Solo & Small Group Exhibitions
Slow Accretions: Works on Paper by Michelle Oosterbaan and Brigham Dimick
November 17 - December 23, 2023
Opening Reception: November 17, 6-8pm
In the Curated Gallery
Pairing the artworks by Michelle Oosterbaan and Brigham Dimick provokes insights about deeper affinities between artists' working practices, even when there are clear stylistic differences. An essential common thread, for example, is the accumulation of small and precise information that accrues organically over time. The slow and sustained development of small marks onto large expanses of paper creates intimate and immersive experiences for the viewer. Using small tools to cover large spaces, the works are developed conjecturally, like traveling on foot over great distances into new terrain in the fog.
Working on paper in a large scale, the works in Slow Accretions explore the liminal space between drawing and painting as an embodiment of transformation. The spirit of private and fleeting notations found in artist sketchbooks are felt in tension with the public statements inherent in museum-scaled work.
Oosterbaan and Dimick have encouraged each other’s practice for the past thirty years. The differences in their visual expressions are evident. While Oosterbaan’s mixed-media drawings feature colored pencil and graphite and share an affinity to marginalia on steroids, Dimick explores the intersection of domestic scenes with larger expanses of space and time, uniting them via complex, intuitive spatial systems.
Beyond those distinctions, however, the artists share a deep interest in the psychology of space. Whether viewing Oosterbaan’s penchant for mapping or Dimick’s engagement in bending perspective, the language of objectivity is made elastic and released into a poetic realm. Relatedly, both use direct visual observation as a catalyst for invention, ensuring that their inventions remain anchored in common visual experience.
In both artists' works, the accretion of marks and revisions over a long expanse of time embody the fabric of their thinking, patiently building worlds of suspended reality.
Between Illusion and Reality
November 17 - December 23, 2023
Opening Reception: November 17, 6-8pm
In the Ramp Gallery
Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School art students showcase a series of photographs in the St. Louis Artists’ Guild’s Ramp Gallery.
Out of the Woods - The Eclectic Art of Bill Abendroth
September 15 - October 14, 2023
Gallery Talk: September 21, 2023, 6:30 pm
In the Curated Gallery
Bill explores the classical shapes used in ancient Greek and Roman vases and urns with a modern twist of them being expressed in wood and with colors that were not available thousands of years ago. In addition, Bill’s somewhat “off center” sense of humor is shown in an eclectic display of small sculptures and figures.
Alcohol Resist Painting by Gary Lang
September 15 - October 14, 2023
Gallery Talk: September 21, 2023, 6:30 pm
In the Ramp Gallery
In 2011 I spent most of my time in Tulsa, Oklahoma caring for my youngest son going through stage 3 cancer treatments. Since I was unable to work in my studio, I researched painting techniques during the long recovery periods between chemo treatments. One interesting technique that I found was the alcohol resist process with acrylic paint. Most of the information regarding alcohol resist was made on paper and used for cards and decorative posters. The alcohol created an unstable painting surface for works on canvas, so to make this work I used an acrylic clear medium to stabilize the resist painting. Over the past ten years the paintings I created with this process have weathered the test of time. I use this technique for backgrounds, textural areas, and complete works.
Light from a Window by Susan Zimmerman
July 21 - August 26, 2023
Opening Reception: July 21, 2023, 5-8pm
Gallery Talk: July 27, 2023, 6:30pm
In the Curated Gallery
Light and windows are deeply intertwined with my work as a ceramicist and photographer. My porcelain hand built sculptures blend an organic and contemporary style. Creating asymmetrical shapes with multiple facades is an intrinsic part of this process. Each sculpture is a personal journey that comes to fruition by shaping and reshaping until the piece tells its story.
The work is only half done after finishing a sculpture, then the other half begins discovering the soul of that piece through light and moment. I use photography to capture the synergy of light and the ethereal effect it has on my work as it shifts from sculpture to imagery. The sun provides light and the time of day provides moment. These sculptural portraits are expressions of how I see my work.
The sculptures are photographed when unfired and bisqued so that the clay’s whitish skin transforms the color photographs into a black-and-white realm. Displaying bisqued sculptures viscerally illustrates where this monochromatic imagery originates. Artificial light is never used in this process – it all comes from the interplay of sun and shadow and “Light from a Window.”
This process came to light in Taos, New Mexico during an artist residency in 2019 where I was living and working in a 100-year-old adobe casita. A defunct kiva fireplace that I used for a photo studio set in motion a new way of seeing. A collection of this imagery was turned into a book, The Light in the Kiva. I continued exploring this photographic style using the window light of my 100-year-old farmhouse which is the inspiration for this newest work.
Photo Possibilities from Cyanotype to Solar Plate by Barbara Zucker
July 21 – August 26, 2023
Opening Reception: July 21, 2023, 5-8pm
In the Ramp Gallery
Photo Possibilities from Cyanotype to Solar Plate is an exhibition of photo-based work utilizing different photo processes often in combination with printmaking techniques. While cyanotype dating from the 1840s has endured many other photographic and printmaking processes or materials have disappeared or been replaced.
A Frayed Knot by Douglas Dale
May 26 - July 1, 2023
Opening Reception: May 26, 2023 5-8pm
Artist Talk: June 15 at 6:30pm in the gallery
"A Frayed Knot is a collection of fiber sculpture constructed through hours of painstakingly contoured yarn built up into second skins over furniture, hunting decoys, lumber, and mixed media. Inspired by drag, theater, and the club scene, the work evokes camp and camouflage to interrogate the difference between presentation and identity and what information is lost in the application of a rigid taxonomy.
Proudly trans nonbinary, the artist extends their own queering unto inanimate objects. The work aims to break presumed polarities and encapsulate the full spectrum of hard and soft, wood and fiber, masculine and feminine."
B(e)-Sides by Sean Hoisington
May 26 - July 1, 2023
Opening Reception: May 26, 2023 5-8pm
I dubbed this body of work B(e)-Sides because the images are reminiscent of a collection of B-Sides from a scrapped concept album about the juxtaposition of being completely lost and completely free while confined in a small town. I created B(e)-Sides when I was beside myself with uncertainty after a period of intense, personal upheaval. I relocated from Indianapolis, IN to my hometown of 7,500 people for 5 months. I photographed most of these images during 3 months in a flurry of doubt. I veered from shooting multi-image narratives to single images, creating an eclectic cast of rogue characters, bewildered in an old Technicolor dream. The rudimentary elements in these photographs were sometimes deliberate and other times forced due to time constraints and guerilla-style shooting. The locations and scenarios reflect, not only a small town, but also a sense of travel and misplaced adventure. I hesitantly revisited these abandoned images in 2022 for a contest on Instagram, which I won.
Everything Falls Apart by Ronald Young
April 7 - May 13, 2023
Artists Reception: April 14, 2023 5-8pm
Ronald Young's multi-disciplinary art installation explores the concept of The Power Object, the spiritual Belief that all objects in nature have a soul. Young seeks to incorporate the West African diasporic traditions of masks, sculpture, ancestry figures, and Nkisi n Kondi. Embedded into a series of mixed-media assemblages are concepts of recontextualizing materials to make connections between the past and the present, America and Africa, and the physical and spiritual world. The exhibition will embody the collective consciousness of generations of black people rooted in the aesthetic traditions of Sankofa: the African concept of understanding one's past to go forward.
Still Point
Still Point by Christine Ilewski
April 7 - May 13, 2023
Reception: April 14, 2023 5-8pm
This body of work began before Covid, a loose freedom and joy of expression; flowers in my backyard against the river twinkling at a distance. I wanted an escape from the somber heaviness of the portraits in my Faces project.
Then the pandemic hit, forcing me to paint from my window inside a small, isolated world, expanded by walks around a few blocks and the endless glorious sunsets watched from my perch overlooking the great river.
But as I reviewed the work and assembled this show, I realized that what had appeared so beautiful actually depicts the effects of human interaction with our environment. That much of this “beauty“ and intense color is like a sugary cupcake masking the toothache that is climate change.
Clean skies and clear waters of the 1700s were blue not red from air pollution and rivers ran clear not neon yellow from algae.
Like the smiling children in my Faces project, a deeper look reveals shadows of our human hands in these environments . The gorgeous sunset that is, Summer Valentine is pink from the debris and dust in the air. The intense neon yellow of Swelter depicts runaway algae and extreme heat.
I still find refuge in the landscape yet now, with a bit of a guilty conscience. What have we done? Where are the other oldest cottonwood trees? I take for granted my view, and the deep greenery that comforts me in Brandt’s Pond which was carved out of runoff and is filled with old tires. Winter’s Whistle was an icy plunge in temperature of a polar vortex. Would Pere Marquette‘s paddle make it through Stymied , the thick invasive underbrush in the back waters of the IL River now?
There are paintings where I hope I did find true still points that I treasure; the protected state parks of Beaver Undamned, the cool, clean, clear, crisp, waters of the Pultite sketches and monoprints, A Chair for Daniel, where spirits rest, To Just Sit Awhile and a little bit of wonder that is Jen’s Creek.
And I ponder what I will leave my children and grandchildren in the pieces: Red Door, Shelter Me on a tattered rescued baby quilt, Shimmer the last light of the Mississippi, and views of The Ancestor, a cottonwood tree through an actual lacy curtain.
The Mandala Project: An Artists Collective
January 13 - February 11, 2023
On Display in our Curated Gallery
The Mandala Project: An Artist Collective features new works created in 2022 along with work created on August 14, 2021 during a live art event in the Cherokee Street Art District. Each artist started a new acrylic on canvas, then passed it along to each of the other artists to respond and add to the creation.
Mandalas are vehicles for journeying to the center of one's being and bridging individual and collective consciousness. It also represents the dreamer's search for completeness, self-unity, healing, and wholeness. The pieces reveal abstracted representations that take on a dreamlike quality. The work is color, design and texture driven. Layers and value create a sense of depth, and repeated motifs coalesce the body of works.Viewers are drawn in by ambiguous characteristics presented. The group's paintings are composed largely of vibrant colors, but the vibrancy is tempered with intuitive use of dark values that create depth both literally and figuratively.
The artists will host a live, shared painting event during the opening of the exhibit.
Community Painting Wall - Expressionism in Art
January 13 - February 11, 2023
On Display in our Ramp Gallery