In 1985 Jim Leedy, also known as the father of the crossroads district, opened the first art gallery in the area off of Wyandotte street, the original Leedy-Voulkos art gallery. Then shortly after moved down the street and opened The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. At the time Union Station was closed and the crossroads district largely did not exist. Jim Leedy began encouraging his colleagues from The Kansas Art Institute to put in words of art and create their own galleries.
Stephanie Leedy, the daughter of Jim Leedy and the current owner and art director of The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center has watched her father grow the area.
“[Jim Leedy] slowly put the gallery’s in. It’s evolved,” Leedy said. “Floor by floor, he started putting artist studios and work live spaces upstairs. So everything up above are places where people either have just art studios, or they live there and have their art studio. You can actually walk around up there too.”
Slowly a community of artists formed and the crossroads district was created as it is today. Which then inspired the need for an event to bring the community together.
“[Jim Leedy] continued to encourage other artists to buy buildings down here and to put galleries in them, so that there was an art community and it’s evolved from there, and the galleries that were down here decided to all be open on the same night, which is how First Fridays evolved,” Leedy said.
Now on the first Friday of every month nearly every gallery in the crossroads district opens their doors. Food trucks and smaller art vendors and performers with live music flood the streets welcoming anyone who enjoys art to come and look around.
Senior Cora Jones is the daughter of Debbie Barrett-Jones the gallery and shop manager at The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center. Jones works alongside her mother and the Leedy family to run the gallery and gift shop. Jones finds first Fridays to be a great opportunity for local artists to share their creations.
“So many people come in, and so many people with small connections to others [visit the gallery], and all of a sudden we have probably over 100 people coming into the gallery seeing different art. And sometimes it’s not big artists, it’s little artists too,”said Jones.
One of the local artists is Milo Mae who uses one of the work-live spaces above The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center which are often open for people to walk through on first fridays. Maes father is a maintenance worker at the art center and helped her make
the connections to share her art at the gallery.
“Being surrounded by art all the time is always so inspiring. It keeps me going, I pop downstairs whenever I want and [ get to] go see new artwork whenever [I want to],” Mae said.
The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center is unique in the way it collects artists for its many showcases.
“Most galleries have their select group of artists, and they show them, they rotate them over and over again, and sometimes it’s really hard to get into a gallery that will really push and try and sell your work,” Leedy said. “But we don’t do that because we have such a big space. We show a lot of first time artists and students and student work, [ we show a lot of] emerging artists,” Leedy said.
Most of The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center student artists come from the Kansas Art Institute however they would be open to high school artists if the variables turn out.
“We’re booked out pretty far in advance, so it’s a little bit tricky, because students are in such a time crunch, because you’re in a semester by semester or year by year . So we don’t have a ton of availability, but if we ever know that there’s this group that’s interested, maybe on a short notice or something, then we can work on something,” Leedy said.
Even without personal art displays The Leedy-Voulkos Art Center and the rest of First Fridays offers an opportunity for student artest to get inspiration or for even non artists to enjoy the beauty of art.
“I think that people should go down to First Fridays at least once in their life, see what it’s like. It’s a very cool experience. There are food trucks, little pop up shops. Galleries are always super fun,” Jones said.
