Bailey Walton is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kansas City. She is inspired by the psychedelia of the natural world, exploring its’ shapes, textures, and patterns. Relatedly, she is interested in the manifestations of diversity in the natural and built world, including geologies, flora and fauna, local cultures and experiences, and landscapes. She has worked in watercolor, photography, metal, wood, fibers, printmaking, and found objects, and enjoys the process of discovering the connections between materials, mediums, and instruments.
As a musician, she is inspired by the history, genres, and instruments developed in the African diaspora, including soul, reggae, and country-blues music on the banjo and guitar. Her music documents the surrealism of surviving in a failing empire, reflecting a range of emotion from a rational, righteous rage to incredulity to joyful rebellion. Her comfort with critiquing power is evident in her thoughtful and witty writing on contemporary topics like misogyny, race, and settler-colonialism. Her eclectic, rhythmic banjo style reflects her wide range of sonic influences — from early blues and Northern soul to Outlaw Country and 60s Ethiopian Jazz — and a belief that there is no wrong way to play a banjo. She has handcrafted several gourd banjos.
Her background in applied ethics and public administration led to her social practice focus: achieving personal and collective autonomy through collaboration, accessibility, sustainability, and a celebration of diversity. After several years of organizing autonomously and with organizations, she founded Kansas City Mutual Aid in March of 2020, establishing a forum for local community to request and offer aid without judgment, and additional programming: Feedin’ Folks Free Hot Meal Delivery, Avant Garden Community Garden, and the Kansas City Mutual Aid Free Skool, offering free workshops in creative and practical skills. Kansas City Mutual Aid has organized annual Mutual Aid Days – a conference for community organizations providing mutual aid to commune, collaborate, and present their work to the public, and an art market to support other local creatives.
She previously served as a cultural equity advisor to the Country Dance and Song Society, Chair of the Kansas City Folk Festival and as a member of the inaugural ArtsKC Civic Leadership cohort.
Selected Awards/Recognition/Publications:
2025 Charlotte Street Foundation Cultural Producer Grant (Kansas City Folk Festival)
2024 Charlotte Street Foundation Cultural Producer Grant (KC Mutual Aid Free Skool)
2023 No Depression Magazine (banjocraft), Summer Issue
2022 Black Banjo Reclamation Project Banjo Craft Fellowship, Port Townsend, WA
2021 No. 1 Magazine, Vol 71, Happy Foods Photo Series
