There, there…
a collaborative exhibition at Wayfarers, Brooklyn
in association with Harvester Arts, Wichita
featuring: 
Mike Miller, Meghan Miller, Hallie Linnebur, Kristin Beal, Kate Van Steenhuyse Ryan W. Gates

Essay by AW Strouse

“That is the reason that everybody thinks machines are so wonderful they are only wonderful because they are the only thing that says the same thing to any and every one and therefore one can do without them, why not, after all you cannot exist without living and living is something that nobody is able to understand while you can exist without machines it has been done but machines cannot exist without you that makes machines seem to do what they do.”

—Gertrude Stein, Everybody’s Autobiography

The show’s title, “There, there...” evokes Gertrude Stein’s famous quip about Oakland. (“There is no there there!” Stein declared.)

But “There, there…” fully realizes, with off-beat humor, the zany machinations of Stein’s sense of America.

In 2020—about 80 years after Stein wrote Everybody’s Autobiography—we are living in at the peculiar seam where Stein’s syntax folds unto itself, within Stein’s bizarre proclamation that “you can exist without machines it has been done but machines cannot exist without you.” 

“There, there…” plays with (and through) the uncanny sense that machines (because they “cannot exist without you”) are somehow more alive than we are, more expressive of their own purpose as the realization of our desire. 

Whereas, the human being lives with less clear purpose, with less clear belonging, and “cannot exist without living and living is something that nobody is able to understand.” 

“There, there…” puts us into contact with this struggle. The exhibition draws energy—literally, kinetic energy—from the titular piece, Mike Miller’s “There, there…” (a see-saw of lumber, wire, rope, and hinges). Conceptualized as the exhibit’s center piece by Kristin Beal, the teeter-totter allows audience members to become participants in the exhibition, riding on the see-saw with third-grade abandon, as their kinetic energy puts into motion…

What? The physical collaboration of the see-saw (in pre-pubescent, ludic revelry) transfers power to the rest of the exhibition. Although Rube Goldberg comes to mind as a possible analogy, the energy is not distributed linearly: the see-saw’s pleasure flows into multiple nodes, digital and analog, switched on by the meditative stillness of Kristen Beal’s zen-like “Landlocked” and passing through a Steinien syntax of counterintuitive switch points and rushing, jammed up, overflowing maneuvers. 

Put into motion is the wrist-turning, sculpted hand of “The Mercury Switch,” which (switching on-again, off-again) re-literalizes the “digits” (or fingers) or the digital… even as this electrical binary activates, yet again, the “CristalStar” *by best friends art team Linnebur & Miller, comprised of artists Hallie Linnebur and Meghan Miller). “CristalStar” is a wondrous concoction of found plastic that is ambiguous both sculpture and performance, with a human (or maybe “human”) inside the sculpture. 

Meanwhile, another node of the network, activated by the see-saw, pulls up and down up Mike Miller’s “Zippering”—unrelentingly enacting the curious pleasure of the zipper, so developmentally interconnected (like the playground teeter-totter) with potty-training and masturbatory pleasure, the futile thrills of machines that just go up and down without necessarily accomplishing anything. 

Also in the mix: “Machine-Nature Interface 125” strings through the air overhead, feathers twirling out of the gallery space and into a separate room, where all of the push and pull, inflation and deflation, twist and turn comes together into an elegant ceiling fan, swirling about in gold and feathers… bringing the fan (human imitation of the bird) back to its primal, originary inspiration. 

The materials—bird plumage, shiny gold, well-oiled surfaces—connote luxury and aristocracy, mixed, somehow, with nature and trash—a playfulness as enchanting as the see-saw’s nebulous mode of control and power, limitation and expression. Are we regulating the machines, or they us? Pleasure is nebulously consumed and consuming… our actions/selves interpolated into systems which we “use” and which “use” us, like Facebook, capital, democracy…

Maybe we are no longer cogs in a machine, but a dusty, old, box of useless spare parts, not anymore needed by the machine (and no one seriously believing, now, that the machine functions, except maybe to pollute the sea with grocery bags). And nostalgia rules political life... both parties led by Baby-Boomers with Cold War platforms. 

Which is not even to mention, yet, Kate Van Steenhuyse’s paintings, “It’ll Shake Out” and “Just Let It” (the latter employing, along with acrylic, some bleach). The paintings are kind of like if Agnes Martin had finally realized her nihilistic potential and gone full-throttle into graffiti and fashion: paintings that, if you could take from the wall, you’d want to wear, or raise up as flags over the wonderland of “There, there…” 

The “Portraits of Joe” by Ryan W. Gates are brilliant in their use of the Post-It note as a canvas for critiquing corporate bureaucracy—like if “Dilbert” had read Marx. They are the kinds of drawings that, if you saw them on a coworkers cubicle, you would have to call H.R. (and the police), realizing that the broken-down American machine had driven yet another working person crazy.   

The thrust of “There, there…” is not the normative grammar of narrative, but the post-industrial diffusion of the cubicle-worker, hooked on social-media and getting high (a Political Junkie) on toxic news from the “feed,” playing the game of the voting booth (where “liking” and “following” are as consequential as they are trivial, and pushing the buttons may or may not create any result, but at least seem to give us the mechanical, purposeful existence that we envy in machines.) Or, the extent to which, whether the machine is or isn’t “doing” anything, it feels as true as gravity, teeter-tottering in place, grateful to go along for the ride… 

A.W. Strouse

We’re thrilled to kick off 2020 with a show that speaks to Wayfarers’ own community ethos and celebrates collaboration between both artists and audiences. There, there… involves a people-powered teeter totter automating and illuminating other works of art in the room. More than ever, we need you at the opening reception on Friday, January 10th—to support this collective coming all the way from Kansas to share their work with you, and to literally power the machine that makes the art work work!


There, there… is a collaborative exhibition by artists affiliated with Harvester Arts in Wichita, KS, featuring works by Kate Van Steenhuyse, Kristin Beal, Ryan W. Gates, Hallie Linnebur, Mike Miller and Meghan Miller.

January 10-February 2, 2020
Opening Reception 1/10/20 7-10 pm

There, there... celebrates collaboration by forming a kind of interdependency within the gallery walls that centers around a working teeter-totter. The teeter-totter is fully functional in several regards: It operates as an apt metaphor for collaboration, of course—the object requires at least two participants engaging with it in order to be anything more than ineffective furniture, one collaborator can raise the other to much greater heights than they are capable of by themselves, and the ups and downs inherent in the process are precisely what generates momentum for the players. But the teeter-totter in There, there… doesn’t just function as an analogy for essential cooperation, it quite literally demonstrates it by operating as the power source for the other works in the room. The energy generated by participants on the seesaw will be harnessed to illuminate several of the works in the show, and to automate others that have kinetic components. In this regard, the teeter-totter is also an appropriate metaphor for art as an exchange between artist and viewer—if no one is in the room to engage with the work, the conversation remains incomplete.

In addition to the central teeter-totter, the exhibition features several other kinetic sculptures by Mike Miller that balance a gorgeous and elaborate mechanism with a simple and elegant natural component. Meghan Miller and Hallie Linnebur present a breathing crystalline grotto whose inhaling and exhaling is powered by the teeter-totter. Kristin Beal uses the seesaw to illuminate her sculptural projections of the sea. Kate Van Steenhuyse presents recent process-based paintings that are careful negotiations with acrylic, bleach, spray paint, and drawing materials on raw, unstretched canvas. Ryan W. Gates exhibits Portraits of Joe, a series of small pencil drawings on Post-It Notes questioning his participation in corporate America.

KATE VAN STEENHUYSE received her MFA (Fine Arts) in 2008 from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and a BFA (Painting and Women's Studies) in 2001 from Washington University in St. Louis. Kate has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, San Francisco, Wichita, and Dallas. In 2014, she co-founded Harvester Arts, an experimental residency and artist capacity-building program in Wichita, KS, that partners nationally-recognized artists with local creatives and offers a variety of artist services. She was featured in New American Painting West Edition in 2011, and was a Fellow of the Career Development Program at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, PA. She has served as Ulrich Museum of Art Alliance Board President and Program Manager at Arts Partners Wichita. Kate is currently Executive Director of Harvester Arts, a Placemaking + Regional Consultant for the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission, a board member of the Mid America Arts Alliance, and graduate faculty at Wichita State University.

KRISTIN BEAL is an arts advocate, administrator and culture producer. She currently serves as Wichita State University (WSU) Placemaking Coordinator and WSU ShiftSpace Gallery manager and lecturer of Community and Social Practices for the WSU School of Art, Design and Creative Industries. In 2014, Beal co-founded Harvester Arts with Kate Van Steenhuyse and Ryan Gates, and serves as program director for the nonprofit, which provides a platform for visual arts experimentation, community engagement and professional development. She studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, Wichita State University (BFA Drawing and Painting) and Virginia Commonwealth University (MFA Painting and Printmaking). Kristin Beal has worked extensively as a grant facilitator with local artists to realize projects through Harvester Arts with the Wichita Arts Council, the Knight Foundation, and the NEA. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and pursues projects that explore various means of collaboration and creative action via community-based art projects.

RYAN W. GATES is a storyteller through mediums such as moving images, writing, and spoken word. He holds a BA with a focus in Creative Writing and Film Production from Sarah Lawrence College, studied Theatrical History at Harvard University, writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has an Executive MBA from the Smartly Institute with a focus in Entrepreneurialism and Leadership. Ryan began his career in New York City as a producer-director for Disney, the Kids WB, and various films before moving to California to work in marketing production. He co-produced The Shark Show, NYC's longest-running underground live comedy variety show, as well as various productions for the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater. He co-founded CreativeRHINO in 2006, a digitally nomadic creative agency that focused on online services, with a home base on Lake George in Upstate New York. In 2010, he moved to Wichita, Kansas, where he served as the Sr. Director of Marketing for Easyhome US, the third-largest rent-to-own retailer in North America. In 2014, he co-founded Harvester Arts, a thoughtful platform for visual arts experimentation that engages the Wichita community through critical dialog and the creation of new work. His work has earned a number of awards in film, web-production, television, marketing, and blogging, including two Academy Award nominations and a Silver MIXX Award for Super Rich Media. Ryan is a gastronome and restaurateur who has owned and developed dining concepts in cities across America. He has served on numerous boards in the non-profit sector and is a long-time advocate of healthcare for all regardless of ability to pay. He currently resides in Wichita, where he provides creative marketing services nationally to healthcare, artists, and non-profits, and is faculty at Wichita State University's School of Digital Arts. He is first and foremost a loving husband and father.

HALLIE LINNEBUR is an interdisciplinary visual artist who creates immersive and fantastical environments, dons elaborate costumes and stages surreal happenings as one half of the artist duo Linnebur & Miller. She is also a fiber artist, muralist, illustrator and purveyor of kitschy vintage oddities. Hallie's artistic practice often skirts the line between arts-n-crafts and fine art, utilizing materials such as felt, tissue paper, cardboard and glitter to create objects, spaces and characters that are simultaneously enchanting, bizarre and irreverent. Hallie earned a Bachelor of Arts (Studio Arts) from Wichita State University in 2009 and a BFA in Elementary Education from Fort Hays State University in 2014. She is a 2017-18 Harvester Arts Community Fellow. Linnebur & Miller’s work has appeared in dedicated exhibitions at the Steckline Gallery (Newman University) and Riney Gallery (Friends University) as well as in group exhibitions at Harvester Arts and Diver Studio. They have produced art installations, photo booths, workshops and performances for the Wichita River Festival, Autumn and Art, the Wichita Art Museum and its annual Art & Book Fair, the Ulrich Museum of Art, Chamber Music at the Barn, VibrantICT, and Botanica. In 2016, Hallie returned to WSU as a lecturer for ADCI Foundations courses. Linnebur created original wearable art for the Jump!Star project in 2019.

MIKE MILLER is best known for his Machine-Nature Interface series of sculptures. These machine-nature forms combine a natural object with a human-made object, creating a machine that produces an original movement or action. Most of Mike’s works are kinetic, whether powered by a motor and salvaged gears, hand crank, the wind, or kids on a swing set. The movements produced echo the machinations of nature itself—plants’ production of oxygen, the orbit of a moon around a planet. As man made machines and nature made machines advance the difference between the two becomes indistinguishable. Mike was born, raised, and educated in Kansas and finds inspiration and materials for both the machine and the nature aspects of his work around his home and studio in rural Butler County.

MEGHAN MILLER is a first-year graduate student in sculpture at Wichita State University. She has practiced performance art, installation, and painting in the Wichita area for the past decade and is one half of art team Linnebur & Miller, who create performance and installation art with interactive elements, often placing the art viewer in the middle of the work. They strive to create bizarre and humorous situations that have no real reason to exist, but that entertain and amuse the public. Linnebur & Miller use readily available, ephemeral, and often thrifted materials such as tissue paper, cardstock, string lights, tulle, cardboard, party supplies, holiday decorations, fake fruit, yarn, and used clothing. Miller was a 2017-2018 Harvester Fellow, and with Linnebur & Miller has shown work and created art experiences at Newman University’s Steckline Gallery, Friends University’s Riney Fine Arts Center, the Wichita River Festival, Autumn & Art, and the Wichita Art Museum’s annual Art & Book fair. Miller created original wearable art for the Jump!Star project in 2019.

There, there… opens to the public on Friday, January 10th, 2020, from 7-10 pm, and will be on view Sundays 1-5 pm through February 2nd or by appointment.