Courtesy of Dave Moore
For a lot of St. Louisans, their first connection with the Cardinals was not necessarily a ball game, but a baseball card. The slick texture, the bright colors, and of course that chalky gum drew you in. You probably didn't know who the players were. But baseball cards have their own special kind of gravitas. Photographer Dave Moore remembers them fondly. "I loved trading cards growing up," he says. "I remember buying them when I was about 5 or 6, and liking baseball, but being too young to be into the stats or anything. But I would get one, and I was old enough to know, 'Oh, that’s the Cardinals. That’s my team!' And it was exciting."
Now, he's channeled that talismanic power into a series of 63 trading cards celebrating St. Louis artists. His original list was 80, with many more possibilities beyond that, but sheer feasibility required him to stop where he did. He conceived of the project in early 2016, and a RAC artists support made it immediately do-able. He studied vintage card designs, then started reaching out to local artists to set up photo shoots in the summer of 2017. Being an artist himself, Moore had a pretty robust network of contacts, but filled that out with help from his wife, Brigid Flynn, co-founder of Midwest Artists Project Services. (She also discovered an online random integer set generator, which helped Moore put together sets of cards without duplicates. "Growing up, there was nothing more frustrating ending up with three of the same card," Moore says. "And of course it was always someone like the backup catcher.")
Courtesy of Dave Moore
Moore says all the artists but one—Yvonne Osei, above—were photographed in their studios, which he sees as a natural extension of the artists themselves. Some shoots, like the one at City Museum (where Sage Dawson, Ken Wood, and Edo Rosenblith keep studios) were pretty simple. "They have windows for days," Moore says of that space, and all that abundant natural light made his job easy. John Early, on the other hand, keeps a studio in his basement. After scoping out the space, Moore realized he was going to have to shoot standing in the doorway. "It worked out, though, because I was able to get his little shelf where his pieces sit," Moore says, "and you can see his tools up in the background." When Moore went to photograph Basil Kincaid, he bumped into Jacob Berkowitz, who he'd been trying to get in touch with, and so photographed them both. And in Tate Foley's case, he got a little extra dose of project-specific inspiration. "Tate had an uncut proof sheet of baseball cards from 1990 Topps set," Moore says. "I thought, 'Oh! I should totally get one of those.' So they ran off an entire set uncut, so I have those sheets to hang on to."
Courtesy of Dave Moore
All the cards are now printed, cut, and lovingly packaged in brown paper. And to answer the question you were about to ask: yep, there's gum. Moore found a gas station that still sells rolls of bubble tape, which he cut to size and tucked inside. This Saturday, he will debut 20 of the portraits, paired with work from that artist, and it will be the first opportunity to get your hands on a set of seven cards (or a whole set—see them all at artistsofstlouis.com). Since this is the first show in Intersect Art Center's new space, the reception is part of a big open house: there will be performances by Leverage Dance Theater, sets by artist Jenna Bauer's jazz trio, cocktails, appetizers, interactive art, story circles, and tours of the new building. In other words: a proper celebration.
Maybe it's too soon to ask, but: is there going to be another series? He's not sure. But maybe.
"There's a definitely a precedent in the sports-card world for this sort of thing," he says. "I bet I could go to a shop now and find the 2018 early sets—they’d be out already. Then, usually mid-to-late summer, there’s a series or an update set with rookies or players who were traded after the deadline, that kind of thing. Sometimes with hilariously airbrushed uniforms."
The opening reception for Ebb//Flow: Artists of St. Louis happens Saturday, February 3 at Intersect Arts Center (3636 Texas) from 4-8 p.m.
