THE DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN was a group exhibition created and curated by 2023 graduates from the Kansas City Art Institute, Jessica Barbosa, Haley Mitchell, and Riley Rouse. These former Fiber and Sculpture students’ backgrounds converge through themes of domestic spaces, daily rituals, and objects that hold value through constant use and sentimentality. 

With their collective knowledge of hand paper making, sewing, ceramics, felting and weaving, they have created an immersive domestic space that the viewer can interact with. The Door is Always Open aims to investigate the relationship between public and private spaces. Portraying domestic objects in the white box gallery space conveys feelings of intrusion and the opportunity to peer into someone else’s life and see it as a reflection of the viewer’s own. The different ways in which the artists each interpret domesticity, converge in this space. 

About the artists: 

Miami born, Brazilian-American artist Jessica Barbosa explores the universal emotions of awe, longing, and vulnerability as a means to transform the individual experience into a collective one. She creates immersive dream-like installations that are both public and intimate. Barbosa employs traditional modes of making such as weaving and felting combined with projection mapping and soundscapes to create harmonious worlds that feel both surreal and familiar. Through her work she invites viewers to put aside the past and future and experience a communal present. Barbosa has received the Susan Lordi-Marker Award, the Barbara L. Kuhlman Scholarship, the McKeown Special Project Award and her design was selected for the Zhaner Student Design Competition. 

Haley Mitchell is a Kansas City-based artist who explores domesticity and the significance of daily objects. Her creative process involves experiencing the everyday without the monotony of habit. She employs a range of fiber processes, with a particular focus on sewing and papermaking, to replicate common objects. Through her work, she synthesizes societal impacts into replicated objects, such as toilet paper and composition notebooks, that prompt the viewer to examine their relation to politics and social norms. Haley is the recipient of the Barbara L. Kuhlman Scholarship and is set to graduate with a BFA in Fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute in May 2023. 

Riley Rouse is a visual artist who’s current body of work revolves around the ideas and concepts of kitsch. Combining her experience in photography with her experience in sculpture, she has discovered humor, nostalgia, and place in her practice. Riley’s knowledge of photography, ceramics, and fiber converge through themes of domestic spaces, daily rituals, and objects that hold value through constant use and sentimentality. She is a recipient of the Mckeown Special Projects and a returning guest artist and speaker at the Bixler 108 Performance and Listening Room.