The exhibit prompting the visit to Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is called Infinite Regress: Mystical Abstraction from the Permanent Collection and Beyond. It is on view through February 23, 2025.

infinite regress : an endless chain of reasoning leading backward by interpolating a third entity between any two entities

Here are a few works that caught my eye.

Scale is so hard to convey, but these are all fairly large pieces. Some of them — Dzubas’ 17 canvases — are VERY large. I kept trying to imagine the dimensions of the room in a house (rather than a museum) where that would work.

AND, did you catch that Dzubas was 70 +/- years old when he did that? I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, given that my own artist husband did a 25′ long canvas when he was 75 +/-.

Age is an issue of mind over matter.
–Mark Twain

Stezaker (above) and Thiebaud & Katz (below) were also doing amazing work in later years.

It takes a very long time to become young.
–Pablo Picasso

Here are a few other pieces, not part of the main exhibition, that also caught my eye.

I love a Thiebaud dessert painting! They’re so colorful & fun.

This painting is also quite large — I kept the electrical receptacle in the frame for a bit of scale. It’s so big & the blacks are SO black… it took a minute to get pulled in.

Oh, I do love a long, horizontal painting. This piece is about a foot high & almost five feet long. It’s very detailed and appears to have been altered (something added or deleted) at some point, given the seam about a foot in from the right.

It was a fun & very fast trip — a Kansas City primer, if you will — and we will definitely go back! There are a lot more museums to visit… and barbecue to eat!

I found the artist who painted the rug!

His name is Antonio Santín @antoniosantin_

I’m sure it would be no surprise to learn that his paintings are labor intensive & time consuming!

As mentioned earlier, this was displayed in the museum cafe, Oil on Linen, which recently opened.

I have seen, and possibly shared, work by Sanford Biggers before… because how could I not? I’d love to see an entire show of his work.

There are a few other pieces from our museum visit that I’ll share in the next day or two.

I had a lovely day of rest(-ish) yesterday, and now it’s time to catch up with everything!!

After visiting the Kemper on Sunday morning, Kate & I drove out to Lawrence, KS, to visit The Yarn Barn of Kansas. It’s not actually in a barn. It’s right on Main Street in downtown Lawrence — a really cute downtown, even more special with all the holiday lights & decorations.

I had a couple of yarn shops in the KC area on my radar, but I am starting to feel anxious about the size of my stash and don’t feel good about buying yarn just because. They had a little offering from local dyers, but otherwise it was pretty “regular” yarn… and there wasn’t quite as much as I’d expected.

Kate found some, though, for a cowl that she wants to knit. So YAY!

If you’re a weaver or a spinner, though… WOW, this is the place for you!! I’ve never seen so many looms & wheels in one place before in my life, not to mention the materials.

We’re home! It was about 12 hours door-to-door today — a lovely day for a drive.

That’s the view from an interesting rest area in Iowa — somewhere between Des Moines & Dubuque.

We visited the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art today. They’re celebrating their 30th anniversary. We saw some amazing art, most of which I will share later…

We almost always enjoy stopping at a museum cafe (and gift shop), and Oil on Linen at the Kemper did not disappoint. The cafe staff & service were great (we enjoyed a cocktail, eggplant dip, smoked fish rillette, and a frittata (half of which we’ll be enjoying for breakfast tomorrow). And we each found a little something at the gift shop.

For most of the work exhibited in the museum, there were cards indicating the artist, title, medium, etc.

This work, in the cafe, didn’t have obvious information. Fine, I thought, I’ll just use Google Image Search (as I’ve been doing for a number of things lately, including the IOOF gravesite markers) to find out what it’s called & who the artist is.

But this piece, about the size of an actual rug (8×10 of so) turned up nothing but actual rugs! It’s really incredible. I’ll track it down & share it again when I post the rest.

Meanwhile, we’re packing up and departing for home early tomorrow morning — after a lovely frittata breakfast.