Untitled by Jacob W. Schildtknecht

Now that 22-year-old artist Jacob W. Schildtknecht has graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute, he’s been craving reconnection.

“I’ve been thinking of catching up with people that I have not seen for a long time,” Schildknecht says. In a way, that’s what he’s been doing with his latest creations. A former resident of St. Joseph who works out of KC, Schildtknecht took two war-time pictures of his deceased grandparents, R.L. Schildknecht and Bill Steele (pictured), and drew nine-foot high representations with a white China Marker on throw-away black paper. And in the process, recalling his own image-based memories of each grandfather’s routines was quite cathartic. “I definitely had to put my sunglasses on a couple of times,” he says. His pieces are currently on display at Pony Espresso, 114 S. 8th St., with a “shrine” of items his grandfathers picked up in WWII and notebooks to catalog other people’s memories they have to offer on the individuals. But even if those notebooks end up blank, he thinks the nature of the pictures could conjure up moments from viewers in regards to their own lives. “It’s easy to take an image and kind of plug in memories, even if you don’t know the person,” Schildtknecht says.