The Saint Louis Visionary Awards are presented every spring to a handful of extraordinary women for their contributions to the arts in this region. This Monday’s ceremony could easily have been one of those stiff, perfunctory, smile-till-your-jaw-muscles-ache affairs. Instead, it was both graceful and down-to-earth, jazzed up at the start by singer Kim Massie, a former Visionary herself. Massie’s banter warmed a crowd crammed all the way to the upper balcony of the historic Sun Theater on Grandel.
Cohosts Susan Sherman and Marcela Manjarrez Hawn (chief communications officer of Centene, whose charitable foundation was one of the presenting sponsors) murmured a little inside info nobody would find on the honorees’ CVs (“Muppets take me to my happy place,” poet and visual storyteller Cheeraz Gormon had confided) before making introductions.
Stay up-to-date with the local arts scene
Subscribe to the weekly St. Louis Arts+Culture newsletter to discover must-attend art exhibits, performances, festivals, and more.
The first award went to Yvonne Osei, curator-in-residence at COCA. She was born in Germany to parents from Ghana, and her art focuses on beauty and colorism, the politics of clothing, the consequences of colonialism, and the complexities of global trade. Quoting the Ghanian proverb that “it takes a village,” she thanked a long list of women who’ve held out their hand since she arrived in St. Louis. One was Washington University professor Denise Ward-Brown, who stayed up with her until 3 a.m. while she finished her MFA thesis, urging, “Do not let anyone limit your limitlessness.”
Longtime arts patron Lana Pepper, who cofounded the Shakespeare Festival St. Louis and has poured her time and heart into the city’s cultural life for four decades, directed her words “to those of you who have sat for hours in board meetings where nothing got accomplished…compiled list after list of names and written ‘Hope you can join us’ on the invitations and nobody came…” It’s easy to wonder if it’s worth the trouble, she said—but “your work is working!” Pepper talked about the unusual richness of St. Louis’ cultural life, the strength of an arts economy that outperforms sports. “I grew up in a place in southern Missouri with almost no art,” she confided. “I got out. But what if there’s a child with an artistic soul who can’t get out? Then there’s anger, and frustration, and we know where that can lead.” Her vision? That every child have access to the arts.
Antionette Carroll couldn’t be present at the ceremony—she was in New York, doing a final interview for a prestigious international fellowship, which rather proved the honor’s point. Founder of Creative Reaction Lab, which uses design skills and concepts to address racial inequities, Carroll sent a challenge to the audience: Think like a designer. “We allhave the power to design better outcomes. You don’t have to be a graphic designer, a fashion designer, or an architect to design a better society.”
At the evening’s midpoint, the Saint Louis Arches’ tumbling and acrobatics read like metaphors for the creative life: a tower four people high, standing on the shoulders of the person below. Rapidfire consecutive backflips. Supple bodies forming a human jump rope or soaring high and landing in someone else’s arms. Everyone coming together, the shared strength lifting an intricate pattern of bodies into the air.
“My job is to help kids find their voices,” said the next awardee, Allison Felter, the longtime director of education and community engagement at Opera Theatre of St. Louis. She talked about advice she’d gleaned from colleagues: First, put people first, no matter how overwhelmed you are with tasks. And second, opera’s challenge is “tackling the cultural elephants in the room through the power of music.”
Awardee Asha Premachandra rose, recalling how, 40 years ago, she and her husband created Dances of India. He’d been a scientist, and though he loved music, “he didn’t know about classical dance until he saw me.” That changed everything. Thousands of dances and students later, Premachandra is still introducing 2,500-year-old dances to uncertain students. “When they start doing the dance, I see joy on their faces.”
Gormon ended the evening with stirring words: “I’m a product of College Hill, ZIP code 63107. When you’re a young woman growing up in North St. Louis, there are so many things you are told you cannot be.” She looked out at the audience and said simply, “Beautiful things come from North St. Louis.” Applause answered her, growing louder instead of subsiding politely.
Gormon said her inspiration to quit an advertising job to be a poet came when she heard Prince say onstage that by all rights, he should never have made it that far: “I am here to stand as a testimony that you have to do what you love.” She was writing her resignation letter in her head as she left the concert. “This world will strip you of everything precious if you allow it to,” she warned the young women in the audience. “Resist the urge to narrow what is meant to be wide…Always choose your freedom.”
