KANSAS CITY, MO.- The Missouri Bank Crossroads Branch will debut four new large-scale commissioned images, by Kansas City based artists Grant Miller and May Tveit, on its “Artboards” in time for First Friday October 2, 2009. An Art through Architecture “Art Achievement” project, the Missouri Bank “Artboards” launched fall 2008, when the building’s existing double-sided billboards were renovated and converted into a highly visible site for work by area artists as part of the bank’s purchase and renovation of the building to house its Crossroads Branch, completed by Helix Architecture + Design.

Grant Miller will present two east-facing images, which are croppings of recent acrylic on wood paintings. Interweaving hard-edges and painterly drips, and built up through many layers, these painting are Miller’s attempts to physically portray the abundance of information that surrounds us at all times in a myriad of forms. Informed by an interest in architecture as well as in the properties of paint, Miller’s “maximalist” images suggest the chaotic, complex network of information, tangible and intangible, that shapes our lives and informs our choices.

“Whether the forms of information are expressions, memories, math, or the mundane, the act of showing what real time information--and all of its different characteristics--could look like fascinates me,” says Miller. “With this billboard project, I am very excited to have my work enter a more direct and public form of communication, actively engaging in the world of information of which it speaks.”

May Tveit will present mirror images of the same photograph on her west-facing billboards. The image documents "COLOR FIELD," a series of hard-coated and painted rectangular hay bales, as installed on a beach along the Cape Cod National Seashore. The sculptures here compose a minimalist dotted line along the ocean horizon and shoreline (and later in the day were seen swimming in the bay as they floated on white pedestals), bringing a sense of serenity, order, and beauty to the Artboards’ urban context.

The COLOR FIELD installation pictured was one of 16 “happenings” Tveit completed this summer as part of FIELD TEST, an ambitious solo exhibition project in Wellfleet, MA, whereby the artist, with the help of dozens of far-ranging volunteers, moved and located these and related sculptures in unexpected locations around Wellfleet. As translated into the Artboards in Kansas City, the image both furthers Tveit’s intent of placing art into everyday life and completes a circle, as these candy colored emblems of Midwestern farm culture come home to roost.

Grant Miller attended the Kansas City Art Institute and received his MFA in printmaking and drawing from Washington University, St. Louis. He has had solo exhibitions at Black & White Gallery, New York, NY; Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City; Pele Prints, St. Louis; and Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago. His work has been featured in group exhibitions including “Maximalist Tendencies in Painting” at Byblos Art Gallery, Verona, Italy; Art Miami; “More is More” at Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University; and “Constructed Realities: The Influence of Science and Engineering in Contemporary American Art” at Center for Contemporary Art, Southeastern Louisiana University. Miller has completed residencies at City Internationale des Arts Residency, Paris; Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY, and Vermont Studio Center, among others, and was a recipient of a Lighton Internation Artists Exchange Travel Grant. Miller is represented by Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City.

May Tveit received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her Masters from the Domus Academy, Milan, Italy. A Charlotte Street Award recipient (2002) and current resident artist at Review Studios, Tveit has presented solo exhibitions at Farm Projectspace and Gallery, Wellfleet, MA; University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg; Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence; Review Exhibition Space, Kansas City; United Metal Spinning Company, Kansas City; and Kansas City Jewish Museum Epsten Gallery at Village Shalom. She has also completed site specific installation commissions for Avenue of the Arts and for National Center for Drug Free Sport, which was awarded an AIA Allied Arts & Craftsmanship Award.