Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Gary Passanise

When I was looking for Gary Passanise's combination home and studio, people up the hill around the spaces of Craig Downs, Sarah Paulsen and Stan Chisholm told me to follow the lane down the hill and look for the hobbit hole. Around a bend, in the lowest of the old commercial buildings built into the hillside over the Mississippi, was a door leading still further downward.

That's where I found him in an office/sitting room. The living quarters and studio were down yet more steep steps. Loft-style living and working space blended into one another. Passanise is a painter in the tradition of abstract expressionism. The work hanging there, perhaps still in progress, reminded me a bit of Anselm Kiefer and Clyfford Still. Visit his sophisticated web site to see a variety of his work. His biography is worth a look. Besides his own art, Passanise is director of painting at the Leigh Gerdine School of Fine Art at Webster University in St. Louis.

I'm still inviting St. Louis artists to contact me if they would like to be part of this series.

WHAT I'M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT TODAY: How to use the Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop to paste text shaped in perspective into an image. Come back on Friday for Theme Day and grade my work.
TOMORROW: St. Louis artists portraits continue with Amy Thompson, printmaker.

HEY, WAIT A MINUTE - I just realized that last Saturday was my 500th post! Are we there yet?

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Thomas Shepherd

.
Thomas Shepherd is a photographer who works with traditional prints, collage, silver gelatin prints and even prints on canvas. You can see some of his images here. We had a long talk about his work. I was loaded with digital gizmos and he shoots film. He had some small prints for sale that he shot with a cheap imported film camera with light leaks camera, not a Holga but apparently something similar. I bought a terrific image of a broad, curly-haired man's head, nothing below the chin, that seemed to be launched upward by the triangular peak of a house's roof. It felt good to talk shop with a professional photographer, take his portrait and not feel like a total poser.

WHAT I SAW TODAY: Up The Yangtze, a documentary about the human cost of the Three Gorges Dam. If you've been to China or just are interested in its explosive changes, go see it.
TOMORROW: St. Louis artists portraits continue with Gary Passanise, painter.

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Stan Chisholm

.

Stan Chisholm's St. Louis studio is tiny, maybe 4 by 12 feet. Makes it a little tough to get enough space to set up a portrait but, hey, you play the hand of cards you are dealt. He spends most of the year at the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work is hard to characterize. He paints on canvas, wood panel or no parking signs, creates collages, designs clothing, makes prints and even decorates paper plates (amaze your dinner guests!). He's won a lot of awards and exhibited in many shows here and in Chicago (look at an example). You can check out many of his images (and his impressive resume) on his web site, 18andcounting.com.

When I look at Chisholm's work, I see elements of cartoons, graffiti wall painting, dada and surrealism. Some stuff looks like the bizarre offspring of a Georgia O'Keefe cow skull and an ewok.

Once again, I am inviting St. Louis artists who would like to appear in this series to contact me. Click my profile to the left for an email link.

WHAT I'M GLANCING AT WHILE I WRITE THIS: Jon Stewart making fun of John McCain again on The Daily Show. Too easy.
TOMORROW: St. Louis artists portraits continue with Thomas Shepherd, photographer

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Sarah Paulsen

Sarah Paulsen's studio is in same group of old commercial buildings as Craig Woods'. Some of the spaces are dug into the hillside leading down to the Mississippi and feel like bunkers. Paulsen's area, which she shares with Lisa Payne (whom I photographed at last year's open house), is on the top level and feels closer to the sun. It contains lovely watercolor sketches and photos of her grand tour of South America. I told her the painting on the wall behind her in this image reminded me of Max Beckman, who once taught at Washington University in St. Louis and has a room to himself at the St. Louis Art Museum. She told me that she had spent many hours in that room and that Beckman had been a great influence on her work.

You can see Paulsen's painting for the STL artists open house catalog here. She has also begun to create clever animations. Take a look at Midwest Hair and Begin. You'll enjoy them.

BY THE WAY, for my St. Louis readers: if you are an artist or know an artist who would like to be featured in this series and get some publicity, plus a free portrait to use, please click the link to my profile and email me.

WHAT I'M PISSED OFF ABOUT: The Canon factory service center has had my good camera, my 5D, for the better part of the last month and a half, now back for the third time for the same problem. Whah, whah, whah.
TOMORROW: St. Louis artists portraits continue with Stan Chisholm, who is a bit hard to characterize, but that's because he's so original.

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Craig Downs

The place was hard to find. I had the address on Broadway, a big street, from the list of open artists' studios last weekend but there didn't seem to be any such number. There was a small lane behind a ramp onto the Interstate from Broadway so I followed it. Around a bend I saw a dreary brick building with the Open House sign. There was a series of three old commercial buildings built into a slope down to the Mississippi, now all occupied by artists.

In the middle one I met Craig Downs, pictured here. Downs is a painter and a singer with a band called Box of Nerves. Listen to some of their tunes here. His painting style may seem simple at first but click the image below and look carefully. The one on the right is particularly complex. Note the woman holding a tree whose wild red hair ends with snakes, like Medusa, placing her right hand on the head of a woman with a halo but no face, while an angel floats across the upper right carrying an Eastern Orthodox cross. Care to offer an interpretation?

WHAT I HAD TO DO: Listen to The Ride of the Valkeries from Richard Wagner's Die Walküre on my iPod, loud, along with other music of similar temperature and pressure, to stick it out on the treadmill. I think exercise is a boring, unpleasant chore but, damn, you have to.
TOMORROW: St. Louis artists portraits continue with Sarah Paulsen, painter

Portraits of St. Louis Artists: Tom Huck

I did not know about Evil Prints until last weekend's studio open house (must be getting old and out of touch). The place is full of young artists covered to one degree or another in tattoos and flesh-eating steel hardware. Tom Huck here is one of the mainstays. He's the kind of person the phrase "fevered imagination" refers to. Tom makes outrageous wood and linoleum cut prints. Check out examples of his work here. While I watched him work, Tom used only tiny hand tools. I cannot imagine my own hands working with such precision.

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: Frank Zappa's perky composition Peaches En Regalia was inspired by his love of the sculpture of Alexander Calder. Thank you, National Public Radio.

TOMORROW: The Thursday Arch Series takes a week off as St. Louis artists portraits continue with Craig Downs, painter and singer

Glassmaking

The past weekend brought one of my favorite annual events, the St. Louis artists studio open house. More than a hundred local artists opened their workspaces or gathered in group exhibition areas. Last summer, charged by Bobbi Lane's portrait photography workshop, I made the rounds asking artists if I could take their pictures and posted some of the results (see here and here). A "portrait of the artist" series with shots from lthis year starts tomorrow, with sincere apologies to Stephen Daedelus.

Today, however, we have a shot from Third Degree Glass Factory, STL's premier art glass workshop. They had hands-on demonstrations on the art of glassblowing and invited visitors to come back and learn more. Indeed, several of the artists work tee shirts that read "Learn To Blow." However, I was surprised by the lack of safety precautions around molten glass and ovens at 2,000 degrees C. and more. Only half of them wore safety glasses (no pun intended). None wore insulated gloves or shoes. When I asked about this, one of them told me that when they go to clubs they do the glassblowers' shuffle, shaking his feet as if to throw off a piece of molten glass. I stayed the heck out of the way. Today's photo depicts one stage of the process. I like the strong hand and tool. The glass is red with heat, not just dyes.

WHAT I'M LISTENING TO: Study for Player Piano No, 3a by Conlon Nancarrow. The devil's own boogie woogie.
TOMORROW: Portrait of the Artist series begins with Tom Huck at Evil Prints.