Exhibitions at KCAC explore the diversity of expression that shapes contemporary culture, art, and ideas.

Current Exhibitions

Opening Reception: First Friday – May 2, 2025, 5:00 – 8:00 PM

Exhibition Dates: May 2 – May 30, 2025

Two Missouri Artists Explore Nature, Growth, and Joy in Spring Exhibitions at KCAC

Kansas City, MO — This spring, the Kansas City Artists Coalition (KCAC) presents two solo exhibitions celebrating the power of plants, growth, and transformation through large-scale paintings and ceramic sculpture. Featured artists include Columbia-based painter Anna Wehrwein and Kansas City ceramicist Linda Lighton.

Main Gallery: What Grows a solo exhibition by Anna Wehrwein

Wehrwein’s bold, colorful paintings and drawings explore themes of care, color relationships, and shared domestic spaces. Her work reimagines the garden as both metaphor and reality—an environment for community, creativity, and transformation.

“I make paintings and drawings that reimagine the domestic space and painting tableau as a site of creative action and communal agency. They are dense fields of color and bodies that intertwine painting history, personal narrative, and abstraction within a framework of a feminist utopia.”

In this new series, the garden is more than a setting—it's a metaphor for psychological space, wildness, and the push and pull between containment and freedom.

Artist Bio:  Anna Wehrwein is originally from the Boston area. She holds a BS in Art and a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Tennessee. She currently teaches at the University of Missouri and co-directs the artist-run gallery stop-gap projects in Columbia, MO.

Snap Space: Attitude a solo exhibition by Linda Lighton

Lighton’s ceramic sculptures are sensual, colorful, and inspired by organic, plant-like forms. Attitude explores the ephemeral nature of joy, fertility, and transformation—rendered in clay with striking color and texture.

“I need to find out what joy is and I am tirelessly searching for hope. So, I am doing the research... Joy is from the earth, full of color and lightness. It is an instantaneous flush in your cheeks, an orgasm.”

Through themes of growth, change, and empowered sensuality, Lighton’s work asks: How can we transition through life with grace, style, and a little bit of wildness?

Artist Bio:  Linda Lighton is a nationally acclaimed artist and arts advocate based in Kansas City. She has exhibited in over 60 solo shows and more than 170 group exhibitions across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.