BJ Alderman Curtis Simmons

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From the top: Landscape Study 1 and 2 are the beginnings of the landscape series that culminates the Landscape 1, which attempts to embody the prairie and region. El Matador-Echo is one in a series that uses a string from the shroud of Curtis’ father.

A South Kansas City factory where World War II airplane engines were made later became a warehouse for nuclear detonators. It finally exploded — from sunlight shattering on impact with an art glass installation in the atrium of the reworked warehouse, drenching the area in prismatic sprays of light.

The brainchild of Curtis Simmons, project designer and associate architect for BNIM Architects, an ellipse of dichroic filtered film on glass hangs in the atrium at the Bannister Federal Complex. As the sun moves across the sky, the sculpture splashes colors off white beams and Tyvek-covered shades into office spaces now used by Federal Supply Services personnel.  

The “moment of delight” that Curtis wished to create for the atrium has resulted in a deluge of awards and accolades for BNIM. In 2006, the firm received the Illumination Design Award from the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America [Heart of America Section], as well as an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architecture (AIA), Kansas City. Last year, BNIM was similarly honored by the AIA Kansas, and earned the National Award for Interior Design and Workplace Environment presented biennially by the U.S. General Services Administration.  

When Curtis puts aside the detail-driven demands of his career as an architect, he loses himself in the freedom of pushing oil on canvas — exploring space not with blueprints and models but with the tools of an abstract painter. “What I love most about being a painter is the freedom,” he notes.

The 36-year-old Colorado native found himself “seduced” into moving to Kansas City seven years ago, after attending the wedding of friends Pat and Kathy Walsh in April, “when Kansas City is the most wonderful place in the world,” he says.   Since relocating to the Great Plains from the Rockies, the springtime energy  of the Midwest has quietly worked on Curtis, influencing a transformation last year in his style and subject matter. For a decade prior, the influences of his deeply introspective exploration of inner self dominated an abstract style that he describes as “a form of journaling.” His works since last April bring that same sensitive exploration to outer landscapes, capturing on canvas our part of the world.  

His newest abstracts reflect the grace and energy of the rural Heartland, communicating dynamic tranquility. Rains pour down, winds whip up, suns set and horizons catch fire. The land lives and breathes. Curtis’ paintings reflect the newfound passion of a convert to our part of the planet and, in the process, uplifts old believers who see it yet again through new eyes.  

A Kansas City enthusiast of his works, Dr. Regina Nouhan began collecting Curtis’ pieces after serendipitously wandering into his solo exhibit at the River Market. “I was blown away by what I saw,” she says. The owner of seven of his paintings, Regina confesses that “it is difficult to attend [Curtis’ showings] because I find myself tempted to acquire yet another piece.”

His paintings can be found in businesses and homes in Spain, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Boston and New York, as well as Brookside, Olathe, Fairway, Waldo and the Country Club Plaza. The Walshes, the couple whose wedding introduced Curtis to the City of Fountains, are not just friends but also collectors of his work. Kathy enjoys how, after hanging each piece, “the subtle colors that I hadn’t noticed are more pronounced,” she says, adding that she appreciates how much energy he has put into them. Pat, also an architect, admits to “a chronic tendency to see incompleteness in art,” which limits his collecting, but he says Curtis’ abstracts satisfy him because “each is, without question, complete.”  

The synergistic connection of the painter to the Walsh family became more apparent when the birth of their daughter, Tatum, inspired yet another transition in Curtis’ development. Wishing to celebrate the arrival of the newest Walsh with an abstract, the piece caught Curtis totally by surprise when it evolved into nothing short of an elephant with yellow bangs balancing on a ball — his first figurative work.

Figurative impressions, however, are apparent in the regional landscapes coming from him recently. Midwesterners around the world will recognize the expansive horizon, hints of rural buildings, lines of trees along creek banks and the elements that come up larger than life. And yet, they are impressionistic only, conjuring feelings that attend memories of past relationships with such vistas.

Relationships of another kind find their way into what Curtis calls his “string paintings.” When a work needs to represent the connection between life and death, the painter turns to a blanket stored upstairs in his Brookside home, picks apart the weave and embeds the knotted warp knit into the oil. That blanket covered Curtis’ stepfather as he passed from this realm of existence to the next, leaving each thread imbued with the energy of that transition. The knot that Curtis ties in each string links the realms of life and death together in the paintings.  

The two realms of his creativity — architecture and painting — were officially linked last year when BNIM appointed him the company’s campaign manager with the ArtsKC Fund. Kansas City’s reputation in both areas can only be enhanced by Curtis’ artistry in the years to come. Oscar Wilde observed that “beauty  is a form of genius — is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts in the world, like sunlight or springtime,” both of which drive Curtis Simmons’ multi-faceted genius.

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