Fine Art With The Finest Collectors In Mind

Featured Artist

Jen Unekis

acrylic with venetian plaster on wood panel

Being Thankful for More

Jen Unekis was born in Los Angeles but spent her childhood in rural Kansas and in a small town in Eastern Idaho. After attending three high schools in three years, she moved to Lawrence to attend KU and decided to stay and call it her home. 

Growing up on her family’s farm she was inspired by her environment. Rusty farm equipment and the many layers of paint and wallpaper on the plaster and lath walls of the old farmhouse. Many of those same elements may still be found in her paintings. A fine crumbling cracked line, a broken edge, a burnished surface with accidental combinations of textures and layers of color.

Jen prefers to paint on panel using acrylic, graphite, China and glass pencil. Paying close attention to the pooling of color up against an inky line, or the way fine sketchy graphite marks can be obscured by paint yet still hold your interest. Creating a piece that ultimately finds its own beauty, balance and sense of self. A piece with its own personality and story to tell.  

Jen’s artwork has been collected nationally and internationally. Her paintings hang at the KU School of Business at Capitol Federal Hall and LMH’s West Campus and her work was recently added to the permanent collection of the Mulvane Art Museum. 

Today Jen lives in a little yellow bungalow near the Kansas River with her husband David, where she has recently converted their 1950’s detached garage into her painting studio. 

Featured Artist

Phil Jones

"New Horizons" fabric art

I am enamored by the ways color and texture affect us: How two colors can come together to form a clean, clear line with some sort of hypnotic buzz we can’t quite focus on. The way we associate certain colors or patterns with ground or sea or sky or emotion or other personal meaning. The way we see images when we stare at the clouds.

I live in the metaphor and love the constructs we make to help organize and explain the world. For this work, I examine the horizon. A man-made construct, like the line. We imbue this construct with meaning. The sun sets or rises on the horizon, or the earth and sky divide the horizon. We expect good things on the horizon. Horizons are where we look as we move forward  or where we look over our shoulder as we move on.

I create my own fabrics for my work. This is an intensive process that includes discharging (removing color) and dyeing (adding color). I use direct application as well as traditional techniques like Shibori, the grandfather of tie-dyeing. Wrapping fabric around a pole and compressing or stitching layers of fabric and shirring together create design, texture and pattern. The results are then over-dyed to create depth and character. Individual works are stitched together, then finished to a final result.

These works are improvisations. When I start, I am only interested in color and texture-no other plan is had. It is only through each piece being worked that its meaning comes to the surface. In this way, the work takes on its own organic, dynamic process. My task is to stay out of the way just enough to let that happen.

Private Collections Consignment Works

Our featured exhibitions for this month highlights works in various media from the gallery’s private collections consignment works. These works include pieces by well-known local, regional, national and international artists. We encourage you to browse the collections  below and contact us for additional information on specific artists or works.

 

Smith Collection

Wu Collection

THE SKIES THE LIMIT

Evans Collection

O'Neil Collection