Creative competition: Wichita artists battle for Mark Arts exhibition prize

Like any serious competitor, Brenda Lichman put in the practice to emerge a winner, timing herself to make sure she was in top form before the actual competition.

When she was declared the champion, the magnitude of what she’d won hit her.

“Oh my gosh, a show,” was the thought that ran through the ceramic artist’s mind after winning last year’s Versus: A Live Art Battle at Mark Arts for the opportunity to have an exhibition at the arts education center in 2023.

During the Versus competition, regional artists have 20 minutes to create a piece of work, competing in rounds against one another while a couple hundred onlookers watch what they make.

Lichman was one of eight competitors in the 3D category, while 12 artists competed in the 2D category last year. Judges with professional arts backgrounds choose a winner in each category. Painter Tim Stone won the 2D category.

“And then looking at the space, I thought again, ‘Oh my gosh, a show,” Lichman recalled.

Lichman, who was featured as an emerging artist by Ceramics Monthly Magazine in 2009 and whose work is part of the well-regarded Rosenfield Collection, is no stranger to having her work in exhibitions. But this would be different. It would be her biggest exhibition in Wichita and one of the few where she is the featured artist.

Stone, who’s had more than five solo exhibitions and several group exhibitions, agreed that Mark Arts’ 5,000-square-foot Gladys & Karl T. Wiedemann Gallery is a big space to fill.

Both artists spent the past year creating new works to fill the space for their joint exhibition called “(In)Flux” that is currently on display in the gallery through July 27. The artists will give a gallery talk and tour of the exhibition — which features 30 ceramic works by Lichman and 22 paintings by Stone — at 6 p.m. on Thursday, June 29.

In the months leading up to the exhibition, the two artists often talked about what they were creating so that the exhibition would be more cohesive and complementary. Both see their work as reflecting changes, complexities, contradictions and relationships, which helped them come up with the name of the exhibition. They liked the wordplay possibilities of “(In)Flux” as two separate words or as one.

Initially, Lichman spent a lot of time developing glazes and narrowing down the palette of colors to blues and greens, along with white pieces that form a strong monochromatic element to the exhibition. Eventually, she made more than 60 new works to possibly use in the exhibition.

“Your white pieces next to my colorful pieces are really good,” said Stone.

Using oil, acrylic and spray paint in combination and separately, Stone’s paintings are indeed intensely colorful, often combining hues of greens, bright oranges and pinks.

For Lichman, preparing for the exhibition meant balancing her creative time in the studio with her full-time job teaching ceramics at Wichita East High School. While last year’s Versus competition was Lichman’s first, she was familiar with the competition since her students have competed in Mark Arts’ student version of the competition.

For the exhibition, she wanted to “use the vessels as a metaphor for the human figure,” she said, to showcase and elicit emotions. For some pieces, she cut and pulled or pushed the clay to manipulate it into the final result. The names of some of her works are emotions themselves, like the grouping of three pieces called Bliss, Nurturing II and Nurture I.

For his works, Stone said he often uses digital photographs he’s taken as inspiration. What appears on his canvases are expressions “in how astray I feel navigating a world that is isolating, yet super connected,” he said in the exhibition’s artist statements. Often, the spaces depicted are obstructed and not straightforward.

After getting his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2012 from Wichita State, Stone has become well known in the local arts community. Wichita artist and KMUW art reviewer Curt Clonts has called Stone “incendiary” for his unique style.

Stone, who grew up in Hutchinson, started teaching art in 2014, first at Mark Arts (then known as the Wichita Center for the Arts) and then Bethany College in Lindsborg. Since 2018, he’s taught drawing and painting at WSU, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts in 2022.

Along with creating paintings and teaching, Stone is also an art consultant, connecting artists with businesses that want to buy art.

After earning art degrees in her native Wisconsin and then Texas, Lichman moved to Wichita a decade ago and brought the Empty Bowls fundraiser movement for the hungry with her. She still directs the annual event at WSU, for which artists create bowls that are then purchased by the public to use for sampling during a chili cook-off. The proceeds benefit the Kansas Food Bank.

After seven years of teaching art at East High, Lichman will become the education curator for WSU’s Ulrich Museum of Art in July.

As past champions, Lichman and Stone were back to compete in this year’s Versus competition held June 8, less than a week after their exhibition had opened.

While usually artists can apply to compete, this year’s competition was an “all-stars event,” said Katy Dorrah, the CEO of Mark Arts, with past champions and artists who had won the fan favorite awards invited to participate.

The 2023 competition was Lichman’s second and Stone’s fourth. Stone participated in the first Versus back in 2015, when only painters took part in the live competition. A Mark Arts volunteer had suggested holding the competition after seeing a YouTube video of a similar battle in Canada, Dorrah said. In 2016, a high school Versus competition was added and the 3D category was added to both the student and adult battles in 2018. This year’s student competition had 300 youth attendees and artists from a dozen regional schools.

The 2023 adult competition had 12 2D artists and eight 3D artists.

While Lichman had encouragingly said to Stone, “Let’s win this again,” at the start of this year’s competition, they didn’t repeat.

This year’s Versus winners were Sheldon Draper in the 2D category and Casey TZ Smith in the 3D category, who earned the prize of having a joint Mark Arts exhibition in 2024.

‘(In)Flux’ exhibition

What: a joint exhibition — the prize for winning the Mark Arts’ 2022 Versus: A Live Art Battle competition — by ceramist Brenda Lichman and painter Tim Stone

Where: Gladys & Karl T. Wiedemann Gallery, Mark Arts

When: through Thursday, July 27. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. A free artist-led talk and tour happen at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 29. Advance registration for the June 29 event is suggested.

Admission: Free

More info: (316) 634-2787 or markartsks.com