The emergence of spring and the buds and blossoms that accompany the season are a welcomed response to the long Midwestern winter. The option to “head outside” and enjoy the natural world as the weather warms is always anticipated, and during the spring of 2020 the action took on especially renewing qualities as many were emerging from municipal orders to stay at home, mostly indoors, maybe all alone.

Head Outside featured the work of six ceramic artists situated within the horticultural displays at Powell Gardens, Kansas City’s Botanical Gardens. On the north side of the glass-walled conservatory, a vignette of sculptures by Nicole Rene Woodard peered out the windows from inside. Made during quarantine, the portraits describe the feelings of loneliness, melancholy, longing, contemplation, and revelation that might accompany being isolated indoors, away from loved ones and practiced routines.

Self-portraits by five students in the Ceramics Department at the Kansas City Art Institute who have expressively rendered their own likeness in clay were installed amid plantings on the south side of the conservatory. Outdoors, gathered in a group, together but also apart, the self-portraits embodied diverse perspectives on being and a joyful relationship to each other. Taken together, these interpretations of the portrait explored how we learned to care for ourselves and each other as we moved through the world amid an emerging pandemic , and how that care continues to be reimagined day by day.

Participating artists: Sydney Clark, Erin Coughennower, Adrian Fieber, Isaac Lee, Jason Wang, and Nicole Rene Woodard