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STUDY FOR SPENCER FINCH'S plein-air ice-cream stand art project, "Spencer Finch: Sunset (St. Louis, July 31, 2008)"
A friend of mine who used to live in Seattle told me that up there, everyone starts the weekend on Thursday, knowing there’s only one day of work to suffer through before the real weekend begins. Well, there's so much going on, you’d better prepare yourself for a Seattle-style weekend…
First of all, there's the The Light Project, which debuts tomorrow night, with an opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m. If you don’t know about it, you’ve been asleep in a teapot like the Dormouse. It’s an extension of the Pulizer’s Dan Flavin: Constructed Light exhibit, a collaboration between the Pulitzer, the Contemporary, White Flag Projects and the St. Louis Art Museum. Artists Spencer Finch, Sebastian Hungerer, Rainer Kehres, Ann Lislegaard, and Jason Peters are creating light-based installations all over the Grand Center neighborhood, including the remnants of the former Spring Street Church, which Kehres and Hungerer have filled with donated lamps (they’re calling the installation “Chorus”). The really nifty thing is that the smaller, surrounding galleries are participating too; for instance, Bruno David’s showing the work of sculptor Howard Jones, who used light and sound in his work. I had no idea until yesterday that he is the father of the very awesome Brandyn Jones, who I know through various channels. I was excited about that exhibit even before I knew that—but that’s a cool little bit of laignappe. And Finch will be out on the sidewalk, dispensing ice cream out of a solar-powered cart (insert that good old caveat about “while supplies last/first come, first served” here).
There’s another biggie this weekend: The St. Louis Art Fair in Clayton. Before I even get into the details, if you’ve never been, I totally recommend parking your car in a Metrolink lot and riding the train—the station is only a block away from the fair, and unless you plan on buying something large and bronze, it's a much nicer experience when you don't have to worry about finding a parking spot. I always have to scan the list of artists to see who’s local, and so far recognized painters Sarah Giannobile, Michael Hoffman and Alicia LaChance (of Hoffman-LaChance gallery in Maplewood) and glass artist Karen Woodward, though there may be others I’m not spotting. I’ll be there on Saturday morning in the St. Louis Mag booth; stop by and say hallo. I’m hoping I get the chance to make a few laps around the place to see the art, and maybe I'll even get that ice cream fix I'm sure to miss on Thursday night.
Also Friday through Sunday is Art Outside, Schlafly’s art fest (held in the Bottleworks parking lot). Once upon a time, and just once, I assisted in putting that thing together—that’s how I discovered that event planning is not my forte. (In fact, I suck mightily at it.) The lore, of course, is that Tom Schlafly started his own art fair in protest after the brewery found its beer booths stuck in increasingly marginalized spots at the Clayton Art Fair. Whatever happened, the bad blood’s run its course, and Art Outside’s become a complimentary experience, rather than a competing one. When I spent the weekend in the A.O. volunteer tent in 2005, gulping water and handing out T-shirts and suffering ten-foot-high humidity hair, most people told me they went to both fairs—it’s sort of a circuit. A.O. is smaller, the artists are all local, maybe a bit younger and scrappier, and the price point is lower. There are fire-spinners, bellydancers, bands like Tenement Ruth; the kids’ art yard is sponsored by SCOSAG and Urban Studio. In Clayton, the fair stretches for blocks, you could easily drop a hundred grand on art, scape maintains a crepe booth and Kim Massie's headlining on the Main Stage. So, apples and oranges. Or maybe apples and figs. They are both great. I suggest you hit both, maybe even more than once!
