Auction 2025

Dec 1

42nd Annual Benefit
Art Auction

KCAC’s Art Auction stands as the pinnacle event for artists and art collectors of all levels to gather for an unforgettable evening filled with community spirit, excitement, and - most importantly - impactful fundraising. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our participating artists, dedicated members, exceptional sponsors, and committed volunteers – your contributions are the driving force behind this event. You inspire us to shape and invest in a vibrant and evolving arts community in Kansas City.

For nearly 50 years, KCAC has been a foundation of the regional arts community, passionately advocating for artists and providing a sanctuary for creative expression. We remain committed to our mission and values: we honor diversity, treat everyone equitably, and foster inclusion and accessibility in all we do. We honor every individual, embracing their unique identities. In these transformative times, we believe that art is not just important – it is essential. Supporting the arts is vital for the continued growth and flourishing of our city.

Every dollar raised tonight directly supports KCAC’s operations, gallery exhibitions, and programming, all of which play a crucial role in nurturing the arts in our community. KCAC empowers artists by providing affordable studios, valuable exhibition opportunities, professional development courses, community programming, and active membership engagement. We are excited about our bright future ahead with BIG things to come!

On behalf of our Board of Directors and team – thank you for your unwavering support of KCAC, the annual art auction, and the incredible artists we serve.

Lorece Chanelle and Adrienne Maples, KCAC Art Auction Co-Chairs

Let us introduce…

Ada Koch, 42nd Annual Auction Honorary Chair

Left: Kevin and RJ Koch competing in the MR340. Right: Ada Koch pictured with her husband, Kevin, and son, RJ.

Ada Koch is a dedicated artist, advocate, and leader, Ada has served on the KCAC Board for 21 years, championing artists and strengthening Kansas City’s creative community. Her passion for the arts goes hand in hand with her deep commitment to making Kansas City a more vibrant and inspiring place for all.

We are beyond thrilled to recognize Ada Koch as the Honorary Chair for the 42nd Annual KCAC Art Auction Join us in celebrating Ada’s incredible impact and leadership at this year’s auction—an event made even more special with her at the helm!

“I am thrilled to be honored this year at the annual KCAC auction, but humbled as I realize that my main contribution for several decades has been as a cheerleader/advocate/groupie admiring the dedicated and hard working staff and the talented artists who keep this vital organization relevant to our community.

What a clever addition this year to have the auction also benefit the Missouri River-a life giving source of water needing our care and attention. This river is especially close to my heart as my husband and son have paddled in the MR340, which is the longest non-stop river race in the world! A life threatening challenge that appeals to the determined and those who care about the future of our river.

As water feeds our bodies, we also need nurturing of our minds and spirits. Making and enjoying art has been shown to improve our health by lowering blood pressure, decreasing stressful anxiety and improving cognitive function. Since KCAC’s founding over 40 years ago, this organization not only encourages and assists artists in creating but also provides opportunities to view original contemporary works in an atmosphere of learning, accepting and openly communicating. Just what we need to stay happy and healthy!

Many of my longest friendships have started at KCAC functions. So tonight, relax, enjoy, make new friends as you visit with old friends. By buying art or donating to KCAC, you are helping KCAC protect and promote key necessities of life!! Thank you!” ~ Ada Koch

Steve Snell, 42nd Annual Auction Honorary Artist

Honorary Artist, Steve Snell, canoed the entire length of the Missouri River documenting his adventure though his art practice.

Steve Snell is inspired by the mythology and popular culture of American history and the Western landscape. Through painting, video, and local adventures, he explores, questions, and celebrates this heroic and complicated narrative. With experiences such as paddling and painting all 2,341 miles of the Missouri River in a canoe, Snell seeks connection with the present moment through a reinterpretation of past stories and legends. Whether serving as a record of a journey or a fantastical vision of adventure, his work embodies a struggle between the comfortable consumption of entertainment and an uncomfortable understanding of history and the present. While confronting the problematic nature that some of this imagery perpetuates, he also finds genuine beauty and inspiration in it.

Snell has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Tallgrass National Preserve (KS), Teton ArtLab (WY), and the Chilkoot Trail Residency (AK/Canada), sponsored by the National Parks Service and Parks Canada. His work is represented by Courtney Collins Fine Art (MT), Momentum Gallery (NC), and Mountain Galleries (Canada). He holds an M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and both a B.F.A. in Painting and B.S. in Art Education from Miami University. Currently, he serves as Associate Professor of Art and the Sosland Family Chair of Foundation Studies at the Kansas City Art Institute. Through his practice, Snell pursues meaningful life experiences and connection with others through art.

“After moving to Kansas City about a decade ago, I found the Artists Coalition to be one of the most inviting resources for local artists. I am incredibly appreciative of the vibrant arts environment that this community has helped foster over the decades and believe that is a big reason that Kansas City remains such a great place to be a practicing artist. It’s also wonderful to see the KCAC partner with Missouri River Relief as part of this fundraiser. Having paddled the entirety of the Missouri River in 2022, the river looms large in my life experience and has served as a core inspiration in my art practice since moving to this area. Missouri River Relief has played an outsize role in helping make this resource a better, cleaner, and more accessible place for all communities. I’m proud to help contribute to an organization that does so much for local artists and also cares about our local resources.” ~ Steve Snell

Catherine Rybak & Dawn Park,
42nd Annual Auction Theme Artists

ILLUSTRATION: Catherine Rybak is an Illustrator, Printmaker, and the theme artist for KCAC’s 42nd Annual Benefit Art Auction. Catherine is originally from Cleveland, Ohio who moved to Kansas City to attend the Kansas City Art Institute.

Inspired a lot by nature, hiking, traveling, and exploring. Her main focus in her work is animals, birds, fish, and plants. She enjoys using mediums like screen printing, risograph printing, linoleum and other relief carving techniques, and digital illustration. She enjoys making fun and carefree drawings of all her favorite animals and birds.

She loves creating screen prints with lots of layers, detailed relief carving prints, and filling up her favorite sketchbooks. She just likes having fun, making things, and sharing her fun animal drawings. She loves participating in tabling events, art markets, and pop ups selling her work all around Kansas City.

AR ACTIVATION: Dawn Park is a native of Texas who already had an impressive art experience for a student and a young artist, Dawn came to Kansas City to obtain her BFA in Illustration at Kansas City Art Institute around 2019. With her time at the Art Institute, she has gotten the chance to do a whole range experiences. She was able to be an intern for Kansas City Artists Coalition, and was chosen to be one of two volunteer leaders for the National Illustration Conference during the summer of 2022. Seeing that she's this friendly infectious ball of helpfulness and laughter, she won the Mentorship Award (Illustration) during graduation. On top of that, she often comes back to guest lecture to the Illustration students in the fall semester due to her innovative, curious nature as a young artist.

Now as a fairly recent graduate who decided to stick around, she is navigating her artist life with her best foot forward. From becoming the gallery assistant for the Bunker Center for the Arts to being a board member to Northeast Arts KC, she is making herself known as a busy and helpful bee with loveable goofy energy in the art scene here.

With her own artwork, she is somewhat a jack of all trades. It spans from things like drawings to paintings to digital illustrations to augmented reality. She knows and understands all forms of illustration, and how to depict in various styles too. Like cat who always lands of their feet, Dawn can make anything that she makes look good -- regardless of medium and style.

In Memoriam…

Philomene Bennett (1935-2024)

Philomene Bennett’s amazing legacy that can be found and felt here in Kansas City - starting with the Kansas City Artists Coalition, a grassroots and growing artist-run nonprofit organization founded by Philomene and her husband, Lou Marak, in 1975.

Philomene is most widely known for her beautiful paintings, of which many are deeply inspiring and often spiritual in nature. But, for those who met her and were close to her she was much more than a renowned artist. She had a loving, beautiful and radiant energy that made her uniquely wonderful... which was often reflected in her most accomplished inspirational works of art.

In an art world that was heavily dominated by men, Philomene was successful in establishing herself as a respected and relevant artist in the Kansas City art community and beyond. She was co-founder and president of the Kansas City Artist Coalition, Art Editor of Helicon Nine Journal of Women’s Art and Letters, Adjunct Art Instructor and visiting artist/lecturer at Kansas City Art Institute, as well as a prolific painter, ceramist, and creator of artistic expressions in a variety of forms.

Gerry Trilling (1945-2024)

Gerry Trilling was a conceptual artist who presented a personal recounting of the history and assimilation of the American Jewish Diaspora in exquisite deadpan. Her parents escaped the Holocaust, relocating to St. Louis where she grew up in a community of immigrants viewing identity, assimilation and belonging as linked to home environments and material culture.

While Trilling used a variety of fabrics to mark the passage of time, she was not nostalgic. She embraced our contemporary material culture, itself omnivorous in the extreme. Nothing was off limits in her unsentimental investigation of the passage from greenhorn to assimilation. Materials, patterns, certain numerical codes were her conceptual signifiers. Her work insists that you, the viewer, reach into your own personal place of memory and association.

Gerry Trilling earned a BFA in Painting from the Kansas City Art Institute. She has studied weaving, dyeing and paper making, and traveled extensively collecting materials and conducting independent studies in Asia, South America, Australia and Europe with an emphasis on how patterns fit into the larger visual landscape.