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Keen-eyed lovers of art may recognize the inspiration for the paintings of desserts by kids currently hanging in the Foundry Art Centre’s Baue Family Children’s Gallery. The tempera renderings of cakes, pies, and a single, stately mound of orange Jell-O are directly inspired by the oeuvre of great American painter Wayne Thiebaud (Pie Slice, from 1991 at right).
The artists are last year’s seventh graders in Ms. Laura Kroeger’s art class at Barnwell Middle School in the Francis Howell school district. Their assignment was to take inspiration from Thiebaud’s deceptively placid paintings of desserts (anybody who would paint cake this often has to be working from some sort of arch perspective—either that, or it’s O.C.D.). The students pored through old cookbooks for inspiration, said Kroeger, and attempted to replicate Thiebaud’s "non-fussy" style, as she aptly phrased it.
The result is a wall-full of gently colored, stylized images of layer cakes, cheesecakes, and so on, captured in a kind of latter-day riposte to Cezanne and his “Apples and Oranges”). These desserts are modern, casual, comforting, and as uncomplicated and familiar as a gently trembling hillock of Jell-O.
On view through Sept.6
Closing Artists' Reception, 5:30-8 p.m., September 6
The Foundry Art Centre
520 N. Main Centre, St. Charles
636-255-0270
Scroll through images of art from Ms. Laura Kroeger’s art class at Barnwell Middle School, now on display at the Foundry Art Centre’s Baue Family Children’s Gallery:
