In the Galleries: Maggie Garner & Kyan Hackney at Envision Arts Center
The two exhibitions engage multiple senses through mixed-media installations and vibrant portraiture.
Envision Arts Gallery moved Douglas Avenue addresses from downtown Wichita to the Delano District in March. Now both the gallery and art classrooms are housed at Envision Arts Center, 535 W. Douglas Ave., just steps from popular coffee and dessert spot Milkfloat.
The center serves artists who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise disabled, and the galleries are equipped with accessibility features, including guide strips for cane users.
“Please touch the art,” read labels for “A Hidden Place,” an exhibition by Savannah, Georgia artist Maggie Garner in collaboration with Autumn Gary and Taiomah Rutledge.
Garner’s show, on view through June 25 in the Dr. Gail Yearick and Family Gallery, is composed of tactile paper collages on canvas and sensory installations. Some of the works invite viewers to access and exercise different senses. “Please touch the art” is one request the show makes explicitly, but I also heard “slow down” as I made my way around the gallery.
“Art Imitates Kyan’s Life” is on view through May 29 in the Patricia A. Peer Window Gallery. Dozens of portraits by Wichita artist Kyan Adger Hackney hang salon-style alongside studies of famous artists. Whether to art history or the people around him, it's clear that Hackney looks closely.
Envision Arts Center is open to the public from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday. Admission is free, and the space is accessible to people with physical disabilities.
— Emily Christensen
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