Juan Diego Gaucin teaches painting at Johnson County Community College and Haskell Indian Nations University. A self-described figurative painter with expressionist tendencies, he emigrated from Mexico as a child. That experience compels him to explore the plight of migrants in the five large-scale paintings that comprise his exhibition Para una vida mejor/For a Better Life. “Ask any immigrant why they choose to risk their lives and freedoms attempting to come into the United States or any other prosperous nation, and you will likely hear the phrase, ‘for a better life for my family,’” Gaucin asserts. “What better motivation is there than safeguarding the well-being and prosperity of future generations? Will we, as a society, choose to condemn the next great historical figure to languish in a detention cell, work a field, or fall victim to the many hardships plaguing our less fortunate neighbors? Or will we open our hearts and minds and resolve to invest in a brighter future for all?” 

Kevin Demery is an interdisciplinary artist originally from the San Francisco Bay area who has exhibited internationally and holds a tenure-track position at Kansas City Art Institute. Demery looks for poetry in objects in order to interrogate Black historical narratives and examine the sociopolitical context in which he finds himself as a Black man. In his exhibition, A Lesson Before Dying, Demery takes on themes he describes as having “permeated African American communities from emancipation to present day.” “Sculpture is the vehicle I use to engage the audience with iconic elements such as children’s puzzles, windchimes, and plaster-cast hands,” he notes. “Many of the works reference specific histories and poetically interpret them within larger cultural experiences. . . . I’m drawn to the use of unconventional materials to reveal the subtle nuances of the histories I awaken. In this, I find links between the objects I create and my experience growing up as an African American youth amid atmospheres riddled with political inertia, poverty, and violence.”