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Artists and athletes aren’t often associated with one another, but a new exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art hopes to challenge that.
“Oftentimes, we think of artists and athletes in two different camps, kind of on one side of the lunchroom table and maybe on the other, not really mixing,” said Stephanie Fox Knappe, Nelson-Atkins curator.
But there’s more overlap than even artists realize — including Tj Templeton, one of the six artists featured in the new “Personal Best” exhibition that opened Oct. 18.
“I don't think of the cycling so much as athletics or sports,” Templeton said. “I don't think of myself as an athlete, you know.”
Yet Templeton’s contribution — titled “Come Ride With Me” — includes a time-lapse of a 40-mile bike ride through Kansas City, surrounded by various interpretations of the journey.
“For the last couple years, I had been trying to figure out how to marry my studio practice with my cycling practice,” he said. “... This was the puzzle that I've been working on for years to try to figure out, how am I going to do this?”
When Fox Knappe approached Templeton, who serves as the artist-in-residence at the Bunker Center for the Arts, he was thrilled to be part of the exhibition, even if it pushed him to see himself in a new light.
“Of course, I was on board,” he said. “I mean, this is the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. I'm not going to say no to that.”
Fellow “Personal Best” contributor Thea Wolfe, whose four portraits for the exhibition feature fighters after a bout, believes everything is art.
“I was already working on these pieces with no idea where they were going to land,” she said. “They're a little bit different. They're a little niche.”
Wolfe created the pieces from layered paint sample cards, which she would snag from home-improvement stores. The largest of her portraits took 16 months to complete, she said.
She threw herself into the mixed martial arts scene as a new avenue for artistic expression several years ago.
“That was a medium I became really interested in for a little over six years,” Wolfe said. “I moved into a gym, and I just really committed myself.”
Some of the things she learned as an athlete now translate to her art.
“I gained a really strong sense of discipline,” Wolfe said. “I already had a sense of discipline, but discipline in extreme discomfort, in pain, in injury, in limitation, in danger.”
Athletes and artists often approach their craft with a similar mentality.
“Think about the determination, the passion, the drive that it takes to show up in the studio every day or to show up for a run, or for a ride, or to show up in the ring,” Fox Knappe said.
“Personal Best” is a free exhibition born from the KC Art Now initiative.
It also features the work of Kate Clements, who works with glass and is a distance runner; Samantha Haan, a painter and climber; Kwanza Humphrey, a painter and former Missouri Western football player; and Mike Lyon, a karate instructor with a passion for Japanese culture.
“With Kansas City taking the center of the world stage for the World Cup this coming summer, we wanted to be sure that we could bring something special to the Nelson-Atkins,” Fox Knappe said.
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