Volkerfest artist celebrates Kansas City’s architecture

Cutline: Gavin Snider, one of the artists who will be at Volkerfest, created this billboard using illustrations of Kansas City buildings that had been lost.

Gavin Snider, one of the artists who will be at Volkerfest, created this billboard using illustrations of Kansas City buildings that had been lost.

As he framed art he’ll be displaying at Volkerfest tomorrow, Gavin Snider explained why his website includes pictures of billboards, music from the band Sad American Night, and illustrations of Kansas City.

(Roanoke Park will be alive with food, local artists, children’s activities and music tomorrow as the Volker Neighborhood Association holds its first Volkerfest.)

untitled-(27-of-27)It all has to do with his twin brother, Grant, an orthodontist in Wichita and world-renowned cartoonist.

Growing up in a small town in Kansas, the two were constantly drawing spaceships, aliens, and anything else that struck their fancy that week.

“We are minorly competitive,” Snider explains, “but more than that, he’s my first reader.”

His brother was – and still is –  a fan, someone to bounce ideas off of.

And Snider remembers the pure joy of drawing with his brother, but he says somewhere in the process of growing up, that got lost.

“I started architecture school and for the first few years we were hand drawing. I was doing it, but I was not having any fun,” he says.

Snider uses Kansas City subjects as inspiration for album covers.

Snider uses Kansas City subjects as inspiration for album covers.

Snider turned to another creative outlet in college – he learned to play the guitar. That led to joining a band. That led to a need for posters for the band. Which, in a way that seems logical when he tells the story, led him back to the joy of drawing.

Drawing posters “connected back to what Grant and I were doing as children and got me excited again,” Snider says.

Snider became an architect. He now works for Huftt Architects, a firm with its offices in Roanoke Park, as a designer.

In 2012, he won a competition to design a billboard that would be displayed in the Crossroads.

“The project started with a billboard, a cityscape made entirely of buildings that once existed in Kansas City but had since been lost. I read books, websites and old newspaper clippings while researching the illustration, learning about the history of Kansas City,” Gavin explains on his website. “It could have been the end of the project, but instead it was the beginning.”

2015-06-26_13-06-49It launched Snider’s next project,  drawing Kansas City buildings, including several in Midtown. He calls these quickly-drawn pieces travelogues. For him, they are an exercise in “preserving a moment.”

“It is about those small moments and stopping to see the world around me at a slower pace.”

Snider hopes that others will see his vision of that building and appreciate it in a new way.

Tomorrow’s Volkerfest is one of several new Midtown mini-festivals celebrating  neighborhoods and their unique residents. For Snider, who lives in Volker right now, the neighborhood has a great artistic vibe. He enjoys walking or running through the neighborhood and hearing other musicians practicing. And he thinks using the neighborhood park is a perfect venue.

“Roanoke Park has undergone a huge transformation. People who live in the surrounding neighborhoods have banded together to make it a great place,” Snider says.

Volkerfest will be held Saturday, June 27 from 3 to 9 p.m. in Roanoke Park.

 

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