Growing up in a Michigan town so small it didn’t have an art teacher, Kathleen Shanahan still managed to develop a talent for drawing. Then a family trip to an art institute in Flint, Mich., led to an encounter with an instructor who helped set her life course.
“My parents said, ‘Kathy here is interested in drawing.’ She said, ‘Well, come back here with me.’ She did this simple formulaic (drawing) — it was a bottle on a table with an apple and a knife. She showed me how to do it with perspective, in a very simple language. It was something a kid could master and feel totally inspired.”
Shanahan has been inspired by art ever since. This month, she’ll receive the Wichita Area Arts Council’s first Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts Award.
“For more than five decades, Kathleen Shanahan has pursued a remarkable life in art — creating, experimenting, teaching, exhibiting, and continually expanding a visual language uniquely her own,” the council said in a news release. “Still an active practicing artist represented by Reuben Saunders Gallery in Wichita and Viridian Artists in New York, Shanahan demonstrates that lifetime achievement doesn’t mean the work is finished.”
Shanahan confirmed that. “Basically, I don’t have any other responsibilities. I try to devote as much time as I can” to making art.
After college in Michigan and graduate school in Arizona, Shanahan taught art at several colleges before taking a job at Wichita State University, where she met her husband, attorney Joe Hlavacek. They moved to Kansas City for a few years before returning to Wichita in 2003. She has also taught at Mark Arts.
In addition to drawing, Shanahan pursued printmaking and painting before turning her focus to mixed- media works, in which more than one material or artistic medium are combined. “I kind of have a pull toward materials,” she said.
Shanahan said a grant she received to do research in Japan while in her thirties had a big impact on her work. “Beyond being wowed by the culture, the biggest change in my art was in color. I was much freer at bolder with color after Japan.”
Shanahan has held three artist-in-residence positions, had her work included in several books and exhibited from Chicago to Hong Kong. In addition to the Reuben Saunders Gallery, her work can be seen locally in collections owned by Emprise Bank, the Kansas Health Foundation, KMUW, the Elizabeth Koch Foundation and others. Last year, the Wichita Art Museum showed her works from the 1970s through 2025 in an exhibit called Now and Then: From the Studio of Kathleen Shanahan.
More is on the way, if a recent change of address is any indication. Shanahan said she persuaded her husband that they should move to a new home three years ago based on her plans to convert its party room into a studio.
“I kind of forced my husband to move over there, because of the studio, primarily,” she said.
To view samples of Kathleen Shanahan’s artwork, visit kathleenshanahan.com.
2026 Art Awards
The 56th annual Art Awards will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 14 at the Doc Hangar, 1788 Airport Road. Tickets are available at wichitaarts.com.
Other winners include:
Youth Performing Arts Award — Aaliyah Venegas, violinist, Southeast High
Emerging Visual Artist Award — Trisha Coates, ceramic sculptor and teacher
Emerging Non-Musical Performing Artist Award — Essex Terrel, rap and spoken-word performer
Arts Educator Award — Johnna Faith Stoffregen, Andover Middle School
Arts Organization Award — Envision, in recognition of the Envision Arts Gallery
Special Project Award — Exploration Place, for the Adventure Playscape
Arts Advocate Award — Walter Girton, poetry advocate and arts promoter
Burton Pell Lifetime Achievement in Music Award — Robin Macy and Ken White, musicians and Bartlett Arboretum concert impresarios
Gordon W. Evans Art Leadership Award — Stacee Olden, Orpheum Theatre executive director
Hall of Fame Arts Award — Caesar and Michelle Naftzger, philanthropists
