Kansas Master Artist familiar to KC synagogue-goers

Janet Kuemmerlein isn’t Jewish, but her Biblically inspired fiber artwork has hung in both of this area’s largest synagogues, among other sacred spaces.

Now in her mid-70s, she has received a 2009 Master Artist Fellowship from the Kansas Arts Commission and has embarked upon a series of portraits of female jazz singers.

According to the Arts Commission, the Master Artist fellowship awards “recognize artistic merit, sustained achievement and excellence.” Joining Kuemmerlein as this year’s Master Artists are Lawrence choreographer Patrick Suzeau and Wichita music composer Katherine Murdock. They were honored by legislators and Arts Commissioners at a reception March 4 in Topeka.

Detroit native Kuemmerlein moved to Prairie Village in 1959 when her husband, an executive at Kaiser Aluminum, was transferred here. He died of a heart attack a year later, leaving her to raise their four young children.

She had been creating art since her own childhood and, once widowed, dove back into it with a vengeance. An important milestone was her work’s inclusion in a touring art exhibition, “Objects: USA,” circa 1970, sponsored by Johnson Wax.

That led to other prestigious exhibitions and commissions during that decade, including the ones that placed her work at Congregation Beth Shalom and The Temple, Congregation  B’nai Jehudah.

To decorate Beth Shalom’s sanctuary on Wornall Road, Kuemmerlein said, the Goldberg and Maizlish families commissioned her to create an 8-by-16-foot stitched tapestry titled “Mount Sinai.” Its Hebrew letters are a quote from Exodus 19:18, “Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke, and the Lord descended like flame.”

Similarly, back when B’nai Jehudah was located at 69th Street and Holmes Road, congregant and arts patron Rosemary Lustig commissioned Kuemmerlein’s “Let There Be Light,” a tapestry whose biblical motifs include the Burning Bush, Tree of Life, Wings of Eagles and Lion of Judah.

The tapestry hung on a wall outside the Holmes Road sanctuary until B’nai Jehudah’s Nall Avenue building opened in 2000, and it moved to the Social Hall.

Kuemmerlein’s work can be seen in many other sanctuaries, including that of the local All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church, and at The Temple, Hebrew Benevolent Congregation of Atlanta.

Lately, she has turned away from her familiar yarn, thread and fiber for the acrylic paints, with which she has begun a series of portraits of local women jazz singers. The subjects include Marilyn Maye, Karrin Allyson and Carol Comer. The works have been commissioned and will eventually be donated to the American Jazz Museum, Kuemmerlein said.

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