Listening to the Land: Walking the Water with Karen McCoy

In conjunction with its recent exhibition Life on Land, the Emily & Todd Voth Artspace is pleased to host Listening to the Land: Walking the Water with Karen McCoy on the KCAI campus.

Inspired by the Life on Land exhibition, Listening to the Land is a series of artist-led encounters that extend the themes of Life on Land through embodied engagement with sound and place. Designed as a set of experiential programs, the series invites participants to attune to landscape through listening, movement, and shared observation.

This series concludes with Walking the Water, a guided listening walk with land artist and environmentalist Karen McCoy to expanded ways of understanding landscape as something heard, felt, and experienced over time.

For Walking the Water, participants will gather and walk together with McCoy while carrying a paper or hand-carved wood listening/sighting horn and a viewing lens provided by the artist. We will explore the site beginning on the campus of the Kansas City Art Institute, into and through Southmoreland Park and Thies Park to conclude with a streetcar ride back.

We will walk a new way by employing our senses, particularly our observational and aural facilities, in an acute and unusual manner, such that we will newly discover new aspects of the cityscape. Walking together in this way is an act overlaid with many intentions which will unfold as we traverse the landscape. Participants will each be part of a "situational sculpture" consisting of a dispersed experience. This calls upon each person experiencing it to remember and mentally assemble all the parts in order to experience the whole.

This program is open to all experience levels. Bring a backpack, sketchbook, and favorite drawing materials if you have them. Wear sturdy walking shoes, long pants, long socks, hat, sunscreen, and bug spray, if needed. Please bring a full reusable water bottle.

We will meet in the Artspace parking lot before departing on our listening walk. This program is free and open to up to 15 participations with an rsvp.

RSVP: Space is limited, and on a first come, first serve basis, so reserve your spot through Eventbrite. Email [email protected], or call 816-802-3571 for directions and questions.

Programs may be subject to change. For the latest information, including other rsvp sign-up opportunities and workshop details and locations, contact the venue directly. Follow us on Instagram @artspace_kcai and Facebook https://www.facebook.com/artspacekcai, or visit www.kcai.edu/artspace, to receive the most up-to-date information about these programs.

LOCATION: 16 East 43rd Street, Kansas City, MO 64111, at the intersection of 43rd and Walnut Streets. The walk will include the KCAI main campus, Southmoreland Park, Theis Park, and portions of the The Arterie experiential walkway that connects KCAI, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

WALK DIFFICULTY: 1.4 miles round trip, easy to moderate elevation changes along paths.

About the Artist:

Karen McCoy is a visual artist whose work focuses on sculpture, environmental art, walking art, and land art. She resides in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is a professor emeritus in sculpture and social practice at the Kansas City Art Institute. She has also taught at Williams College, Colby Colleges, and the University of Minnesota-Morris.

McCoy's sculptural works are created out of a combination of artistic practice and environmental activism with focus on the ecological, geographical, cultural, and societal histories of the site at which the work is created. She uses reclaimed materials to create large-scale sculpture that address issues of global climate change, sustainability, and resource depletion. She has also created drawings made as a result of walking since 1987, and she frequently collaborates with composer Robert Carl, on an ongoing body of work that includes her ear horns and listening post sculptures.

Listening to the Land: Walk the Water with Karen McCoy is organized by the Artspace as part of Life on Land, January 30 – March 14, 2026.

Images courtesy of the artist.

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Host or Publisher H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City Art Institute