AlltheArtSTL Spring 2015

SPRING 2015

PREMIERE ISSUE ISAACSON & SANDITZ Mutual Interest Partnership

FEMMAGE

Departure from Form

TOM REED

Quiet Moments

NICK CAVE

Wearable Sculptures

Above, front cover, and back cover: Nick Cave, Soundsuits (photo credit: Richard Reilly)

CONTENTS WHO’S WHO AT ALL THE ART Executive Editor/ Co-Founder Sarah Hermes Griesbach Creative Editor/ Co-Founder Amy Reidel Social Media and Outreach Manager Semilla Bland Principle Photographer Richard Reilly Photography Contributors Linda Mueller The Reclamation Project 2015 Bruno David Gallery Jamie Kreher Cameron Fuller Tara Daniels Sarah Hermes Griesbach Elizabeth McKeown Amy Reidel Maxine Ward Content Contributors Molly Moog Amelia-Colette Jones Saaba Buddenhagen Lutzeler Sarah Hermes Griesbach Claudia Joyce Veronica Alex Gloria Woodcock Cbabi Bayoc Amy Reidel Layout Contributors Jamie Ameling David Alex Ambrose Sky Goodman Katherine Lam Ashley Lear Kenna Mangan Elizabeth McKeown Eric McLaughlin Jessica Perez-Brook Michael Swoboda Karema Thabet Maxine Ward Print and Proof Contributors Cat McMillan Jenny Agnew Kate Toussaint

In Review (pgs. 1-5)

All the Art is interested in all voices. Although some of what you will read here has a traditional, academic tone, some content is decidedly experimental. We are interested in varied perspectives and writing styles and we are excited to assist developing art writers who are finding their voice. In this issue, Amy Reidel, Molly Moog, and Amelia-Colette Jones offer their thoughts regarding work on the walls and gallery floor.

Spaces and Places (pgs. 6-8)

In this issue’s Spaces and Places, Sarah Hermes Griesbach takes a look at efforts

by Art Saint Louis, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Bruno David Projects, the Luminary and the Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts to get people in the door and to stir up excitement in the visual arts through unexpected acts of art.

How To Guide- for the StL Art Scene (pg. 8)

If we want to “bring the art to the people and the people to the art,” we need to lend a word of encouragement to the reluctant and unsure. To begin this segment off right, Saaba Buddenhagen Lutzeler introduces our readers to the RAC app and a local blog that helps the authors of this publication be in the know.

Studio Visits and Artist Interviews (pgs. 9-12)

Artists are seers. Artists look at the world in search of patterns. They seek out hidden stories, alternative visions, alarming juxtapositions, subtle ironies, simple truths. They create to make sense of the world so that we, too, can see. Who better then to consult in trying to understand who we are as a city? All the Art artist profiles go beyond the surface in order to give readers a way into the work of the featured artists. In this issue, St. Louis artists Basil Kincaid, Jamie Kreher, Cameron Fuller and Tara Daniels discuss their experiences as St. Louis artists exhibiting work outside of our region.

Community Voices (pgs. 13-16)

Our Community Voices section explores a single broad topic from multiple points of view. In this issue, Claudia Joyce, Veronica Alex and Gloria Woodcock discuss their favorite art objects from the Saint Louis Art Museum’s permanent collection.

What’s Going On (pg. 18)

The What’s Going On section is for commentary pieces from St. Louis artists, art educators, observers and supporters. Cbabi Bayoc starts us off boldly with his critique of St. Louis’ limited gallery opportunities for black artists.

Footnotes (pg. 18) Our Footnotes section provides street and website addresses for the artists and art venues discussed in this issue.

(photo credit: Richard Reilly)

Artists are doing some of the heavy lifting of community building in St. Louis but this often goes unrecognized. We believe that providing a platform for artists, art workers, and art participants to communicate with one another can take this city to a new level of mutual understanding.

All the Art is a celebration of our city’s vast and varied artistic accomplishments. It is a record of exhibitions and art events that invigorate the communities residing on both sides of Delmar and Hwy 270, and on either side of the rivers.

While we were preparing for this premier issue of All the Art, massive amounts of SLAM visitors tweeted and posted Instagram pictures about their experiences at the special exhibition by artist Nick Cave. On February 12, Cave told a sold-out SLAM audience that the genesis of his Soundsuits took place after the acquittal of the five Los Angeles police officers that beat Rodney King on March 1, 1991.

Cave designed these impossible wonders to obliterate all of the markings that separate us. Each is a celebration of individuality and creative expression, while removing gender, race, sexual orientation, and class.

What we have found already is that people within St. Louis have very different ideas about artistic endeavors due to the many parallel and overlapping art worlds located here. Because of this, we will work to draw in all neighborhoods and populations by sharing the efforts and vision of a diversity of artists and contributors. Although our contributors will not speak with a homogeneous voice, it will be a unified one carrying the same message of inclusion and appreciation.

The work of Nick Cave, as well as the many others addressed in this issue, teaches us that there is often more to these creations than what meets the eye. Often, it’s important to take the time to learn and research the context surrounding a piece in order to discover the content within. After a tumultuous and heart-breaking year in our region we have all discovered that what we cannot express with words, we can sometimes articulate with our cultural productions.

Cue, All the Art.

In this first issue of All the Art, you will find an emphasis on the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM). Our great, public art museum is often where St. Louisans first dip their toes in the galaxy of artistic production surrounding them. The original 1904 beaux-arts building designed by Cass Gilbert was coupled with a contemporary wing by David Chipperfield in 2013 and has brought in hundreds of thousands of museum patrons since.

All the Best from All the Art,

Executive Editor/ Co-Founder

Creative Editor/ Co-Founder

MatthewIsaacson & LisaSanditz Duet Gallery

Modestly tucked into the side of a building in Grand Arts Center is Duet Gallery, a bright and airy space dedicated to exhibiting the work of “meaningful pairings between an artist from St. Louis and a carefully chosen complementary artist from another city.” Recently, Matthew Isaacson (St. Louis) and Lisa Sanditz (New York) presented works concerned with their mutual interest in agricultural production and the Midwestern landscape. Through a multi-media and gently colored installation of drawing and sculpture, Isaacson and Sanditz poetically hint at the imposing nature of technology and humans on a fragile, though adaptable, landscape.

Entering the space, a makeshift horizon line of drawings on the wall leads to a central vanishing point. These mixed-media compositions converge in a corner with small, sketchy drawings of weirdly alien, near-geometric shaped trees and power lines.

With minimal yet calligraphic mark-making Sanditz captures this familiar imagery with an ephemeral

respect. Like two positively charged magnets, the trees and power lines seem to repel each other yet are forced together constantly by us. The work is a reminder that trees are formed into unnatural, one-sided, u-shaped beings so that our power lines stay intact and we can (thank heavens) get our Facebook and E!news.

As the drawings radiate from the corner into larger compositions they confront the viewer with their angsty scribbles, bright colors, and splashy representations of trees and foliage reminiscent of intestines. The monochromatic and meditative use of pen and ink on one drawing is immediately challenged by the intense neighboring compositions of spray paint and acrylic. These painted orbs act as foliage, dead zones, and voids on an otherwise traditionally gestural landscape drawing.

Throughout the gallery, Isaacson’s mixed media constructions teeter and interrupt the vast sea of concrete floor. Isaacson turns plaster, wood, acrylic,

foam, duct tape, and more into stratified structures suggestive of oil rigs, pumps, and transformer towers. With their satisfying and comfortable designer-color palette, these sculptures are also nerve-wracking, as they seem to hang on by a thread in their nontraditional and wonky assembly.

What’s on the top should be on the bottom and what’s on the bottom doesn’t make any sense.

This calculated but casual display matches the arrangement of Sanditz’s drawings on the wall.

Everything seems like it could come crashing down at any second.

The most collaborative piece in the exhibit combines one of Isaacsons sculptures with a painted blimp by Sanditz. Tied to the “rig” with fluorescent yellow string, the cute and colorful blimp can’t actually go anywhere, stuck like a balloon in a tree or a power line.

-Amy Reidel

Matthew Isaacson and Lisa Sanditz Exhibit at Duet Gallery (photo credit: Amy Reidel)

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IN REVIEW

Nick Cave, Soundsuit; Antonio Martin Memorial in Berkeley, MO (photo credit: Richard Reilly)

NICKCAVE Currents 109:

St. Louis Art Museum

When visitors entered the exhibit Currents 109: Nick Cave at the Saint Louis Art Museum the first thing they encountered was a figure in a head-to-toe body suit made from old potholders (the kind crocheted by your grandmother). The suit was enclosed by an armor fashioned from safety-pin baskets (a gone but not forgotten craft trend) fitted together and topped with… wait for it… an easter bunny the size of a small dog holding a shimmering pink egg. This enigmatic suit is inanimate, occupied by a mannequin, but when worn by a dancer it magically transforms.

It is one of Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, wearable sculptures made from an assortment of materials including raffia, human hair, sequins, buttons, vintage toys, and old sweaters. The Soundsuits cover the wearer’s face and body, disguising race, age, gender, and identity, and offering the wearer the seductive possibility of transformation. They can be worn in dance or displayed on mannequins, as they were at the Saint Louis Art Museum. In this sense they bridge the gap between time-based media, like video and performance, and static works like sculptures and textiles.

important to Cave, who also works as a professor of fashion design at the Art Institute of Chicago. Cave’s multifaceted artworks, which combine performance, dance, fashion, and craft are evidence of his diverse interests: Cave has worked as a fashion designer and studied dance with the Alvin Ailey dance theater.

In addition to the Soundsuits, Currents 109 included a video and Cave’s Tondos, circular wall hangings made from odd-sized scraps of recycled, sequined fabrics. Cave sewed the pieces together in an improvised or irregular pattern, referencing the folk art tradition of crazy quilts: eccentric quilts made from salvaged bits of velvet, silk, and other fancy fabrics.

Cave has created hundreds of Soundsuits. Some look like sequined surfboards or Liberace-fied bishops’ miters.

Others are covered in beads and buttons, or made out of recycled items, like an antique sifter, vintage noisemakers, or toy globes that Cave sources from thrift stores around the country. A playful example of Nick Cave’s fertile imagination is the sock monkey Soundsuit, a sort of “wild thing” of grinning sock monkeys and colorful stuffed and stitched thrift store socks.

Drive-By, the mesmerizing video that was on view in a separate gallery, was filmed in 2011 to celebrate the publication of an eight-page spread in Vogue featuring Cave’s Soundsuits. In Drive-By, a troupe of performers, some in masks and Soundsuits made of rainbow colored hair or raffia, others in tall beaded or sequined Soundsuits, jump, dance, and roll across a white studio space to techno music punctuated with drum beats and animal noises.

Enhancements and alterations to the images and sounds distinguish the video from Cave’s live performances. In a memorable shot, a performer in a Soundsuit made from pink raffia that resembles the hair of a shaggy dog hops on a pogo stick in slow motion. The video is titled Drive-By because it was shown nightly for a week in the storefront window below Cave’s Chicago studio in a location visible to people driving by. However, the title, referencing urban violence, hints at darker content underlying Cave’s work.

The Soundsuits are sewn together by Cave and his studio assistants rather than glued. In fact, craft is particularly

Cave describes the outlandishness of the fantastical Soundsuits and their shimmering tactile surfaces as

IN REVIEW

“seductive,” enticing the viewer to engage with their conceptual foundation. The Soundsuits, Cave says, “allow identities to be lost or hidden and new ones to be claimed.” The first Soundsuit was created in the aftermath of the brutal beating of black construction worker Rodney King by members of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1991. Cave, who was a professor at the Art Institute of Chicago at the time of the King beating, was astounded by the description the police gave of King as “larger than life” and “scary.” Cave, who is black, thought, “the moment I leave my studio my identity is in jeopardy.”

Walking in the park, Cave picked up a handful of sticks and fashioned a life-size sculpture by attaching the twigs to a fabric undergarment. He realized that he could wear the finished suit and that, when he moved in it, the sticks poked out threateningly and creaked conspicuously. Cave says he thought of the suit as protective armor, shielding his identity. He called it a Soundsuit for the creaking noises it emitted.

In Speak Louder, one of the most stunning and somber works in Current 109, seven figures covered entirely in pearly buttons were arranged in a circle, joined by swaths of heavy button-covered drapery. Their large heads, each looking off in a different direction, are shaped like tubas with the holes plugged and covered over. The Soundsuits, so animated in Drive-by, are still and silent here, their voices stifled. Speak Louder is a statement of the premise underlying all of Cave’s work. Ever since he created his first Soundsuit, Cave has understood that “in order to be heard you have to speak louder.”

-Molly Moog

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IN REVIEW

IN REVIEW

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Reimagining

C o n t e m p o r a r y Wo m e n A r t i s t s X V I I :

Femmage a t t h e Fo u n d r y A r t s Ce n t re

Reimagining Femmage is a collaborative exhibition between the Women’s Caucus for Art and the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles. Exhibition juror Lisa Melandri, director of the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) in St. Louis, chose entries that adhere to the definition of ‘Femmage.’ Femmage is a term invented by feminist artists Miriam Schapiro and Melissa Meyer in the 1970’s to describe artwork created by women that includes the assemblage of materials through collage.

All artworks in the group exhibit showcased sewing, use of a pattern, collecting and recycling. The most engaging interpretations of the feminist theme made a direct comment on the state of ‘women’s work’ today. Among the artists making a departure from the familiar depictions of female form and the use of standard weaving were Erika Swinson, Olivia Jones, Khara Koffel, Marcelle Pope, and Sondra

Schwetman. Swinson’s, Louise Bourgeois Memorial Sweater, is a clever and meaningful tribute to Bourgeois’ (1911-2010) notoriously bulbous and sexually charged sculptures. Jones and Pope created and displayed ordinary items like couch cushions and receipts, but subverted their usual neutral character. Jones’ hot pink gash in a tacky upholstered cushion and Pope’s display of strangled receipts comment on the sexist historical and contemporary stereotypes of women, specifically of the stay-athome variety.

For those bells that cannot be unrung and the revelation of wanting by Illinois artist Khara Koffel go beyond their poetic titles to portray a hopeless longing using ephemeral materials like matches, canon fuse wire, and fortune cookie fortunes. Though cute and clever, they also reveal a volatile heaviness.

Reminiscent of the “Vagina Dentata” myth associated with the female-challenged Surrealist movement, Intergalactic Hotdog by Sondra Schwetman is at once uncomfortable, hilarious, intriguing, and pretty. Interpreted as a metaphor for all genitalia, real and imagined, it demands curious attention in its minimal presentation but layered meaning.

Contemporary Women Artists XVII: Reimagining Femmage is a huge exhibition varied in its work and artistic vision, and rightly so. As long as female artists have to keep responding to Linda Nochlins famous 1971 question, “Why have there been no great women artists?” we need shows like this that confront the established canon. Even though according to workdnik.com ‘Femmage’ has only been looked up 8359 times and is “no one’s favorite word,” on the upside, the first five visitors through the door on opening day were all men.

-Amy Reidel

Sondra Schwetman, Intergalactic Hotdog (photo credit: Amy Reidel) 05 ALLTHEARTSTL.COM SPRING 2015

IN REVIEW

Innovative Arts Institutions Sarah Hermes Griesbach

Art spaces quite naturally feel rarified. It is the purpose of museums and galleries to place art objects apart so that they can be considered. Quiet rooms, pared down to basic, white walls and balanced light are designed to encourage interaction with the physical manifestation of the artist’s ideation. But the reality is that the quiet can be stifling, the art-going crowd intimidating. In St. Louis, many of our local art entities are making their own creative leaps in how they engage their audiences. As a result, these art institutions are growing the art-going crowd in St. Louis.

Art Saint Louis

For 30 years, Art Saint Louis has exhibited work by regional artists and provided educational and outreach programs all around the city. In the summer of 2013, Art Saint Louis moved from Washington Avenue to their current address in the Park Pacific Building at 1223 Pine Street. In what could have been seen as a step backward for an art institution, the non-profit gallery partnered with coffee roaster Mississippi Mud to become a gallery-café hybrid. The collaborative venture turned out to be very clever. It was a good time to move to the Pine-Tucker corner. The change coincided with Saint Louis University Law School’s relocation downtown. Foot traffic increased instantly with visitors coming to view exhibitions over lunch, during work breaks, at the end of the day…,rather than waiting for an opening. Though the café and art gallery have discrete spaces, the audiences overlap. Art Saint Louis director Chandler Branch says that since the move, there are no quiet days, a statement very few gallery directors can make.

Bruno David Projects

The expansion of Bruno David into the Grove with the new Bruno David Projects space creates a visual art bookend effect with White Flag Projects at the west end of that thriving strip of cultural activity. Keri Robertson, the director of the Bruno David Projects gallery opened the space with a solo exhibition bringing paint and performance powerhouse Cindy Towers’ wild site paintings back to an appreciative St. Louis audience.

The Luminary Center for the Arts

In February of 2012, The Luminary Center for the Arts supporters surpassed the non-profit arts organization’s campaign to raise $20,000 for a move to Cherokee Street. The Luminary directors James and Brea McAnally report that the gallery’s move was “part of an effort to be both internationally relevant and to contribute to the neighborhood as an integral part of it.” The McAnallys see the physical design of the new Luminary as part of a larger effort to be completely transparent to the neighborhood. “The gallery was designed to be fully viewable from the street and includes several oversized doors that open onto the sidewalk to ensure there were no physical or conceptual barriers to what we were doing.” The Luminary has a longstanding bent toward art that engages social concerns. Their intention is to host an art space in which people of different backgrounds are not just said to be welcome, but one in which they actually are made to feel welcome.

In March, The Luminary initiated their Counterpublic project which takes place in “community hubs” such as barbershops and bakeries. James McAnally describes it this way, “In this instance, we are moving the work out of our space and into the places people already spend time, that are themselves cultural hubs, to consider art’s power there. In our model, we’ve always been a gallery,

Thus far, the Projects art line-up is heavy on powerful one-woman shows. Monika Wulfers’ January-February Lines installation filled the gallery space with glowing glass tubes suspended by nearly invisible flexible wire so that the visitor entered the room as if entering a painting. (Yes, this exhibit is a prime example of “activated space.” See, it is a thing.) Robertson can imagine boundless new uses for the second gallery. She appreciates art neighbor White Flag’s “Film to be Determined” series, projected outdoors and looks to the opportunities for performance and music that she expects will be part of the Bruno David Projects’ development. Robertson finds that while running two separate spaces allows for twice the programming, it also brings new logistical hurtles. For example, . . . “Bruno only has one giant ladder.”

studio space and venue simultaneously, so these different ways of operating have coexisted since the beginning. Starting out, we were interested in conceptualizing music along a continuum closer to visual art. They are very different, obviously (and it should be said that we don’t advocate for all art being considered the same), but we wanted to present music as a thoughtful practice in which the decisions were intentional on the part of the performer and the venue was set up to encourage a more immediate engagement, but also conceptually expansive experience of music. We get a lot of questions from visual artists about what that means for the gallery, but it is usually a practical matter: Is the art taken care of? Is it protected and valued? We’ve never had artwork damaged at an event and find that these events dramatically expand the number of people who experience the work.”

Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts

Cherokee Street is bubbling over with interdisciplinary collaborations that push the boundaries of the traditional arts. Fort Gondo’s addition of neighboring gallery space Beverly advanced that expansion ever further. Fort Gondo and Beverly’s warm, wood-floored rooms make them viscerally welcoming galleries, perfectly suited for …poetry.

Fort Gondo Compound director Jessica Baran is a literary artist who sees gallery spaces as a perfect

Fort Gondo and Beverly Galleries (photo credit: Maxine Ward)

*All the Art has benefited from this generosity in the form of Fort Gondo’s temporary fiscal sponsorship PLACES AND SPACES

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place for both visual art and poetry. One of Fort Gondo Compound’s great accomplishments is in the promotion of other local creative ventures*.

In Spring (May 16 through June 6), Fort Gondo’s Beverly gallery hosts Giant Steps, an exhibition co-organized with the Missouri VSA (a state organization on arts and disability called Vision, Strength and Access). Giant Steps is one of many Fort Gondo collaborations that bring divergent crowds together to find expression for their gathered impressions and exchange these visual thoughts and poetic pictures. Unconvinced?

Leonardo da Vinci had this to say about the Fort Gondo-Beverly art-poetry amalgam, “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”

Pulitzer Arts Foundation

The Pulitzer Arts Foundation re-opens its doors this spring, adding 3,600 square feet added to the original 6,800 square feet of gallery space that Tadao Ando designed for the Grand Center museum in 2001. The change is powerful. It allows for, among other things, concurrent exhibitions.

In the inaugural exhibition, Alexander Calder, Fred Sandback and Richard Tuttle speak to each other with strong, discrete installations that multiply in meaning when placed in one building. A walk through these three artists’ works activates the visitor’s interpretation of space. Calder’s mobiles, stabiles and constellations work with gravity,

balance and the air around them. Placed high, drawing the eye up, Calder’s work becomes the initial segment of a sculptural triptych with Tuttle’s wire-pencil-shadow works at the human level and Sandback’s taut lines of fuzzy yarn pulling our attention toward the floor. With this show, the Pulitzer uses its building as a frame for the art, activating space in a way that requires audience presence and audience buy-in. The three spatial settings of Calder, Sandback and Tuttle’s sculptural works are only relevant if the viewer encounters them this way.

If at this point, the reader feels too far removed from the concept of “activated” spaces, that is a fair response, but worth facing. Art people talk a lot about “activating space.” This term sounds dippy at first hearing, but it is, as they say, “a thing.”

And it’s a good thing. It’s a probing of your world for new ways to consider how you are experiencing it. For example, the Pulitzer has arranged to bring in voice art to “activate” the nooks and crannies of the museum when it reopens. From various stations throughout the cavernous cement building, singers will let their voices fly. Visitors will hear sounds bounce off the walls, interact in places and fade out in muted isolation by acoustic anomalies that exist in others. One can walk through and test out the differences in the activated sound spaces or sit on a cushion on the floor and “activate” that often underused bottom half of the galleries (identified here with Fred Sandback).

Laumeier Sculpture Park

If you park in the Northern Grove lot of Laumeier Sculpture Park, one of T. Kelly Mason’s Laumeier Lamps will shine a pithy blue statement down upon your car, such as “Your HEAD is pointed at the GROUND of another PLANET.” Cross-sensory thought provocation is nothing new for Laumeier.

Consider the massive metal sculptures of St. Louisan Ernest Trova (1927-2009), a body of work that formed the foundation of the park’s permanent collection. Trova’s flatly abstracted Poet Sitting by a Tree appears among the trees like a pop-up illustration in a children’s book. The sculptor named his great geometric steel machine Profile Canto IV for the divisions of a long poem, calling attention to the connection between disjointed words and image that provide human minds room to make meaning. Trova’s sculptural expressions all have synesthetic properties. He pushes our engineered, built environments into the philosophical domain with Abstract Variation Lozenger NO. 3, and dives into the metaphysical in his Falling Man series. These evocative art experiences are why St. Louisans have long valued Laumeier.

Laumeier director Marilu Knode says that non-traditional art programming is written in the

“These new spaces will give indoor room for programming that continues to further Laumeier’s role as a ground-breaking, experimental arts institution.”

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PLACES AND SPACES

Photo credit: Elizabeth McKeown

sculpture park’s DNA. The park’s dynamic educational outreach activities reach student populations in 22 area school districts. The curator of education, Karen Mullen, works with adolescents in arts career job training. Laumeier arts programming is not only for the young, however. Laumeier (like the Saint Louis Art Museum) coordinates with the Alzheimer’s Association to provide opportunities for mental stimulation that can’t be obtained through medicine.

What IS new at Laumeier is the park’s grand Adam Aronson Fine Arts Center and the newly repurposed 1917 Estate House which will now function as the park’s Education Laboratory for Art. Knode maintains that this physical growth is not merely for the sake of expanding Laumeier’s reach. These new spaces will give indoor room for programming that continues to further Laumeier’s role as a ground-breaking, experimental arts institution.

Each of these St. Louis art venues is actively expanding the basic concept of their purpose within the public sphere. That flexible identity, rooted in a deep desire to link community through art has produced outcomes that wildly contrast with one another. Art Saint Louis sets up a hot cup of artisan-roasted coffee as a lure for your eyes. The Luminary calls to you with the siren call of sound art. Fort Gondo makes a quiet place for poetry and art to coincide in an atmosphere that is unpretentious and welcoming. The Pulitzer seems to be after all of your senses, charming visitors with fluffy pillows and bewitching sound performances while engaging the artful mind. Bruno David Projects continues Bruno David’s long progression toward open art exchange. And Laumeier, the only of these with a “past Lindbergh” address, draws crowds ready to climb on and through the art.

There is a great deal of limit testing and cross-pollination going on within these art places. Says James McAnally: “I think contemporary art and the institutions that present it have an obligation to experiment with their models, their publics and how these interact with one another.” And if the institutions can bend toward the new, certainly audiences should take risks too!

H OW -TO G UI D E for the S tL A r t S ce n e RAC Rescue: A Handheld Resource for the Art-Minded

Saaba Buddenhagen Lutzeler It’s a Thursday morning, dark and bitter outside, when I find myself wishing I had…something, some tool – a fast, easy tool – to help me learn about and locate art in our town. My guests fly in tomorrow. Like me, they’re into art; but, I – having been immersed in the gauzy part of parenting, when the children are all under ten – realize I have no idea what’s happening in St. Louis’ art scene!

Once home, I’ll be eyebrow-deep in haranguing the kids before school. After that, work. If not now, I’ll never find time to figure out what to do with my guests.

As the door opens, frigid winter air arrests me.

I fortify myself with a deep breath for the walk across the parking lot. I’m heading home from the community center gym where I teach. Dry snow compresses audibly under my boots: crunch, crunch, crunch. The cold air forces a cough, makes me bow my head, hurts my fingers too much to operate my phone. I’ll use it in the car, I think.

In the car, I pull off one glove with my teeth, holding the phone with my other hand. S-t-l A-r-t S-c-e-n-e, I tap into the search engine. CityData. com comes up first. Then Public Radio on Tap. I find a “Critical Mass listserv” website that’s informative but just like an online events calendar: it leaves me the task of sorting out what, where, and when. I decide it’s too cold, table the task for who-knows-when, and drive home.

Later, I get my wish. I mention to a friend how unaware I’ve become of local art happenings.

PLACES AND SPACES

She ducks toward her purse, putting up a finger in my direction as if to say, wait for it…I’ve got your solution . . . The St. Louis Regional Arts Commission (RAC) has launched an app called STL Arts.

It allows users to sort and map the art events in town. Ta-DAH! Who knew it could be so easy?

STL Arts calls itself an “arts and cultural events calendar,” but the tagline falls short of the tool.

With the RAC App, you simply use the filter tool: choose your date –any date, literally years into the future or past; select your desired proximity, 1-50 miles (from your current location, divined somehow by satellite); choose what you’re looking for -- visual art, lectures, or calls to artists, to name a few; select free events or all events; press the button; and…out comes a tailored list! Just like that! It maps every venue, offers descriptions, provides relevant times, dates, everything!

For the kids, I find an exhibition of visual and performing arts put on by the Coalition of Artists for Peace. It’s called “Moments of Silence: A Response to the Ferguson Experience.”

If art is inaccessible because it is challenging to physically locate, STL Arts is here to help. If it’s inaccessible because it’s aloof or expensive, well, that’s a topic for the next article! In the meantime, happy logisticating for all your St. Louis art-viewing adventures!

Saaba Buddenhagen Lutzeler is a St. Louis-based painter, parent, and fitness instructor with a secret appetite for writing.

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When

St. Louis Artists Leave

By Sarah Hermes Griesbach

In this series of interviews Sarah Hermes Griesbach asked Basil Kincaid, Jamie Kreher Cameron Fuller and Tara Daniels how they see their art practices in relationship to St. Louis, particularly when they are not here.

BASIL KINCAID St. Louis artist Basil Kincaid is in Labadi, Ghana for a yearlong artist-in-residency program organized through Connect International, an organization that connects artists who are also social change leaders. The residency program concludes with a ninemonth tour of the US, showcasing the work he created while in Ghana.

Basil Kincaid in Labadi, Ghana wearing and surrounded by his Reclamation art (photo credit: The Reclamation Project 2015)

“The work that I am creating here focuses on using found materials that are a part of everyday life. This is the continuation of a project that I started in St. Louis with Damon Davis and Eric White called the Reclamation Project.

What started as a project is growing into a movement: The Reclamation Movement focuses on valuing community, diversity, heritage and inclusion all through a lens of creative recycling. We direct our focus on reclaiming the debris of our collective past and present as a way to forge a new future. Using found objects, we recycle creatively to address the interplay among poverty, consumerism, and environmentalism. Reclamation also focuses on identity, exploring how one’s surroundings affect their perception of self. We look at how our waste is reflective of our lived experience. Here, I am working with found water bags used to package purified drinking water and prepaid cell phone scratch cards used to refill. As I become inspired by other materials I will fold them into the work as well.”

Though Kincaid’s work is currently on exhibit in Chicago and New York, he won’t be able to attend either show. I asked him if he feels more like an American artist living in Ghana or a St. Louis Artist?

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ARTIST INTERVIEWS

“St. Louis is my heart. I’ll always be a St. Louis artist. The city shaped me in many ways but I have global aspirations for this art and for the Reclamation Movement. I want to collaborate with artists on a global scale to work towards healing the ardent sense of longing for belonging within the African diaspora. I want my art to bring people of all backgrounds and nationalities together to see that we all need each other. We are all intrinsically tied to one another and it is disbelief in this that generates a lot of the problems that we face nationally and globally. I will always represent St. Louis because I’m proud to be a contribution to the legacy of great artists, poets and musicians that hail from The Lou. I will quote a curator friend of mine Kimberly Jacobs who said, ’It’s an awkward dichotomy for those of us awakened to our African selves.’ She’s so right. I’ve spent most of my life in the United States and in the few months that I’ve been in Ghana I feel more at home, more welcomed and treated with more respect than I have ever felt in The States. The police aren’t accosting, killing, and beating people here; I can walk without dealing with the anxiety that accompanies the way people act when you can see that they are afraid of black people or have been coached by American culture into distrust or even hatred of black people. Although I feel a new level of comfort and freedom I still don’t fit all the way in and that’s where it gets a little awkward. I don’t experience the full rights and freedoms of being fully American and yet being American has shaped my consciousness in such a way that I can’t be or feel fully African. The one thing that settles my mind is that we are all Earth people and should be able to unify around that.

When we begin to trust each other and value each other’s differences and the beauty in the uniqueness that each difference brings to the table then we can begin to heal and co-create a new world.”

I asked Kincaid to talk a bit about differences in the look and feel of St. Louis and Labadi.

“Both places are beautiful in their own ways.

You don’t see bricks here. Every time I’m away from St. Louis there is a strange desiderium for things made from bricks. Visually, things are very colorful here. People repaint their houses fairly often so you see the neighborhood gradually shifting its color palettes. I love the look of peeling paint-you see lots of layers of peeling paint in different places not really on homes but on shops and stands. I love it, the textures and colors are so amazing, very visually stimulating. The color of people’s skin against a bright pink or blue wall is so lovely; The colors really dance here. In that way it really reminds me of New Orleans. That’s the only city in the United States that I have seen with the multitude of color that I see here but you also see how New Orleans in many ways is very connected to its African roots.

Another visual difference comes from the high population density. The houses are closely packed and in a lot of cases connected to one another, divided by pathways with only a few major roads. The city is more western looking.

Accra is a really major city. Sometimes it looks like New York even, but imagine a busy area of New York with all black people. People spend a lot more time outside here. In the neighborhood most of daily life happens outside, probably because the weather is perfect everyday.

Beautiful and sunny, it wouldn’t make any sense to cook and live indoors. I think this brings people together too. You are never really alone here.

There are always people near by and everyone greets one another. There are no strangers, it seems.The main difference is that I never feel like I’m on guard here. In St. Louis whenever I get in my car I’m immediately on guard. I know that just by operating a vehicle I can be potentially accosted by the police for no reason. Almost annually since I started driving I have been pulled over by the police for no reason. It happens a little bit less now that I have a nicer car but in

Tara Daniels, Home Is Where the Hate Is, A Portrait of Basil Kincaid (photo credit: Tara Daniels)

high school I was driving a 1984 Chevy Silverado I loved that truck, but driving in Ladue or Clayton to see various friends gave me trouble on a number of occasions. I would be pulled over, questioned and provoked, and then after the game of “Yes, sir” and “No, sir,” after staying calm and respectful, speaking my ‘best’ English, I would be let go. I love St. Louis with all my heart but in many ways it really is the belly of the beast as far as issues of race are concerned and we are seeing that truth more than ever now. St. Louis has a relatively strong sense of tight- knit community but only after you’ve been accepted into the different circles. St. Louis is real cliquey which leads to these small overlapping communities or collectives. I would like to see work towards a wider sense of city-wide unity. I want to collaborate with all sorts of people to bring that about.”

The Huffington Post published a poem “The Longsuffering of Open Eyes” and seven digital collages that juxtapose police response to peaceful protests in the United States throughout history that Kincaid created in response to his feelings surrounding the pattern of violence against black people that reaches back to the era of Jim Crow and Slavery. I asked him to tell me about that work.

“I don’t see how it’s any different for a black man to be killed every 28 hours by the police in 2013 and a black man being killed everyday by vigilantes in 1913, or by slave masters in 1813 or 1713. We are still being murdered on a daily basis. In 1963 the police responded the same way that they did in 2014 to the protests. Peaceful protests are met with violent police measures and it’s a pattern.

That’s what inspired the collages. I wanted to elucidate this unbroken link to history. I wanted to raise questions surrounding how so much time can pass with so little change. People think things are better now than they were in the 1950s but that makes me laugh. Back then we were fighting for rights, now we are fighting for life. Nothing has really changed. The judicial pattern in response to these murders is showing that innocent black men don’t deserve to live and that police are justified to murder us for no reason.

These police murders are essential to the maintenance of white supremacy in that they confirm in reality the constructed, mediagenerated images that show black people as subhuman. We have to address the media’s role in the construction of consciousness. The way the media even talks about black and white crimes or news stories in general works to support a distorted image of black people. I want to do more than merely make collages and poems but these are the gifts that I have and I want to use my art and my words to change the perception of black people and to unify the American cultural landscape at large. I have to use art to respond and reclaim public space. In the Reclamation of discarded items and spaces we show the potential ARTIST INTERVIEWS

Jamie Kreher, Cowboys Platter (photo credit: Jamie Kreher)

for our own healing and transformation as a discarded people. I feel very strongly that art can help activate consciousness and guide healing or provide spaces for healing, this is what I want my art to do. I want my art to bring people together and inspire people to collaborate and engage in this process of liberation for mutual agency together.”

JAMIE KREHER

A few of artist Jamie Kreher’s photo platters from her “American Mythologies Project” recently made their way to New York as part of a group show, “A Donkey is a Lion. Insecticide, A Message From God.” I asked her to relate the ways that her “Mythologies” are Midwestern.

“The photographs for the series were taken while on day trips or driving cross country. The bulk of them are from the Midwest. St. Louis as subject matter is instinctive. I’m compelled to take the photos I take. Only in retrospect, as I examine the composition and the content of each, do I find meaning. While reviewing my work I see reflections of my political, cultural, sociological thoughts embedded within the subjects and composition.

The photo-platters are a means of tying the useful to the contemplative and, in some rather obvious ways, they may be Midwestern in their nature. I have Midwestern sensibility – I’m ok with that. They are ‘Pragmatic Idealist Platters.’”

Kreher has moved through a series of varied approaches to her photography. What is very consistent in these is the way in which each project works to try and engage both her and her audience in some new, unexpected way.

“In 2012, I placed small photos across folding tables at the Good Citizen Gallery. Viewers became participants as they picked up and arranged the photographs. In this way I could bring gallery visitors into conversation about the role of photography in our lives. I wanted to highlight the democratic nature of the art form when viewed in its vernacular, printed in unlimited editions, in a common scale. I wanted to celebrate the unfussy, inexpensive forms of photography everyone can access to provide a foil to more rarified work that is expected in an art market.”

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Cameron Fuller, Clouds (photo credit: Cameron Fuller)

I asked Kreher how she perceives St. Louis’ role in the greater national and international art world.

“The St. Louis art world has grown tremendously in the last 15 years. More and more subgroups emerge. There is great room for further growth.

We as St. Louisans should take the initiative to declare what is important, not wait for trends from New York. The reality is that there is horrible art in some galleries in New York and Los Angeles and some great work showing here.

Awareness of trends informs artists and can inspire us, but there is no right thing for right now, whatever the market may seem to dictate. The ubiquity of information allows everyone to know what is going on everywhere all the time anyway, so artists in St. Louis can easily be as informed as artists anywhere else. And, while local institutions may be reticent to experiment, local artists are clearly not.”

CAMERON FULLER I asked Cameron Fuller to talk about his experience as a St. Louis/Midwest artist making work in New York. First off, he had to set me straight.

“I actually have Washington state origins. I’m really from the Northwest. I did my undergrad at San Francisco State, worked in SF, then came to St. Louis well into my adulthood.”

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Fuller reports that Washington University’s MFA program drew him with their large-scale presses that allowed him to work with largescale prints. He came here looking for big machines so that he could embark on big projects. That ambition has not weakened.

“I won a commission to install a permanent public art piece in a public school in Queens, New York. The New York City School Construction Authority ensures that all new school buildings will contain original work by contemporary artists. Their ‘Public Art for Public Schools’ program uses a percentage of money allotted to the construction of each new school building to putting art in and around that building.”

Fuller’s ceiling installation does not look like the seemingly mass-produced creative elements one sometimes finds in children’s museums and playgrounds. There is a reason for that. He likes things that are handmade and doesn’t fear having them look that way. The installation is a representation of a sky scene, formed through an arrangement of triangles.

“I’m not interested in a polished, manufactured look; clean streamlined objects are less interesting than unexpected forms. The beauty of using the triangles is due to their dynamic structure. They can be arranged in various compositions. These triangles are a man-made

ARTIST INTERVIEWS

object, but I am using them to recreate nature.

I often look for ways to play with what is real or natural and what is human made but mimics nature. I like that the triangle cloud chandeliers overtly symbolize structures found in nature, rather than pretend to actually ‘be’ those structures.”

Fuller is a self- described Maker. He enjoys working with problems that can be resolved on the spot. He seeks out projects that engulf him in the mechanical nature of things. His ideal project allows for him to work toward a new mastery of craft and visual art.

“I like learning new techniques. The technical aspects keep me interested. I enjoy getting better at something new until it is part of what I can do. The cloud chandeliers at PS 316 offered an array of tough problems to decipher. After some experimentation, I framed the threelayered triangle forms with welded aluminum and lit the systems with flexible neon tubing that ensured even lighting. The pieces are built to be discreet so that they could be adjusted as my design shifted and now they can be moved for maintenance. This installation is built to function for the next fifty years.”

I asked Fuller to talk about the difficulties and the benefits that accompany a St. Louis studio address.

“Opportunities tend to snowball. Nods of approval from one sector of the art world will provide the support necessary to draw in interest from another quarter. I think the beauty of St. Louis is that it is still big enough that I meet new people all the time. Yet it’s small enough to navigate. I don’t see a tight, stagnant singular art community in St. Louis. Numerous arts events take place daily and the range of these events is wide enough to challenge any comer. Yet, it is more knowable than the booming art world of Brooklyn or Oakland. With effort, the newcomer can gain relative familiarity with the galleries and institutions, the artists and art consumers. With ambition, those systems can be deciphered to find where support is available. Vital to the list of St. Louis strengths is the fact that studio space is affordable. St. Louis allows for artists to maintain autonomy that is difficult to have when expenses make beggars and salespeople out of those who intended to focus their lives on creating.

The perception of an artist being ‘from’ an art location with cache is not altered by moving to a city like Portland, Miami, San Francisco or Austin, despite those cities’ vibrant art scenes. They still aren’t New York, Los Angeles or, even, Chicago. St. Louis does not rank in any list of ‘Most Creative Cities,’ but that does not mean it isn’t conducive to creative professions. The St. Louis art scenes are relatively unknown by outsiders. People who come here are often pleasantly surprised. “

TARA DANIELS Tara Daniels is living in the burbs of New York, but her heart is in St. Louis. Daniels made a name for herself as the “Lieutenant of Badassery” (Associate-Director of Community) for St. Lou Fringe. Today, she is managing director of Long Island operations for Kitebridge, Inc., a boarding school program for international and exceptional, at-risk American high school students. I asked Daniels to talk about her impressions of St. Louis now that she has been away for a year.

“I do plan to return to St. Louis eventually.

St. Louis seems like a much more down to earth place to grow up than New York. People in St. Louis are more likely to talk to the person next to them than people here. My love for St. Louis has not faded, but I feel a little disconnected here. From afar, it seems as if St. Louis is starting to get its fight back. I’ve been here since the death of Eric Garner and the death of Mike Brown. I was hit hard by both. When I listened to Eric Garner’s family members speak, I felt as if his family members could have been my own.

They looked like my relatives, like people I know and love.”

people I think have something special about them and I try to find that in the colors that I use. Most of the subjects I have portrayed have been artists. Because of my palette, bright pastel colors that read like Fauvist paintings, race is lost in these portraits.

It is not my purposeful intent to erase race, just a desire to use fantastical colors that, I think, capture what my subject is really like, how I see them.

Using colors that don’t occur naturally in human beings somehow seems to speak to a color palette of the soul. I try to express what I think is beautiful about the people I draw and that goes beyond what you find in a photograph.

I work with layers of watercolor, charcoal and oil. The conception of the idea for each portrait is in the title.

My self-portrait is entitled, [I’d Rather Be Your Nightmare Than Your Dreamgirl] because I was thinking about what people believe I should be, how I should look and how I should act as a black woman.

I made a portrait of Basil Kincaid on the night of the no-indictment announcement. I was influenced by my emotions and what he was expressing from Ghana. That portrait of Basil [Kincaid with chains as hair and beard is titled, Home Is Where the Hate Is.] I am not really looking for recognition of my work. I often show my portraits on social media. It isn’t because I’m particularly confident about my work. I think I have a lot of fear. I just do it anyway. That’s how I handle most things. I just do it. The work is an expressive outlet for me and social media allows for easy self-expression.

My Instagram name Unique Vessel comes from something my aunt said in response to one of my paintings. She said that I am ‘one of god’s unique vessels.’ I like that.”

Tara Daniels, I’d Rather Be Your Nightmare Than Your Dream Girl (photo credit: Tara Daniels)

Daniels is not trying to make a living with her art right now. She rarely tells the adolescents she works with that she is an artist. I asked her to talk about the place she gives to her art practice and what compels her to create, given her long, hectic workweek.

“I took a figure drawing class and found that figurative work just makes sense to me. I need to include people in my art. So, one after another, I kept making these portraits until I found I had a series. I generally use photographs of my friends, ARTIST INTERVIEWS

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is the purpose “ Wofhatviewing

ART ?

W hat should we get from viewing it ?

”

COMMUNITY VOICES Claudia Joyce is a docent at the St. Louis Art Museum. As she leads museum visitors into conversations about the museum’s collection, she can’t help but think about how museum guests experience the art she shares with them.

What should we get from viewing it? Critics write about what they value in art. Curators mount shows around the themes that they derive from it. Gallery directors and collectors put a price upon it. For those of us who flock to museums, stroll through the galleries, check out new exhibits, return to our favorites, time and time again, what is it that we are looking for in art?

Can the answer be drawn from the text panel blurb found on the museum wall? Those few sentences can open a thought bubble to understanding the work. For me, art is, in part, what each person brings to the museum. Each visitor’s personal story provides an opportunity to access meaning in the art that they consider, meaning that goes well beyond the brief notes found on a text panel.

I recently witnessed such a connection as a museum visitor stopped to look at a painting by Franz Kline.

A member of the New York abstract expressionist movement in the 1940’s, Kline made a name for himself at the same time as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. He is best known for his stark black and white industrial shapes. The painting in our collection is one of these. Its brushstrokes flow over the edge of the canvas to stretch our imagination. I appreciate the massive bands of black and grid like qualities of this abstract painting.

For many of the museum visitors I meet, however, it is difficult to form a relationship with this work.

“Oh!” She smiled. “I see it now.” “It’s the stable where Jesus was born!”

She went on to explain that the white represented the purity of Mary, but also the cold aching reality that Joseph, her husband, felt when he couldn’t offer his wife a decent birthing place. Equally powerful, she went on, was the black wedge of a barn without comfort where the couple would stay.

It wasn’t the steel grid that Kline intended, but for her, it represented a specific place.

I bit my lip at her interpretation of the painting through the title until it struck me that she had construed Kline’s painting through her own lens, her own interests. In fact, Kline named his paintings after locations in his home state of Pennsylvania.

My guest observed the tension of the bold black and white brushstrokes and created context for what she saw. She overlaid a story of her own making to explain the great emotion that she perceived in the angles of the composition. She found profound meaning within the canvas.

I wasn’t about to correct her.

So, what is the purpose of viewing art? Perhaps the value is in being moved into making a connection that resonates with one’s own backstory. It can be a powerful experience to draw a personal narrative from another’s creativity. That quick engagement can be transformational. It can allow us to see ourselves at a different angle and then to carry that vision out of the museum and into life.

As this guest and I stood in front of Kline’s massive painting, she wondered what it could represent. I asked what she thought. She hesitated. I read her the title, “Bethlehem.”

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COMMUNITY VOICES

Veronica Alex spent four years with the U.S. Army and four years with the U.S. Army National Guard before joining the BJC organization fourteen years ago. Now living in St. Charles with her son Christopher, Alex is an ERP Coordinator for the Business Process Team at BJC HealthCare. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Healthcare Administration through Saint Louis University and joins ‘All the Art’ as this issue’s Student Contributor.

It should be a social requirement to visit an art museum at least once a year. We listen to popular music, go out to movies, and attend concerts all for entertainment. We sometimes forget that the museum also provides us with the finest entertainment. Within this entertainment there are histories and stories to be told. The exhibits allow us to use our own imagination, and also learn something new that the artist envisioned. I, personally, found a gem in Forest Park during my recent visit to the Saint Louis Art Museum.

The first major work of art that caught my eye was a sculpture. Located in the European room displaying the modern body, I could not help but be drawn to this man. He is bent in a fetal position and lying on the left side of his body.

His right hand is covering the right side of his head as if to protect himself from another blow or just to hide his face in general. His body is strong and muscular.

Background image: Franz Kline, Bethlehem (photo credit: Linda Mueller)

Within this Entertainment There are histories and Stories to be Told.

Not only is he completely nude, his pose shows a vulnerability that is not normally seen on a figure built like an Adonis. As he is tightening his body, we see the bulging of his muscles from his calf, his back, and his biceps.

His body looks powerful, as if you could reach out and touch it, feeling warmth instead of the cold, white marble. This sculpture is entitled Despair by Auguste Rodin. It is a perfect name. It is also the emotion I felt as I walked around the frame of a man collapsed on the rock.

Rodin created Despair in 1890 from marble, although he was also known for using bronze as well. He did a wonderful job expressing the pain in the piece. It is not often that we see a strong man displaying such pain. I had an “a-ha!” moment while reading about August Rodin. I recognized his iconic sculpture The Thinker . Here, again, is a nude man but this man sits with his chin on his fist. The effect is as profound, but completely different. I did not know what to expect before visiting the Saint Louis Art Museum. I’ve learned that we don’t have to be an “artsy” type of person to appreciate art. I’ve also learned that art can affect us all, whether we want it to or not. There is something in art that we cannot escape. This is a good thing.

August Rodin, Despair (photo credit: Richard Reilly)

COMMUNITY VOICES

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Gloria Woodcock,born in a town called

Xalapa in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, moved to the United States when she was 24. She is a docent at the Saint Louis Art Museum where she provides tours to groups in English and in Spanish. Her essay is part of an ongoing series of Spanish language Contributions by St. Louis area residents.

Navegando el Misisipí: Una mirada diferente del oeste Americano a través de la obra pictórica de George Caleb Bingham.

George Caleb Bingham, details of Jolly Flatboatmen in Port (photo credit: Richard Reilly)

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COMMUNITY VOICES

El oeste Americano ha sido retratado en películas como un lugar hostil donde la ley se resolvía en duelos, un lugar polvoriento y poco ivilizado. Lo que muy poco se muestra en estas películas o muy poco se conoce es que a diferencia de ser un lugar sin ley, se estaba formando una sociedad diferente, la de comerciantes y aventureros que procedían del norte del país o de Europa en busca de nuevas oportunidades de vida. A mediados del 1800 la expansión del territorio americano se fue dando en forma gradual, lo que se conocía como el oeste estaba formado de tres estados principal-mente; Arkansas, Missouri y Louisiana.

El comercio a través de los ríos, particularmente, el Misisipí y el Missouri empezó a florecer y con ello un tipo diferente de cultura, la de los

“Barqueros”o la gente que habitaba y trabajaba a las orillas de los ríos. Estos Barqueros se dedicaban principalmente al comercio, trueque o intercambio de bienes o de ayudar a los pasajeros y marinos que lo solicitaban.

George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879), pintor iluminista nacido en Virginia, pero establecido en Missouri. Se dedico a captar en sus pinturas esa cultura que se formaba en el Misisipí. El represento la alegría de los Barqueros así como los hermosos paisajes a lo largo de los ríos muy diferentes de los que se pensaban en el norte del país, no solo lugares inhóspitos y peligrosos, si no llenos de vege-tación, búllanle cultura y hermosos atardeceres.

Bingham en su serie dedicada a los Barqueros nos muestra un tipo de cultura diferente de la que se tenia idea en otras partes del país, la del individuo empren-dedor y alegre que comerciaba y trabajaba a la vez que interactuaba con los diferentes grupos étnicos que poblaban las orillas de los ríos. Pieles de animales era

el producto mas apreciado, así como tabaco, algodón y alcohol. Bingham nos muestra como transcurría la vida de estos personajes, como ejemplo tenemos uno de sus famosos cuadros: “Jolly Flatboatmen in Port”, 1857. Donde podemos admirar con brillantes colores la alegría de los Barqueros bailando y conviviendo probablemente después de un largo dia de trabajo, nótese como Bing-ham capto en cada individuo detalles particulares que hacen de su obra una composición especial en perspectiva y balance.

Bingham nos muestra a través de sus bellas pinturas el paisaje ideal y tranquilo y a la vez como los ríos se volvieron la vena principal que conectaba a las diferentes poblaciones haciendo de estos que se empezaran a trans-formar en una fuerza económica organizada.

dido y disfrutado de su increíble narrativa pictórica. George Caleb Bingham mostró y cambio el concepto así como el estereotipo que se tenia de la gente del oeste, los retrato como gente alegre y productiva con su propio estilo de vida y cultura.

El 22 de febrero, el Museo de Arte de San Luis inauguró una exposición dedicada a las pinturas de George Caleb Bingham se centraron en la vida de los barqueros Mississippi, 16 pinturas icónicas y bocetos preparatorios fueron exhibidos.

Esta exposición presenta una gran oportunidad de visitar y conocer un poco más acerca de este talentoso pintor y político, pero la mayoría de la cultura que creció a orillas de los majestuosos ríos Misisipí y Missouri.

Viviendo en St. Louis en los últimos 20 anos, he de admitir que mi primer contacto ccon la obra de George Caleb Bingham fue relativamente hace poco tiempo y desde entonces he apren-

COMMUNITY VOICES

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“Bold” In 2015?

Commentary by Cbabi Bayoc

Cbabi Bayoc has based his art practice in St. Louis for the past 18 years. In 2012 he created the art piece, ‘365 Days with Dad’, comprised of 365 paintings of black fathers and their children. He and his wife, Reine Bayoc, own SweetArt Bakeshop and Art Studio in the Shaw Neighborhood.

The past many months have been very tumultuous in St. Louis. On the day of Mike Brown's killing, a call to artists went out and folks from all over the world answered. They saw a small town rocked, guns pointed at women and children, homes tear gassed, vigilantes on rooftops with guns, looters, protesters, die-ins in malls, protests at football games and the symphony and boarded up buildings adorned with art. The art community had always been in the mix.

Folks asked early on where were the artists, and what was being produced in response to Ferguson and all that was going on? Artists were out protesting with everyone else and also wondering how they should respond. Painters, sculptors, performers, writers... they too had to process their emotions and wait for the right side of the brain to click.

Then, the click happened. Freida Wheaton curated an exhibition that took place in several venues around the city and county of St. Louis (Hands Up, Don't Shoot: Artists Respond). That was a BOLD move. As expected, though, with anything addressing the reality of society's faults, certain pieces couldn't show in certain venues because they were “too much.” The artist Robert Ketchens did an amazing emotional piece, but was not able to show it in a key location. Ostensibly, this was to protect young eyes, but was this censorship really about the child? We worry about making certain adults uncomfortable most times.

Soon after, the Philip Slein Gallery showcased African American art from collectors in the St. Louis area (Other Ways; Other Times: Influences of African-American Tradition from St. Louis Collections). That very impressive body of work –Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kehinde Wiley and Elizabeth Catlett - was so well received, someone encouraged the gallery to actually show work by African American artists from the St. Louis region, again curated by Freida Wheaton (Now! Vibrant Traditions with an Unexpected Edge).

Of all things, this was deemed a “BOLD” move.

Why was the word “bold” used in this case? I would argue that this exhibition was smart, but NOT “bold.” To actually put the work of 15 Black artists in an "established" gallery in St. Louis and no fight break out?! Black folks can actually show work in the same venue and not only have great attendance, but have work sell. Had the work addressed how black artists feel about being friends of but not represented by white gallery owners and letting that body of work hang in an "established" gallery, THAT would have been BOLD! There is an air of exclusion in ALL areas of the St. Louis region.

None of the work in the Philip Slein Gallery exhibition of St. Louis black artists was political or even overtly African American and yet, critique of the show remarked on the “boldness” of the gallery for hosting it.

What does the St. Louis Art Community need to see as we continue to make change in 2015?

Work by local black artists must be recognized as worthy of support and included, without caveat, in high-end, white galleries. The reality is that most collectors of black artists’ work reside outside of the black community. The “established” galleries

Learn more about the origins of “femmage” and other feminist art forms in After the Revolution: Women Who Transformed Contemporary Art (Prestel Publishing, 2013)

Studio Visits and Artist Interviews

Discover more about what these St. Louis artists are up to! www.basilkincaid.com; www.jamiekreher.com Interested in the StL Fringe Festival? Go here: www.stlfringe.com

Spaces and Places

Art Saint Louis: 1223 Pine Street, 63103 www.artstlouis.org Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts: 3716 Washington Blvd, 63108 www.pulitzerarts.org Bruno David Projects: 1245 S Vandeventer Ave, 63110 www.brunodavidprojects.com Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts: 3151 Cherokee St, 63118 www.fortgondo.com The State Organization on Arts and Disability: 2814 Sutton Blvd, 63143 www.vsamissouri.org The Luminary Center for the Arts: 2701 Cherokee Street, 63118 www.theluminaryarts.com Laumeier Sculpture Park: 12580 Rott Rd, 63127 www.laumeiersculpturepark.org Regional Arts Commission: 6128 Delmar Blvd, 63112; download the RAC App: www.racstl.org/stlartsapp The focus of this section was on the Saint Louis Art Museum: 1 Fine Arts Dr, 63110 www.slam.org

What’s Going On

SweetArt is located at 2203 S 39th, 63110 www.sweetartstl.com View Cbabi Bayoc’s work: www.cbabibayoc.com

Marketing art made by black artists is not bold, it is smart. In a time when we cannot help but note the unbroken connections that tie us to injustices of the past, it is worth observing that almost all of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance died penniless.

That should not be the legacy of the artists of today's renaissance that give their all to the arts, for there are too many avenues of representation if certain folks would be BOLD enough to champion their work.

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1/8 page horizontal (4.25” x 2.875”) $250 1/4 page horizontal (2.875” x 8.5”) $350 1/4 page vertical (4.25” x 5.75”) $350 1/2 page vertical (4.25” x 11.5”) $550 1/2 page horizontal (8.5” x 5.75”) $550

Why Advertise with All the Art?

‘How to Guide’ for the StL Art Scene Community Voices

that represent Radcliffe Bailey, Kara Walker, John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett and Jean-Michel Basquiat have no trouble marketing these black artists’ work.

All the Art is St. Louis’ quarterly arts magazine Printed in fabulous full color and also available in digital format.

FOOTNOTES

In Review

Follow Nick Cave’s sparkling, booming and swirling career: www.nickcaveart.com Check out the Duet Gallery in Grand Center 3526 Washington Ave, Ste 300, 63103 www.duetstl.com Visit the Bruno David Gallery in Grand Center 3721 Washington Blvd, 63108: www.brunodavidgallery.com Visit the Foundry in Old St. Charles: 520 N Main St, 63301 www.foundryartcentre.org

Cbabi Bayoc (photo credit: Sarah Hermes Griesbach)

Publish Date Fall Issue: SEP 1 Winter Issue: DEC 1 Spring Issue: MAR 1 Summer Issue: JUN 1 Ad Materials Due Fall Issue: AUG 1 Winter Issue: NOV 1 Spring Issue: FEB 1 Summer Issue: MAY

Our audience is broad and growing.

We provide content that stays relevant over time. The breadth of local, personal art topics we report on results in a readership that is connected to the magazine. That means our readers hold on to our magazine for longer than media that expires.

Technical Print Specs Digital photos must be 300 dpi minimum All the Art prefers to receive hi-res print ready PDFs for advertisement, however, these formats are acceptable: InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop CONTACT: advertisement@AlltheArtStL.com

COMMENTARY

SPRING 2015 ALLTHEARTSTL.COM 18

Conveniently located near I-270 and I-44 in Sunset Hills Open daily from 8 a.m. to 30 minutes past sunset

The Newly Renovated Estate House, Featuring the Education Laboratory for Art

The NEW Adam Aronson Fine Arts Center, Opening Mid-2015

Exhibitions | Art Camp, Classes & Workshops | Public Events | Conservation | Event Rentals | Membership | Museum Shop Laumeier Sculpture Park is a living laboratory where artists and audiences explore the relationship between contemporary art and the natural environment.

12580 Rott Road | St. Louis, MO 63127 | 314-615-5278 | www.laumeier.org

through May 10, 2015 Open Tuesday – Sunday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Located at 3700 West Pine Blvd on the Saint Louis University campus

Regina DeLuise. Wrapped Statue, Thimphu Bhutan, 2010.

Archival pigment print. Image courtesy of the artist.

New galleries open May 1,2015

Join us for a reopening celebration with events throughout the weekend, May 1–2, 2015.

Pulitzer Arts Foundation is free and open to the public. For hours and events, visit us at pulitzerarts.org @pulitzerarts

Art can be found in unexpected places....

with three new exhibitions of artists

Alexander Calder Richard Tuttle Fred Sandback Art can be found in unexpected places....

Art can be found in unexpe Art can be found in unexpected places....

Eight local artists contributed work to make Eating Lightly a visual feast.

Proceeds from the sale of this cookbook benefit the Missouri Coalition for the Environment's work on clean energy, water, and air.

To order a copy and see what we do, go to www.moenviron.org.

Eight local artists contributed work to make Eating Lightly a visual feast.

Proceeds from the sale of this cookbook benefit the Missouri Coalition for the Environment's work on clean energy, water, and air.

To order a copy and see what we do, go to www.moenviron.org.

SPRING 2015