Statement of Interest

I have been working and showing as an artist for more than two decades. Although my education was in Michigan in mathematics and then at an art school on the east coast, I am firmly rooted in Kansas. As an artist trained in painting and printmaking, I began my artistic career studying traditional figurative painting and creating large paintings of myself and my friends that dealt with power dynamics within human relationships. While I no longer depict the figure in a naturalistic way, my concern with scale, the human form as subject, my interest in body language, and my curiosity about psychology has continued to inform my artistic practice which expanded into the realm of sculpture, drawing, and installation. I have been fortunate to receive grants to support my practice including a Partners of the Americas federal grant, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; and have been awarded a number of fellowships at artist-in-residency programs including the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and the Fine Arts Work Center. These grants and residencies have afforded me the opportunity to create work for more than 100 exhibitions nationally and abroad. My work has been on public display at the Miami International Airport, and recently I created a large-scale sculptural installation for the SACO Contemporary Art Biennial in Antofagasta, Chile.

I feel that I am at a critical point in my practice to build upon this momentum and success. With access to a large studio space and support from the Studio Inc. and Kansas City community, I want to establish a more permanent presence in Kansas City, and continue to pursue national and international opportunities. Specifically, I will be able to build more ambitious and larger scale works. With this body of work, I will apply to prestigious national grants, residencies, and exhibition opportunities, which I believe will take my career to the next level.

Use Description

For more than 10 years I have been exploring scale, and expressions of vulnerably and intimacy. Recently, I completed a large public project at the Antofagasta Regional Library as part of the Chilean Biennale (SACO 1.0). For the outward facing part of this public installation titled Mooring, large-scale underpants were used to literally represent the result of a catastrophic event — belongings disrupted and found out of place or moved up and out of harms way or aired out after the flood waters had receded.  It, became a metaphor for vulnerability and acceptance: underpants raised up a flagpole — a negative act of humiliation transformed into something positive and celebrated; a rescue beacon; a flag of surrender. Ultimately, I wanted to emphasize the beauty and importance of this historical building in the center of Antofagasta through various contradictions: public vs. private, absurd vs. reasoned, chaotic vs. ordered. I thought about it like a big bower bird’s nest made from 2x4’s, discarded clothing, giant socks, and sequined flags that might be signaling to someone or something beyond, and as a hodgepodge farewell to moments lost.

I want to more fully explore similar kinds of installation experiments that involves larger-than-human scale parts with constructions that incorporate architecture, but due to space restrictions I have been limited to working through problems virtually, or on-site. It would be a game changer to have the space to flush out ideas on a one-to-one scale and then document ambitious installations for application purposes. This would be possible with the studio space, shop facilities and gallery space at Studios Inc.

Finally, I would like to have a studio presence in Kansas City to build my artistic community in Kansas City. A residency at Studios Inc. would allow me to have more effective studio visits with curators and other art professionals who are based in Kansas City or are visiting the city.

I will be including images in my application from these pages:

Examples of my ongoing drawing series can be found here (the first six images dated 2024 or 2025 are part of this current series):
https://www.eric-conrad.com/work/project-one-hat3k-xdw8f

Examples of related sculptural work can be found here:
https://www.eric-conrad.com/work/project-one-hat3k-xdw8f-jfchb

And here:
https://www.eric-conrad.com/work/project-one-hat3k

From the Studios Inc. website:

The Studios Inc Residency Program awards a three-year studio space to mid-career artists eager to grow their portfolio. Conveniently located in Kansas City’s thriving Crossroads Arts District, Artists-in-Residence use the industrial-sized spaces to grow their bodies of work while engaging with the regional arts community to an enhanced degree.

Studios Inc Artist Residency Eligibility Guidelines:

1. Hold residency in the Greater Kansas City area or be willing to relocate to live in the Kansas City area for the duration of the residency (three years).

2. Support program objectives by maintaining a strong studio and community presence.

3. Identify as a mid-career artist* with at least 7 years of proven post-graduate experience in the field and a well developed body of work.

4. Possess a strong desire to use the awarded space to create a significant body of work that propels the artist the their next level of professional achievement.