St. Louis and New Orleans have many issues of common concern and are physically linked by the mighty Mississippi River. The River Between Us, will showcase works that reflect how the lives of people in both communities have always been intertwined with the river’s role in US history.

The exhibit is the second collaboration between Laumeier and Longue Vue House and Gardens in New Orleans. Marilu Knode, Laumeier’s executive director said, “this is the first time the connections between our two cities have been explored through the visual arts. We’re excitied to expose Laumeier and Longue Vue guests to the artists’ interpretations of the social evolution of St. Louis and New Orleans.”

The River Between Uswill be the fourth in a series of projects Laumeier has organized around the rubric “archaeology of place.” Laumeier’s 105 acres, Longue Vue’s eight acres and Estate Homes at both sites provide unique backdrops to works that focus on the history of land usage. Theexhibition will feature commissions by artists, inspired by the two locations, and historical documents culled from local institutions. Some of the commissioned works will travel to New Orleans in the fall, opening at Longue Vue in September and closing February 2014.

While there are many cities that have grown along the Mississippi, St. Louis and New Orleans are linked through trade and social and cultural exchange dating from the pre-historic Mississippian cultures to today. The series of indoor and outdoor commissioned works responds to the past as the past impacts the future.

Probably because of my own work, I felt more connected to Mel Watkin’s work…especially the work with the maps but not the entire installation. Plus, she is using the same types of maps (Mississippi Navigation Maps that are from the US Army Corps of Engineers) but my versions are a bit older. Of course, our work is quite different but I love when I see work that is similar but taken in a different direction. 

Artist’s website: Mel Watkin

It isn’t too often I stop by the St. Louis University Museum of Art. I often forget about it and when I DO stop by, I am surprised by their collection. This post is mostly about a local artist and her first museum exhibit.  The artist is Roxanne Philips and she is a St. Louis artist/printmaker. The exhibition featured many works that referenced architecture and local structures. The prints ranged from some small etchings to reductive woodcuts. She seems very interested in the process of the woodcuts. The prints are playful in their simplicity and exploration. As a printmaker, I think there interest in repetition and the serial exploration of subject and that is something I am interested in. I also liked the structures are seemingly mundane - power lines, water towers, highway overpasses, etc,… yet become interesting due to color, composition, and the fact they seem to represent something personal. The repetition of imagery turns them into symbols - of things she is interested in, in place, and in discovery.  See more of her work at: http://www.roxannephillips.com
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It isn’t too often I stop by the St. Louis University Museum of Art. I often forget about it and when I DO stop by, I am surprised by their collection. This post is mostly about a local artist and her first museum exhibit. 

The artist is Roxanne Philips and she is a St. Louis artist/printmaker. The exhibition featured many works that referenced architecture and local structures. The prints ranged from some small etchings to reductive woodcuts. She seems very interested in the process of the woodcuts.

The prints are playful in their simplicity and exploration.

As a printmaker, I think there interest in repetition and the serial exploration of subject and that is something I am interested in. I also liked the structures are seemingly mundane - power lines, water towers, highway overpasses, etc,… yet become interesting due to color, composition, and the fact they seem to represent something personal. The repetition of imagery turns them into symbols - of things she is interested in, in place, and in discovery. 

See more of her work at: http://www.roxannephillips.com

This guy is Amazing. Fun, engaging, and somewhat interactive exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. I even had myself a cup of tea, and paged through old issues of NME from 1990. 

http://camstl.org/exhibitions/main-gallery/jeremy-deller-joy-in-people/

Many of Deller’s projects over the years have dealt with the social meanings of popular music and how the use of power by those in authority affects everyday people. 

Gary SimmonsPlaza Inferno GridOil and pigment on 6 pieces of gesso paper2008 A new addition to the permanent collection at Washington University’s Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis In this painting the artist presents a science fiction-like rendering of a skyscraper fragmented by a six-part grid that adds an abstracted and ambiguous quality. It is part of a series of works that he created in reference to the popular 1972 sci-fi movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, a cinematic metaphor for race relations in the United States released in the years following the Watts Riots of 1965. 
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Gary Simmons
Plaza Inferno Grid
Oil and pigment on 6 pieces of gesso paper
2008

A new addition to the permanent collection at Washington University’s Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis

In this painting the artist presents a science fiction-like rendering of a skyscraper fragmented by a six-part grid that adds an abstracted and ambiguous quality. It is part of a series of works that he created in reference to the popular 1972 sci-fi movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, a cinematic metaphor for race relations in the United States released in the years following the Watts Riots of 1965. 

Source: kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu

Rather than write about an exhibition, I’m just gonna share the works that made an impression on me. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis just opened a few exhibitions. One was called FACE AND FIGURE IN EUROPEAN ART, 1928-1945. This exhibition explores figurative works in conjunction with the rise of abstraction and interest in the expression of the human condition. 

What really jumped out at me in the exhibition were the prints - the richness and the expression of line, I thought were quite wonderful. There is something haunting and somewhat grotesque about the figures that is intriguing to me.

For more info and works to explore see http://www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/exhibitions/faceandfigure

Today I went to the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis to see The Progress of Love exhibition. Truth be told, I didn’t know what to expect and had low expectation. That being said I still went and I am glad I did. Very informative and learned a lot of stuff - especially of Nigerian culture.

The exhibit is a “three-part, intercontinental project that proposes a mode of collaboration between arts institutions. The project links together three distinct curatorial visions that explore how we imagine love, experience love, and process its demise.” The exhibition is a collaboration between the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis, Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, Nigeria, and The Menil Collection in Houston, TX.

The exhibition features the work of four artists:

1. Zina Saro-Wiwa (British, born in Nigeria), a documentary filmmaker and video artist who in the exhibition explores, through a series of short videos, mass-produced overwrought melodrama of some of Nollywood’s most famous actresses. They would cry on cue, mourn - very contrived performances of emotion and love. 

2. British-Nigerian artist, Yinka Shonibare, explores the historical and social aspects that underpin our notions of love. She references post-colonial Britain “to reflect the relationship between the birth of the British Empire and Britain’s present-day multicultural context”. She appropriates Pre-Raphaelite paintings. One work, Addio del Passato, was a video based on an aria from the last act of Verdi’s opera La Traviata (The Fallen Woman).  She represents Frances Nisbet (The fallen woman who in the opera becomes estranged from he husband after his affair with another woman) as a black opera singer wearing 17th century garb (white wig, etc…) roaming through an opulent manor and expressing the pain of her loss. 

3. Temitayo Ogunbiyi, an American-Jamaican-Nigerian artist, created a work that consists of a vending machine that dispenses limited edition books. These books are based on two Nigerian publishing phenomena: Onitsha Market pamphlets of the 1990s that focused on love and romance, and text message booklets that have been popular in Lagos since 2000.

The latter are publications that offer samples of text messages that can be sent as expressions of love to mark different events in the pursuit, attainment, or loss of love.

These pamphlets are in the vending machine and can be purchased. I am guessing as some ready-made version or concept of expressing love?

4. French Artist, Sophie Calle, examines the process of coming to terms with the loss of a loved one - a romantic love. This is the centerpiece of the exhibition. It is a body of work called Take Care of Yourself. This body of work is a multimedia group of work that was spurred by the break-up of her and her boyfriend. He send a letter via email to break-up with her. The closing line of the letter was “Take care of yourself”. 

The letter is featured in the exhibition (what a fuck you to her ex, eh? To just expose his letter, that was supposed to just be for her, in such a public way.). She invited more an 100 women to respond to this rejection letter from their professional perspectives. There is a vast array of responses that go from the proof-reader that marks all the spelling and grammar errors, a rifle shooter that shoots holes into the letter, a cartoonist that draws a cartoon to illustrate the side of the ex who wrote the letter and Calle receiving the letter, a text message interpretation. There were so many. It was almost overwhelming and at first I was like, “really? I am am going to have to read through all this?”. However the responses were so varied from the expected, “what a jerk” to more humorous ones.

I loved the one that involved a parrot. She gave a tiny version of the letter to a parrot. The parrot then tore it to shreds and then said, “I never lied to you” and “take care of yourself” at the end. This one prompted laughs from most people. I thought it was funny.

For more info see The Progress of Love website. 

Gerhard Richter - Painting, 2011Directed by Corinna Belz The title of the film pretty much explains the film. For the most part we are watching him paint. This can be fascinating but at times can be like watching grass grow. The experience of watching this documentary was like that. There are parts where he is at an opening or giving an interview but for the most part this is a look into his studio.If you are not familiar with the artist Gerhard Richter, as a start just check out his Wikipedia page just to get some idea of what he does. I am not gonna go into biography for this one. Personally, I am a fan of his wide variety of work.In this film you are seeing a mature artist working. He has assistants that help him prepare paintings, prepare for shows and such. For the most part he can just focus on being creative and thinking. This isn’t the same experience as an young emerging artist that is struggling. As an artist I dream of his studio. As for now as an artist, I do everything myself and with the help of friends that volunteer to help. I liked watching him create the large scale squeegee paintings. See and example pictured above. It is a physical and radically transformative process. Looking at the finished works, it doesn’t seem like it would be the case but there is a bit of labor put into these works. He says at the end, “Man, that was fun,”. It does seem like fun and surprising to see the transformation of the works. While he seems cold and stoic, you see an artist that really seems to get much satisfaction out of making the work. You see an artist with guts and confidence in his ideas. As an artist myself, that is great to see.
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Gerhard Richter - Painting, 2011
Directed by Corinna Belz 

The title of the film pretty much explains the film. For the most part we are watching him paint. This can be fascinating but at times can be like watching grass grow. The experience of watching this documentary was like that. There are parts where he is at an opening or giving an interview but for the most part this is a look into his studio.

If you are not familiar with the artist Gerhard Richter, as a start just check out his Wikipedia page just to get some idea of what he does. I am not gonna go into biography for this one. Personally, I am a fan of his wide variety of work.

In this film you are seeing a mature artist working. He has assistants that help him prepare paintings, prepare for shows and such. For the most part he can just focus on being creative and thinking. This isn’t the same experience as an young emerging artist that is struggling. As an artist I dream of his studio. As for now as an artist, I do everything myself and with the help of friends that volunteer to help. 

I liked watching him create the large scale squeegee paintings. See and example pictured above. It is a physical and radically transformative process. Looking at the finished works, it doesn’t seem like it would be the case but there is a bit of labor put into these works. He says at the end, “Man, that was fun,”. It does seem like fun and surprising to see the transformation of the works. While he seems cold and stoic, you see an artist that really seems to get much satisfaction out of making the work. You see an artist with guts and confidence in his ideas. As an artist myself, that is great to see.