Sheldon Johnson's studio was across the hall from Marlene Lewis'. Like me, he has a day job but a separate passion. Some of his work hints at the figurative. However, his recent stuff that I saw is abstract, coarsely geometric and muscular. He struck me as having a certain power, individually and as an artist.
Marlene Lewis is a painter whose work ranges from barely figurative to abstract. She uses loose, vibrant color with a palette that reminds me of Helen Frankenthaler. Her studio is full of light shining on white walls, in contrast to the spaces of the men in the last two day's posts. The brightness suits her personality and her art.
The last photo was taken as an exposure test and didn't get my attention, Marlene noticed the reflection when looking at my camera's screen and immediately saw the possibilities. She was right.
Down the hall from Henryk Ptasiewicz's studio at Koken Art Factory I met another painter, Eric Ridge. His style is both more and less realistic than Henryck's. You can see great photography, Hieronymus Bosch and Salvadore Dali in his work. The viewer suspects that you might find him in a corner of one of his own images.
Finally getting around to editing pictures from the annual St. Louis artists studio open house weekend. It took place over a month ago. I go from place to place, learn about the artists and their work, then ask if I can take some candid portraits in their workspace.
This is my friend Henryk Ptasiewicz, who has appeared in these pages before. I first met him when he was painting en plein air in Citygarden while I was shooting downtown. His style is at once fresh, original and accessible, using loose brushstrokes to create a rhythm of vivid and darker colors.
More of these to come.
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Found in the corner of a fashion designer's studio (not Michael Drummond's). I'm drawn to bare mannequins. You can see them as soulless or as full of potential. This group feels like is must have a social connection, maybe the anticipation of a wedding party picture.
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There was more to see than art and artists during Studio Open House Weekend. The spaces in which artists work and exhibit, the necessarily cheap neighborhoods where they hang out, have lots of fascinating details.David Ottinger, who we saw last Wednesday, and several others displayed their work at Mad Art Gallery, a recycled 1930's police station across the street from the Budweiser brewery. Down in the basement, near the toilets and the drinks machine (no connection implied), I discovered these strict orders taped to a door.
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Heather Woodson works in ceramics and is one of the resident artists at Soulard Art Market, where I occasionally show. I don't know much about the techniques of this medium - uh, clay, bake, glaze, bake, shampoo, rinse, repeat. Something like that. Look at her photo gallery on her website. The outcome is quite remarkable.Which reminds me - there is a deadline coming up for submissions to a show at Soulard Art Market on the theme of urban architecture. Uh oh! Where's a building? Where's my tripod?
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Anthony Michael Philip paints, draws, works in the gallery/frame shop where I get my framing done and bangs the heck out of the largest drum set I've ever seen close-up. When I stopped by his loft and studio last weekend and asked him what he was working on, he just sat down as pictured and made the most amazing noise. What does he do with all those cymbals? He must have very nice neighbors.
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We first met David Ottinger at last year's studio open house. He is a professor of art at nearby McKendree University and a painter of note. A common theme of his work involves multiple images of the same individual in some kind of struggle with him or herself. He's stuck himself in the middle of the action here.You can't read the words on the button he's wearing in this small image. It says "Jennifer Weigel was here." She's the artist with the traveling exhibit in the back hatch of her car seen in Sunday's post.
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Jane Martin is one of the resident artists at Soulard Art Market, where I sometimes participate in group shows. (I'll be exhibiting there in September.) She has been on the blog once before when I ran into her at our wacky Tomatofest, where there is an annual attempt to make the world's largest bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Her work is African-inspired but in this picture she looks like she could be reciting Shakespeare.
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Jim Trotter is a St. Louis photographer I greatly admire. His skills blow mine away. Well, he's a pro and I'm...a lawyer. He is active in local photography organizations and puts on educational programs at his studio. Click the link on his name and look at some of his work. And see that book he is holding? You should buy it if you are interested in the St. Louis scene. Go to http://www.trotterart.com/index.htm and click Best of St. Louis Book.About yesterday's photo: several people left very nice comments, for which I thank them. How was it done? It was shot in color as a RAW file, as always. It got its first buffing in Lightroom and then another in Photoshop. Each has its own advantages. Then I used a suite of Photoshop plug-ins called PhotoTools to convert it to a B&W with the look of a Holga camera using infrared film. A bit of a bother but I like what came out. And yes, Olivier, I used fill flash on the sign. .
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Photographer Amanda Pfister finds her subjects in abandoned spaces, the empty husks of what was once human activity. Her images include closed car dealerships; old, empty factories; out-of-business shopping malls and, as above, disused schools. Nobody goes there any more, except her. The pictures are a meditation on transience.We're driving to Kansas City today. Dinner there tonight with a bunch of the in-laws. On to Hanover, Kansas, (population 653) Saturday morning to see Mrs. C's 91 year old mother (still living at home) and the annual family reunion. I'm hoping to get some good portraits..
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I walked into Barry Liebman's studio on Sunday, saw some of these paintings and thought, "wow, I bet this guy likes Cy Twombly." So I asked if he did. In response, he pulled out a beautifully-made art book about that painter. It told me something about Liebman.He is an abstract painter who often uses mixed media to enhance the effect. Music is a great influence on his work: he has series inspired by the work of Charlie Parker and the Adagio from the 9th Symphony of Gustav Mahler (my artistic hero!). You can click here to listen - you'll get the point. No Western music is more profound.Until recently, Liebman was co-owner of St. Louis' beloved Left Bank Books, one of America's finest independent booksellers. He will soon be moving to Whidbey Island, Washington, a jewel in Puget Sound not far from Seattle. Our loss, their gain..
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I like Sandra Marchewa's work and her personality, too. We met for the first time at last year's studio open house: in the portrait I made her face and art are full of whimsy. She has some new work this year, notably this piece with little portraits of friends affixed to lighters. Some of the people have died. On those lighters, Marchewa has changed the logo BIC to RIP. The objects are encased in resin. I couldn't photograph her next to it - the glare was too severe. So we decided to use the situation to our advantage and place her in the reflection. It worked, or we think so..
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It's Open Studios Weekend once again, when St. Louis artists open their workspaces or gather in exhibition centers to show what they are making. I went around more slowly yesterday than in the past, spending more time with the artists, learning about them and their work, and of course, asking if I could take their pictures.I saw some very original stuff, not the least of which was the painting of David Ottinger, professor of art at McKendree University in nearby Lebanon, Illinois. The long painting behind him has four iterations of the same person, apparently wracked in thought. I wish I'd written down the title - it was The Essence of the Decision or something like that. It's quite penetrating.Yesterday brought portraits of eight or nine artists, many of which will appear here in coming days. Today, the second day of the open house, will feature different artists and spaces.
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J. C. Gray was one of the most interesting people I met during studios open house weekend. Her approach is simple, sincere and lovely: she paints what she sees and feels. She doesn't have a website. She's not on Facebook. She has no need of e-mail (she said I could send us to her daughter if I wanted to). I was almost overcome with the charm of the painting she was beginning. Gray told me that it represented how she felt when she was at her happiest as a child.
Flickr says that this is my most interesting photo of all time, and there are 1,906 of them there as of today. The results you get at this link may change. Flickr has an arcane, semi-secret algorithm for determining "interestingness." It has something to do with how many views your picture gets, who views it, groups you upload to, tags and more. Every day, they determine what they call the 500 most interesting uploads. You can see August, 2009, to date here, for example. My work has never made the list, although sometimes I look at it and think "my picture is way better than this &$#!*&%@ picture." I almost never add tags. Maybe I should start doing that. Anybody have any insights about this?
By the way, if you look through my somebody-else-said-so most interesting pictures, all the ones from Nepal were shot by my wife in February-March, 2008. I'll get my own next month.
By the by the way, it's impossible to select your own most interesting photo; it's all so subjective. However, if I had to choose one I'd pick this.
There is a new Arch photo
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Angela Malchionno makes the most subtle works on and from paper, fabric and other unexpected materials. They are complex. Her statement on her web site says: My current body of work explores the developed and undeveloped landscape as a metaphor for shifting personal identitiy. I am concerned with increasingly routinized interactions between people and what architect Sanford Kwinter describes as a neo-fordist world in which the unpredictable forces of human nature are boxed up, walled off and disregarded.
I must confess that I had never heard the term fordist, neo or otherwise, until I read this text. So I looked it up - see here. In any event, her web site has many illustrations of her work. The objects in the foreground of the photo are similar to these. They are made of bits of paint color sample cards, each pinned to a core. One can look at them for a long time.
Photographer Amanda Pfister finds her subjects in abandoned spaces, the empty husks of what was once human activity. Her images include closed car dealerships; old, empty factories; out-of-business shopping malls and, as above, disused schools. Nobody goes there any more, except her. The pictures are a meditation on transience.
My friend Garrett Roberts is one of the resident artists at Soulard Art Market. I've had work in a couple of shows there. Roberts is a soft-spoken, unassuming guy who creates uncommon images. He often uses a Holga camera, creating photos much different than what the eye sees. You can see some of them in a post about him last year.
I walked into Barry Liebman's studio on Sunday, saw some of these paintings and thought, "wow, I bet this guy likes Cy Twombly." So I asked if he did. In response, he pulled out a beautifully-made art book about that painter. It told me something about Liebman.
I like Sandra Marchewa's work and her personality, too. We met for the first time at last year's studio open house: in the portrait I made her face and art are full of whimsy. She has some new work this year, notably this piece with little portraits of friends affixed to lighters. Some of the people have died. On those lighters, Marchewa has changed the logo BIC to RIP. The objects are encased in resin. I couldn't photograph her next to it - the glare was too severe. So we decided to use the situation to our advantage and place her in the reflection. It worked, or we think so.
It's Open Studios Weekend once again, when St. Louis artists open their workspaces or gather in exhibition centers to show what they are making. I went around more slowly yesterday than in the past, spending more time with the artists, learning about them and their work, and of course, asking if I could take their pictures.
J. C. Gray was one of the most interesting people I met during studios open house weekend. Her approach is simple, sincere and lovely: she paints what she sees and feels. She doesn't have a website. She's not on Facebook. She has no need of e-mail (she said I could send us to her daughter if I wanted to). I was almost overcome with the charm of the painting she was beginning. Gray told me that it represented how she felt when she was at her happiest as a child. 
There is a new Arch photo
Angela Malchionno makes the most subtle works on and from paper, fabric and other unexpected materials. They are complex. Her statement on her web site says: 
