When Artists Turn Huck Finn

Their start may have been a bit chaotic, but a handful of Kansas City and California art-adventurers have sailed across the state of Missouri on a homemade raft crafted from recycled materials.

Jamie Burkart, a slender filmmaker with a penchant for pastel-colored clothing and off-the-wall art installations, came up with the idea of an experiential boat expedition this past winter. A Kansas City native but current student of film and digital media at the University of California- Santa Cruz, Burkart became fascinated with Kansas City’s transportation history.

This spring, he organized a subterranean screening of old trolley videos in an abandoned tunnel that used to shuttle goods from the West Bottoms to the heart of downtown. That, he says, got him thinking about what Kansas City would be like without highways and how the metro had lost its connection with its historic thoroughfare: the Missouri River.