February 2021

February 2021 Issue

67

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Feb 2021

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Craig Downs

Serving Up Art, Music, and Culture for the Metro Area’s Enjoyment 1 GessoMagazine.com Gesso Magazine

Editor's Word

February 2021

Editor’s Word: Straight Up Magazine is now Gesso Magazine and it is here with its 67th edition ‘Serving Up Art, Music and Culture for the Metro Area’s Enjoyment’. The St. Louis Metro deserves its own arts and entertainment magazine. And here it is.

It’s called Gesso!!!

We are very pleased to have Craig Downs as our featured cover artist.

Craig is a native of the St. Louis metro, transplanted to Dallas, Oregon and now wintering somewhere in the warmth of Mexico. His 2

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artwork - on canvas and in murals - can be found in homes, businesses and public spaces in the United

States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. And now also, of course, in the pages

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February 2021

and on the cover of Gesso Magazine. See more of Craig Downs starting on page 25.

And our Jacque Davis “Dreaming in Color” exhibition is still on display

at Governor French Gallery.

Due to COVID, the Gallery is still closed to foot traffic.

However, the exhibition is still visible from the vast windows at 219 West Main Street in Belleville IL or by appointment.

We thank our writers for their poignant features and all those who contribute to this project.

We appreciate all of those individuals who have submitted their works for publication. And “Likes” to all you followers on Facebook!!!

We are grateful to you, the reader, for picking up this latest issue of Gesso Magazine

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Editor's Word

February 2021

– Issue #67 in the Str8 Up Magazine legacy!!!

Like Straight Up before it, the mission of Gesso Magazine is to support local arts and artists and the businesses and organizations that support local arts and artists. We invite you to contact us with ideas, comments, information, etc. that might assist us in our mission to serve you, the residents of the St. Louis Metro area.

WE WANT YOU! - All you artistic and creative types out there!

You should contact us. Show us your work. Tell us of your craft 4

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and brief personal/artistic history. Submit any art form that you’d like. Perhaps, you can be one of our next

published contributors or even a featured cover artist.

Check out the Submissions

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February 2021

Pages to see who’s featured this month. Next month, that could be you!!

Enjoy Gesso!

Tell your

Follow us on Instagram and Facebook daily for new and additional events and content. Unlike the pre-Covid past, you will not see Gesso Magazine at hundreds of area distribution locations!

We will continue online in this brave new world.

Stay safe and be healthy.

P.O. Box 412 Belleville, IL 62222 (314) 266-9199 Editor@ GessoMagazine.com

friends. Send us your work.

And visit our website at GessoMagazine.com.

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Credits

February Credits

Staff

February 2021

Editors: Jake Bishop, Dylan Seibert, Paul Seibert Layout Design Artists: Jake Bishop, Dylan Seibert, Mark Polege Sales: Jake Bishop, Jennifer Lynn Reida, William Schmitz, Paul Seibert, Dylan Seibert Ad Artists: Jake Bishop, Mark Polege, Dylan Seibert, Wil Sullivan Calendar: Dylan Seibert, Paul Seibert Website Design & Up-Keep: Mark Polege (MarkusDesignWorks.com), Jake Bishop Photography: Mark Polege (PhotographyofMarkPolege.com)

The Gesso Movement Relies on Your Support!!

We are committed to supporting local artists, musicians, & businesses and providing this material FREE to readers month after month!!

We invite you to reach out to us!!

Together we can discover how we can best help you, your band, your business or organization, etc. and how you can best help us in our continuing mission.

Hit us up on Facebook or Instagram or via GessoMagazine.com Editor@GessoMagazine.com 6

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February 2021

Contributors Cover Artist: Craig Downs Cover Logo: Jake Bishop Game Page: Dank By Design Fun Page: Jake Bishop Photography/ Images: Courtesy of Gogh-Getters and Paul Seibert (p.1013), Craig Downs (p.22-25) All material in this publication and its affiiated on-line content are copyrighted to the individual contributors or Gesso Magazine and may not be reproduced without written consent. We are very grateful to those who have submitted material to be considered for publication. However, the opinions and views of those contributing content to Gesso do not necessarily reflect those of Gesso Magazine.

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Table of Contents

February 2021

10 Gogh-Getters - From The Grounds Up

16 Sunday Morning Game Night from Dank by Design

14 February Comics

18 Friends of Gesso Membership Program

By Paul Seibert

by Danny Houk

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Table of Contents

February 2021

22 Cover Artist Craig Downs

By Paul Seibert

30 February Submissions

Featuring: John Dorroh, Mitchy Mitch, Brooke Peipert

36 Governor French Gallery Exhibition: Dreaming in Color Textile Art by Jacque Davis

@blvscreenprint 618.277.9600 GessoMagazine.com

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Gogh Getters

February 2021

From the Grounds Up

by Paul Seibert

It was feared that it was lost. Another casualty of the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic.

Gogh-Getters Gallery was about to lose its forever home with the closure of its physical location, the Sacred Grounds Cafe at 233 North Main Street, Edwardsville. With the current business environment, founder and owner Jenn Courtney would retire after 21 years and the Cafe would be no more.

STOP!

Due to COVID, there will not be the usual opening reception for this exhibit.

With social distancing protocols in place for the Cafe, the exhibit will grace the walls through February 20.

Gogh-Getters Gallery features local and national artists and was founded in 2011 by a group of four local artists: Kerry Smith, Steve Hartman, Jim Harper and Dave Thomas. Their philosophy: “Art is a record of our culture.

Sharing and collaboration are part of its DNA. Our purpose is to encourage artists to create and share their work. Plus, we like to hang out. So, come join us and experience the best art our area has to offer.�

Yes, Jenn would retire, but another hero would emerge and bring the Cafe back to life.

Enter Kate Baumgartner, a fervent fan and believer in this hallowed coffee shop. A lastminute transition of ownership brought about that Sacred Grounds Cafe reopened with its official Grand (re)Opening on February 6. And along with the Cafe, so also reopened is the Gogh-Getters Art Gallery.

The Gogh-Getters have graced the walls of Sacred Grounds Cafe for 10 years and are ecstatic to have their home back. And they are celebrating their return with an exhibition of the works of Renee Raub-Ayers. Renee is a St. Louis area artist who works primarily in acrylics.

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Gogh Getters

February 2021

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Gogh Getters

February 2021

Now, more about Sacred Grounds. Kate Baumgartner says she is “exceptionally honored to provide the surrounding community with more than just sandwiches and coffee. Sacred Grounds is culture, friendship, belonging, safety and conversations (also really great food & drinks). It’s a space for love and laughter and longggg chess games. It’s for books and art and a 10-second coffee pause in a hectic week day.” With faith in the business and the community, Kate took the leap of faith to phoenix Sacred Grounds Café from the Covid ashes, pandemic or not. And, she says, the Gogh-Getters were a major part of her decision. “The Gogh-Getters were so helpful.

Their knowledge was so important to the process, a real blessing.” Seems she just couldn’t let the Cafe go away.

Kate had been an ardent patron since she was 12 and especially during her SIUE days. She wanted to work there, to be around that kind of interesting people.

Practically completed her undergrad degree at the tables there. Loved the “growth” conversations that helped shape her current ideologies about food and the importance of culture and community. “Owning a cafe has always been my end game and Sacred Grounds Cafe was the inspiration for it. The food and coffee is always great, but the community is what makes it special.”

And that community includes Gogh-Getters Art Gallery. Drop in anytime between February 6th and February 20th and take in the Renee Raub-Ayers art exhibition and all the wonderful smells and tastes of “fresh organic breakfast and lunch, plus specialty coffees served in a coffeehouse filled with local art.”

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Gogh Getters

February 2021

Sacred Grounds Cafe 233 North Main Street Edwardsville, IL 62025 618-692-4150 https://www.facebook.com/sacredgroundscafeedwardsville Gogh-Getters Gallery https://www.facebook.com/GoghGetters Renee Raub-Ayers https://www.facebook.com/reneeraubayersoutsiderart Kerry Smith https://www.facebook.com/kerry.smith.39948 Steve Hartman https://www.facebook.com/SteveHartmanArt Jim Harper https://www.facebook.com/thejimharper Dave Thomas https://www.facebook.com/dave.thomas.169

For even more on Gogh-Getters: http://www.gessomagazine.com/2019/04/keeping-art-downtown-edwardsville/

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Comics

February 2021

“Keeping Safe in COVID”

By: Danny Houk. See more at https://www.Instagram.com/dannyhoukart/

Facebook.com/GessoMagazine 14

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Fun Page

FUN PAGE

February 2021

Gesso’s monthly dose of riddles and teasers! Can you guess them all?

1. What goes up but never comes down?

2. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday?

3. What kind of coat can only be put on when wet?

4. If I have it, I don’t share it. If I share it, I don’t have it. What is it?

5. How many months have 28 days?

6. What word is spelled wrong in every dictionary?

7. What word contains 26 letters, but only three syllables?

Answers: 1. Your age 2. Yesterday, Today, tomorrow. 3. A coat of paint. 4. A secret. 5. All of them! 6. Wrong. 7. Alphabet GessoMagazine.com

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Sunday Morning Game Night

February 2021

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Sunday Morning Game Night

February 2021

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February 2021

Introducing:

The Friends of Gesso membership program * Donate any amount to become a member * Donate $10 or more and receive a Gesso sticker as a thank you gift * Donate $100 or more and receive a Gesso sticker and a T-shirt as a thank you gift All Members will be thanked in print in the next issue (unless they wish to remain anonymous) All members who provide a valid email address will periodically receive invitations to access special bonus content on GessoMagazine.com, as well as other perks!

(No email addresses will be sold to any third party EVER) Gesso Magazine reaches THOUSANDS of people on both sides of the river & serves the local art & music scene by continuing to make this publication available to the public free of charge.

This community project relies on the support of the community it serves. Help us keep LOCAL art and music ALIVE.

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February June 2021 2020

BECOME A MEMBER TODAY

To become a member, send us an email at Membership@GessoMagazine.com Or send us a message on Facebook Or cut out this form and mail it to: Gesso Magazine P.O. Box 412 Belleville, IL 62222 Your name, or that of your business, band, group, or organization: Email (optional): Donation amount: Would you like to have your name excluded from print in the next issue?: (those who do not answer will have their name included) GessoMagazine.com

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Visit the RenewAudio.com/Music page for links and streaming music for our Artists.

Or Search Renew Audio Music or DrunkMouse Records for Spotify Playlist.

Renew Audio Music is available on all streaming services.

Attention Gesso Readers: This Holiday Season and All Year Around, We are So Very Grateful to You and to

EVERYONE

Who Has Contributed to this Project...

We have some exciting things in the works for the coming year!!!

From All of Us to All of You: Thank You So Much and Please Stay Up with us via Social Media & GessoMagazine.com

Cover Artist- Craig Downs Craig Downs

February 2021 His paintings tell stories from the many places he’s traveled and worked, including now - the Pacific Northwest.

Cover Artist Craig Downs is a native of St. Louis, currently living in Dallas, Oregon.

Craig Downs has spent the last thirty years creating a bold and original style to call his own.

Craig now lives happily in the beautiful Willamette Valley of Oregon.

His inspiration comes from the Northwest’s exuberant beauty and its rich indigenous arts.

His style has been referred to as allegorical, mythological, metaphorical, and whimsical.

And the stories he tells are for his viewers to interpret.

( Craig Downs - Willamette Valley Rendezvous - 40x30 acrylic )

His signature art - on canvas and in murals embellishes thousands of homes, businesses and public spaces in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe.

Craig’s art is well known and loved from his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, to the Puerto Vallarta area of Mexico where he has spent the winter months for the past five years. ( Craig Downs - True Love - 30x40 acrylic ) 22

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Cover Artist- Craig Downs

February 2021

( St Louis Night; 20” x 24” Acrylic on Canvas )

“St Louis Night” is included in the February 27th virtual silent auction fundraiser for St. Louis’ Carney’s Kids Foundation: https://www.carneyskids.org/ GessoMagazine.com

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Cover Artist- Craig Downs

February 2021

Speaking of murals: Craig and his life partner, Candice Fulton, created the mural project they call “Wall Together Now”. Wall Together Now is an exciting new way to strengthen and energize working and community relationships. Wall Together Now creates murals that are painted by your workforce or by the community you serve - or by both together. Their approach is both classic and accessible: the time-honored Paint by Number technique, popular for generations and perfectly relevant in today’s world. Wall Together Now was born from their passion for the magic of collaborative art.

“Our experience has proven to us that working together artistically breaks artificial barriers, opening the possibility for new and quality relationships among people both diverse and like-minded.” Craig and Candice’s Paint by Numbers projects can be found in Dallas OR, in St. Louis MO and in San Pancho, Mexico. They could be coming to your community... https://www.walltogethernow.com/

Craig Downs and His Magic Paintbrush can be found at:

www.CraigDowns.com https://www.facebook.com/CraigDownsArt https://www.facebook.com/craig.downs.144

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Cover Artist- Craig Downs

February 2021

( Craig Downs - River Blues - 20x24 acrylic, Cover Image ) GessoMagazine.com

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February 2021

www.JohnnyBBQSauce.com www.Facebook.com/ Johnny-Sauce-502689276810563/

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February 2021

(303) 524 5729 GessoMagazine.com

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February 2021

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Submissions

February 2021

John Dorroh John Dorroh was born with a pen in his right hand. “I’ve always written,” he said. “My love of writing was fostered by my high school senior English teacher, Paul Ruffin. He demanded good writing on a regular basis. I wrote my first chapbook, Thin Man’s Lights, when I was 17, as a student of his. Although it wasn’t published, it served as a template for persistence.” His poetry can be found in about 90 journals, including Ephemeral Elegies, Ponder, Kleksograph, Feral, and Plum Tree Tavern.

John’s work is also included in the just released Sixth Issue of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art. https://feralpoetry.net/issue-six-the-love-issue/

“Tree as Teacher”

by John Dorroh When you described the trees coming into winter as bruised, I perceived it as a sweet flash of light, photons and waves articulating an image that made me cry. Tall tree trunks on a bronzed mountain ridge rising up across the creek bottom like an ancient reptile, stretching up, up, 100 feet? I don’t know. But they look sad, like someone has died.

I stand as tall as I can these days, feeling spent with change. Ten years ago I moved a tree with a hug and gritted teeth. I flipped a boulder with my bare hands and lifted a fallen tree off of the trail. I challenged black bears to cross my path, and when they occasionally spotted me, they ran like sissies.

I can feel you tree, the better years of your life having evaporated into the smoke of time; how your leaves fall sluggishly these days, the struggle of staying normal, being counted in the tree census, claiming your space on the lip of the ridge, leaning ever so closely to a dive into the stream to finish you off.

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Submissions

February 2021

“The Yellow Flippers, or If I Can Smell History in a Garage Sale, Then I’ll Write a Poem about It”

by John Dorroh I. I found them, these canary-yellow flippers, years before a film of chlorine dust had permanently coated their surface like a thin dead skin. I’d swum through rough-edged lanes of cabbage-patch dolls, skateboards with three wheels, and rickety wooden ladders; worn-out Tupperware bowls with missing lids, 70’s casserole dishes, and leather-elbowed cardigans; limp cardboard boxes of molded National Geographic and Look, a Remington Rand typewriter, fatigued overalls.

They lay on the grass, begging me to take them home.

The rubber strap of the mated goggles disintegrated In my hands, but the flippers were solid and a good fit.

One dollar and a story from his grand-daughter.

“He wore these until he couldn’t walk,” she said.

“He loved swimming, gliding across the sparkling waters for hours. Met my grandma at the city pool. You can have them,” she said. “Do you plan to use them yourself?”

II. I felt my feet slide into history, his heels snug as if my own. I’d grown new appendages, sitting on the edge of the pool, ready to submerge my body into his blood.

I shot half-way across the pool like a dolphin, the flippers as flexible pistons, propelling me across the water, defying gravity, feeling his shins in mine, our upper legs as one.

“You’re cheating,” said the fish in the next lane. “No one swims that fast,” he said. “I took my goggles off, held them high above my head, and winked.

“I know.”

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Submissions

February 2021 My name is Mitch Berens and I am a local artist.

I have a gift for writing and other mediums.

2021 For some it was a loss; for others they gained something and won People’s true colors came out It seemed it was racial tension mid year that came about People laid off if not lost their job Others places of living the lights cut off; in the dark they wept and sob Some were able to maintain Others like me lost friends and family and try to stay sane Restrictions were made stating our friends and family can’t physically be seen or greeted Lost for words we felt alone and defeated Told to wear a mask and more than one glove Told food and toilet paper were scarce; people now push to shove Did anyone bother to look at the planets and see what they won’t do again Well for at least a couple hundred years in the Stars live to try to comprehend Let this New Year bring a peek of what it means to survive That if anything it would make you more alive Be safe be strong Let my words forever carry in your hearts very long Be thankful and try to stress less Try not to look at last year’s mess but as 2021 as progress Author: Mytchy Mitch

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Submissions

February 2021

Brooke Peipert First, I am an artist. Secondly, I am an art advocate. Thirdly, I am here to provide art advocacy and art exhibitions in a variation of locations and fashions. Currently, I am the lead curator/co-owner of Good Weather Art Gallery in Edwardsville IL.

https://www.facebook.com/BLPart

https://www.facebook.com/GoodWeatherArtGallery

Looking for Love

by Brooke Peipert

Looking for love can feel a lot like morning traffic.

Whether you’re on the bus or stuck on the freeway we think we are alone, in our bubble, that no one sees, but most likely there is someone observing your face, watching you sing to yourself, seeing how you drink your coffee or put makeup on while keeping a steady wheel. They can see when you’re having another “monday,” or a rough time with a roommate when you’re screaming on the phone.

We have our lives on display for an audience we don’t know is watching.

Hoping.

That maybe they can be your passenger, changing the radio station because we both hate commercials and silent traffic. ( Watercolor, Untitled ) GessoMagazine.com

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Visit the RenewAudio.com/Music page for links and streaming music for our Artists.

Or Search Renew Audio Music or DrunkMouse Records for Spotify Playlist.

Renew Audio Music is available on all streaming services.

Search “Ian Buechele� on Spotify, iTunes and any streaming platforms to listen to Americana/ Blues songs by Ian Buechele.

Governor French Gallery Exhibition

Dreaming in Color Textile Arts by

Jacque Davis Governor French Gallery 219 West Main Street Belleville IL 62221 Due to the Covid quarantine, the Gallery is closed.

This exhibit is continued indefinitely.

“You can’t come in, but... you can see the exhibit through the windows.”

Sponsored and Curated by Gesso Magazine Regular Gallery Hours: 8am-4pm Monday through Friday or by appointment