Less than a year after creating pop-up shows around town for digital artists, Kansas City native Mary McCawley opened KC’s first digital-only art gallery, Digital Dreams KC, in the Crossroads this past spring.
When McCawley came back to KC after living in Colorado for seven years, she was surprised that the KC arts scene was largely unchanged and there wasn’t a gallery in the city focused solely on digital art.
“Digital art is art that is created using any kind of computer program or software—Photoshop, for example,” McCawley says. “Adobe has a whole suite of programs that are essential to most digital artists, from Adobe Animate to Adobe Illustrator. It’s anything that’s using a computer program to create a picture.”
Being the owner of the first digital arts-focused gallery of its kind in KC, McCawley likes to keep the dialogue going between creators and local artists and is always open to changing and challenging the narratives of what digital art can be. Before every new monthly exhibit, McCawley puts out open calls for both local and international artists to submit their work.
“We feature eight different artists each month in different mediums and different themes,” McCawley says. “So for example, in May our theme was digital identity, which looked at: ‘How did the internet affect your identity. Did the internet take your identity? Did it shape your entire identity? Do you use the internet to escape your real world identity? Who are you on the internet, and how does that shape your perception of self?’ [Those are] the questions I asked the artists for the open call.”
While most of the submissions have been from international artists, McCawley is hoping to get more KC-based artists involved, which can be challenging because digital art isn’t as predominant of a medium in the Midwest. McCawley will continue to put out open calls for themed monthly exhibitions, which will premiere at First Fridays in the Crossroads and run for the month. Digital Dreams KC (2018 Main St., KCMO) is open from 4 to 10 pm daily (except Sundays) and by appointment.
“Digital Dreams brings Kansas City its first digital art gallery—a gallery space that’s dedicated to showing digital art in different mediums and forums from global, national and local digital artists,” McCawley says. “When you don’t have something that you assumed you had, especially in the arts and culture department, it’s probably filling a void. I hope in five years, we’re incorporating digital art in with the physical. Whether they used a paintbrush on a canvas or used a digital stylus pen on a tablet, someone created this and it’s still art. We’re living in a digital world. It makes sense to have spaces where we’re enjoying art in the same digital format that everything else we’re consuming is in.”
