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Photographs by Elizabeth McBride
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Always consummate professionals, they flipped a coin. Although an international insurance broker and a veterinarian might seem to form an unlikely partnership, Jerry Schmutz and Jim Irwin share at least one similarity—a passion for photography. The result of their coin toss determined whose camera would capture the signature image of Clayton Fine Art Gallery’s kick-off reception entitled The Art of Nature, which the public can attend for free tonight, beginning at 6 p.m.
St. Louis art lovers will have their first chance to meet the featured and resident talents behind the various oil paintings, pastels, photography, sketching and sculpture taking up residence in what used to be the Gateway Gallery. Schmutz and Irwin—both advocates for the intimate, personalized feel of art galleries and the ongoing exposure they offer artists—recall their disappointment when lagging business and internal apathy impelled managers to close Gateway, where they were both resident photographers.
“Jim and I got our heads together and said, ‘Well, no, we think that we picked a good thing to keep this gallery going,’” Schmutz says. “It’s a great location—it’s in Clayton. It’s an attractive location for customers, as well as [for] artists to be in. So we thought, ‘Well, we’ll just re-open it and keep it going much the way it was before but with some new artists and some new concepts.’”
Gallery visitors will encounter sculpted busts by Philip Perschbacher and get the opportunity to marvel at the photo-like reality of John Salozzo’s paintings of St. Louis landmarks like the Tivoli Theater and Blueberry Hill. Irwin says he’s eagerly awaiting his forthcoming trip to Kenya, where he’ll continue his 40-year tradition of photographing animals in their natural environments. It’s a way of communicating a conservationist message without “preaching”—a type of passionate yet non-judgmental expression Irwin says he sees proponed by the majority of his peers at the gallery and, indeed, anyplace where art is valued and supported.
“They’ve got a neat perspective on life,” Irwin says, noting his creative friends’ ability to recognize and appreciate the finer details of everyday existence. Schmutz sees beauty in the rickety, wind-washed fragility of a stick-and-wire fence growing from a rippled sand dune—or the striped shadow cast by the glossy wooden back of an outdoor lounge chair. He won the coin toss, and he says his The Art of Nature photo, rendered through creative use of Photoshop techniques, represents an experimental pathway for him, and a new beginning for the small art gallery on Bemiston.
“My objective as a photographer is to take a few of what people might consider an ordinary sight—an ordinary thing in the environment—somehow render it photographically in some sort of an unusual or different or unique way. It gives me the most pleasure of all to have someone look at my photos and say, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen that there,’ or, ‘I’ve never seen it quite like that.’”
The Clayton Fine Art Gallery kick-off reception is today from 6 to 9 p.m. Hors d’oeuvres will accompany a complimentary wine tasting. For more information about the art and artists featured, call 314-696-2244 or visit claytonfineartgallery.com.
