Studio Open House Weekend: Found Along The Route 5

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Bittersweet photos, real caring on a budget of pennies. This business is on Cherokee Street, a mixture of Hispanic businesses and restaurants, hip art galleries, run-down art galleries and oddball hipster shops.

Home health care is a significant business with so many Americans confined by chronic illness. Lots of my countrymen like to claim we have the best health care system in the world. Maybe if you have excellent insurance or a ton of money, but for the nation as a whole that's a pile of BS. We rank 36th among the nations of the world in life expectancy. Geez, Chile, Costa Rica and all of western Europe do better than us.This little storefront agency in South St. Louis does what it can to oppose the fatal tide.

Thursday Arch Series

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This shot was taken from the same seat in Busch Stadium as last week's Arch photo. just more zoom and converted to black and white to simplify the image. The monument is inescapable when you are downtown and I'm glad for that.

Sorry for few comments yesterday. Blogger was down for a chunk of the evening my time and that's when I prepare my post and write comments. Couldn't they have done this during evening over the middle of the Pacific?

Studio Open House Weekend: Found Along The Route 4

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The photo in yesterday's post was taken at Firecracker Press. I mentioned that, rather than putting on printing demonstrations or something, the staff presented surreal mini-dramas. Now that's a nice change of pace. In the top photo, a harried mom has been talking to her own mother on the phone while packing to move. There as a hint that it was for economic reasons. Part of the humor was that the baby she appears to be holding was in fact a Cabbage Patch doll.

In the bottom photo, a couple may or may not be falling in love but he is a real wacko. Unable to manage the stress of intimacy, he dies for no apparent reason, falling face first into his MacBook. Fun for the whole family.

Studio Open House Weekend: Found Along The Route 3

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Our town has some art printing studios, one of which is the perky Firecracker Press on Cherokee Street. They were open during studio open house weekend but not to just show their work. When I stopped by, the staff was doing mini-dramas, sort of tiny Dada theater that was entertaining and at times hilarious. More about that tomorrow.

I saw this old print lying on a table while while watching the show. The Missouri state capitol in Jefferson City is another undistinguished neo-classical government building built during the Depression (the old one, not the one we may have started yesterday). Pretty cool image, maybe with more meaning than the publisher intended. So this is Missouri? Well, what is Missouri? What is reality? Is reality an illusion? If so, does that mean Missouri is an illusion? All of a sudden I start hearing Jimi Hendrix playing Purple Haze in my head.

Studio Open House Weekend: Found Along the Route 2

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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.

Studio Open House Weekend: Found Along The Route 1

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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.

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Heather Woodson

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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?