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Courtesy of Artists First STL
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Courtesy of Artists First STL
Beginning Saturday at 8 a.m., Maplewood residents and visitors will be able to noodle to their hearts’ delight on a newly-installed public piano in Sutton Loop Park.
The project, about a year in the making, is the brainchild of Maplewood resident Laura Miller. She had seen public pianos in other cities and thought St. Louis was a natural fit for the idea. So, she approached Sheila Suderwalla, the executive director of Artists First, a nonprofit Maplewood art studio serving kids, adults with disabilities, and veterans. Artists First had just kicked off another project, Arts in Unity, which combines music, poetry, and visual art.
“For some time, we had been wanting to incorporate music,” Suderwalla says.
A family donated the upright, and Artists First tuned it and invited their artists to "artify" it. “Each artist was invited to put their touch on the piano—collage, mosaic, paint-pens, markers,” she says.
While artists were decorating the piano's exterior, St. Louis musicians and poets would come by the studio to provide entertainment. And several artists learned how to play the piano in the process. “One of my staff taught them a couple little pieces," says Suderwalla. "It gave [the artists] a huge sense of pride.”
The piano’s unveiling coincides with the sold-out 8th Annual Maplewood Coffee Crawl, a self-guided tour of businesses featuring local roasters. The upright is located underneath a pavilion in Sutton Loop Park, and has a fresh coat of polyurethane spray to protect it from the elements.
“There’s so many times kids are taught, ‘Don’t touch, don’t touch.’ But this is art; it’s interactive art,” says Suderwalla. “The plan is just to have it there and have it readily available. Anyone that visits the park can play it.”
