School of Art Faculty Member Jean Schmitt Opens Solo Exhibition in Kansas City

Assistant professor of art in the School of Art Jean Schmitt opens her solo exhibition Threshold Ecologies: Above and Below this evening, June 5, at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City, Missouri. 

On view until Aug. 22, Schmitt's exhibition is focused on shared routines with other living things. Works include big and small elements from nature. Live worms churn soil below while wheatgrass grows above, both housed within stacked porcelain pillars. Graphite drawings demonstrate how worm trails in soil and vulture flights in the sky present their own line language. What ties these subjects together is that they are part of ever-evolving ecosystems. 

"In my large graphite works, I render worms at human scale over 18 months, searching for a 'vermicular vernacular,' a line language of worms that mirrors the slowness of soil-making. In other pieces, worms trail wheatgrass juice directly across paper, or their pathways are etched into stone as future fossils, asking what traces of our shared actions might remain millions of years from now," Schmitt said. 

Visitors will experience her Worm Tureen series, which includes stacking porcelain vessels that function as living composting systems and sculptural columns. Produced with master ceramists in Jingdezhen, China, the historic porcelain capital, the tureens carry centuries of material knowledge into a living, composting present. Inside their ornate structures, worms transform waste into soil, and wheatgrass pushes upward, creating a circular system where scraps become juice shared in community, and the pulp returns to the worms. These structures reimagine decorative objects as thresholds from private habit into a many-layered, shared world, a theme that extends into Schmitt's research collaborations on both microscopic and technological scales.

Working with teaching assistant professor of biological sciences Dr. Lora Shadwick in the U of A's microscopy lab, Schmitt has been imaging the microbes in the worms' soil. Their presence introduces another layer of living participants in the exhibition and underscores the interconnectedness of worms, microbes, plants and human visitors.

Several works in the exhibition were developed with support from the School of Art's AT3D lab, where Schmitt collaborates with advanced digital fabrication tools to translate vulture flight paths and soil ecologies into sculptural form. Working closely with School of Art Director of Technology Vincent Edwards, she experiments with processes such as 3D scanning, CNC machining and digital modeling to extend her drawing practice into space. These collaborations emphasize how technological and ecological systems can be woven together, allowing Schmitt to test new materials and formats while remaining grounded in the slow, relational rhythms of worms, vultures and prairie ecologies.

"The worm transforms what people throw away into rich ground and becomes one kind of doula; the vulture, circling and returning bodies to sky and soil, becomes another," she explained. "Their lines - the tunnel and the spiral - hint at a quiet ontological turn away from the solitary hero toward a world where many worlds fit." 

In her other works, lines drawn by vultures themselves are translated into three dimensions. As the birds ride invisible currents, their circling paths are tracked, then 3D-printed in space and milled into aluminum reliefs that register those movements across the wall. These aerial drawings mark where the birds have ridden the warm air, inviting visitors to notice the invisible currents that carry them. "I try to make visible the forces that carry us - ecological, social and spiritual - and to ask how small, ongoing revolutions in our daily lives might add up to different ways of living together in troubled times," Schmitt added. 

Threshold Ecologies: Above and Below invites all who visit to consider how we exist within something shared, circular and much larger than we could have imagined. Schmitt's exhibition opens Friday, June 5, with a special performance from the KC Contemporary Dance and remains on view in the main gallery until Aug. 22, 2026. The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center is located at 2012 Baltimore Ave., Kansas City, MO 64108 and is open Wednesday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and during First Fridays 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. For more information, visit the center's site: https://www.leedy-voulkos.com/.