://www.kcai.edu/kcai-gallery/exhibitions/twenty-two-springs-two-tone-press-and-kcai-ceramics/

“Twenty-Two Springs: Two Tone Press & KCAI Ceramics” displays 22 letterpress posters and more than 100 ceramic works from the KCAI ceramics department’s teaching collection.

10/01/2026

“I kind of like that middle ground of, like, you’re not quite sure what’s happening here. It feels a little familiar, but not quite.”

Ellie Naeger (el) presents The Forest Whispers to Me, a solo exhibition at The Waiting Room (formerly Beco Gallery). Naeger is a 2025 KCAI Ceramics Department alum and currently a Visual Arts Studio Resident at Charlotte Street. She primarily works in ceramics, using repetition and accumulation to explore the unconscious mind, the body and the natural world.

The Forest Whispers to Me
October 2–November 12, 2026

Opening Reception
Friday, October 2, 6–8 p.m.
Artist Talk: 6 p.m.
Opening Performances: 6:30 and 7:45 p.m.

The Waiting Room
1106 Santa Fe St., Basement
Kansas City, MO

The exhibition builds on themes Naeger began exploring during her time at KCAI, particularly through wearable art that activates the sounds of porcelain pieces striking one another. During the opening reception, Naeger will give an artist talk followed by a performance activation within the gallery featuring Regina Lombardo (Regina Lombardo), in collaboration with Grey Area (| GREYaRea / •). Lombardo will wear a cloak covered with porcelain “feathers,” allowing their icy sounds to resonate throughout the space.

The wider space features a ceramic installation that transforms the gallery into an organic timberland, composed of small porcelain forms that appear to defy gravity. Drawing from childhood explorations in the forest and remote mountain hikes, Naeger creates an immersive environment that evokes the wonder and mystery of the natural world.

She describes it as a place where “a little explorer has wandered into the center of a fairy ring, transported into a porcelain forest of tinkering vines and blooming buds.”

The Forest Whispers to Me explores the sense of awe that comes from being surrounded by nature. Naeger considers parallels between her artistic process and the natural world as spaces for self-discovery. Fragile porcelain forms, created through meditative repetition, allow the subconscious to emerge, creating an environment for reflection and contemplation.

📷: Ash Parsons Story



“I kind of like that

10/01/2026

Ellie Naeger (el) presents The Forest Whispers to Me, a solo exhibition at The Waiting Room (formerly Beco Gallery).

The Forest Whispers to Me
October 2–November 12, 2026

Opening Reception
Friday, October 2, 6–8 p.m.
Artist Talk: 6 p.m.
Opening Performances: 6:30 and 7:45 p.m.

The Waiting Room
1106 Santa Fe St., Basement
Kansas City, MO

Naeger is a 2025 KCAI Ceramics Department alum and currently a Visual Arts Studio Resident at Charlotte Street. She primarily works in ceramics, using repetition and accumulation to explore the unconscious mind, the body and the natural world.

The exhibition builds on themes Naeger began exploring during her time at KCAI, particularly through wearable art that activates the sounds of porcelain pieces striking one another.

During the opening reception, Naeger will give an artist talk followed by a performance activation within the gallery featuring Regina Lombardo (Regina Lombardo), in collaboration with Grey Area (| GREYaRea / •). Lombardo will wear a cloak covered with porcelain “feathers,” allowing their icy sounds to resonate throughout the space.

The wider space features a ceramic installation that transforms the gallery into an organic timberland, composed of small porcelain forms that appear to defy gravity. Drawing from childhood explorations in the forest and remote mountain hikes, Naeger creates an immersive environment that evokes the wonder and mystery of the natural world.

She describes it as a place where “a little explorer has wandered into the center of a fairy ring, transported into a porcelain forest of tinkering vines and blooming buds.”

The Forest Whispers to Me explores the sense of awe that comes from being surrounded by nature. Naeger considers parallels between her artistic process and the natural world as spaces for self-discovery. Fragile porcelain forms, created through meditative repetition, allow the subconscious to emerge, creating an environment for reflection and contemplation.

09/29/2026

Jedel Visiting Artist: Jacobo Alonso (.alonso)
Current Perspectives Lecture
📅 Thursday, October 8, 2026
🕖 11:15 a.m.
📍 Epperson Auditorium | Kansas City Art Institute

Free & Open to the Public!

Underwritten by the Jedel Family Foundation, the program highlights internationally acclaimed artists at KCAI. The Jedel Visiting Artist enhances the student’s educational experience with contemporary ideas, dialogue, critiques, and studio visits in .

Jacobo Alonso is a Mexican artist whose work explores the opacity and versatility of the concept of the "Body" and its displacements across various contexts and disciplines. His practice challenges conventional boundaries, examining how the body interacts with and adapts to different environments and cultural frameworks.

Alonso’s work has been showcased internationally in countries such as Mexico, Finland, the United States, Iceland, England, Hungary, Italy, France, Portugal, Poland, Spain, Slovakia, Ukraine, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Germany, South Korea, Malaysia, Australia, the Netherlands, and China. He has participated in prestigious artist residencies, including Banff Creative Centre in Canada, MASS MoCA the Studios, ART OMI, Vermont Studio Center and BBAX Gallery in the USA, Viarco and Córtex Frontal in Portugal, SÍM Residency in Iceland, Serlachius Residency and ARTELES in Finland.

Alonso has won a number of international awards, including the Special Prize at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea, the Sally Yunis Award for Innovative Use of Materials at Fibertart International in the USA, and the Career Award for Paper Performance at the Lucca Biennale in Italy.

In Mexico, Alonso completed Bachelor's degrees in Computer Systems and Fine Arts and studied at the University of Rennes 2 in France. He is a member of the National System of Creators FONCA (Sculpture, 2020–2023) and was a beneficiary of the Young Creators FONCA program in 2016–2017.