Spend an evening celebrating art in the Central West End!
On Friday, February 21 from 5-8 p.m. — three different galleries on McPherson will be hosting Opening Receptions for their newest exhibitions: Duane Reed Gallery, Houska Gallery, and Philip Slein Gallery. From thought-provoking sculptures to intricate paintings, you’ll want to stop by all three galleries! Attendance is open to the public and free to attend. Plus, you can also enjoy live music while you stroll through the neighborhood. The Alberto Patiño Trio will be performing at the corner of McPherson & Euclid from 5-8 p.m.
Duane Reed Gallery
Opening Reception: Ken Worley, Lesley Richmond & Matt Mitros
For the past thirty years, eco-landscape has been Ken Worley’s subject of choice, depicting a still and simplified nature, where every tree looks like a tear and every hill mother earth’s anxious breast. His goal is to record through his paintings the feel of his favorite small patch of nature rather than its literal appearance, in a subtle way that brings the viewer’s attention to the difference. “Landscapes are sensory things,” he wrote. “They are always changing. One has no control over a landscape. And there’s a mystery to them. Viewing a landscape is like looking at chaos and discovering order by making some sense of it. There’s so much adventure in there, so many possibilities.”
Lesley Richmond photographs trees, focusing on the intricacy of their branching structures and then prints these images on cloth, using a medium that creates a dimensional surface. She then eliminates selected background areas, leaving the structural images of trees as the dominant feature. The images are then painted with metal patinas and pigments.
Matt Mitros was born in Philadelphia, PA. After graduating from Penn State University in 2001 with a BFA, Mitros completed a post-baccalaureate from the University of Illinois and holds an MFA from the University of Washington. Mitros has been an Artist-In-Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts, the Archie Bray Foundation, and Red Lodge Clay Center. Mitros’ work is in the permanent public collections of the National Museum of Slovenia, Bemidji State University, the Spartanburg Art Museum, the de Young Museum, The Hudgens Center for the Arts, the Fine Arts Museum of Florida State University, the Everson Museum of Art, and others.
Houska Gallery
Opening Reception: Peter Manion & Mark Pack
Peter Manion is taking over the main gallery, transforming it into his personal studio. Peek in February 9-21 to see what he’s doing and watch the installation take shape. The completed works will be on view at the Opening Reception on February 21 from 5-8 p.m.
Since receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and after a ten year hiatus, Peter Manion has been pushing the creative envelope in the St. Louis contemporary art world.
Manion’s work is diverse and moving. His use of non-traditional methods, materials, and practices gives his work an animative quality, lending variance and movement to what once was undisturbed brings the work closer to the idea of a living object. His sculptures represent transformation and decay, and challenge the ideas of art as only static beauty, while also exploring ideas of preciousness.
Mark Pack defines his artistic process as one of cultivation rather than manufacture. His practice explores themes of nature and how we as a society interact with it. For Pack, this is a way to examine the duality between chaos and control.
His sculptures explore these themes through the process of brushing, pouring, and layering paint — sometimes hundreds of layers. Then, he goes into these layers, cutting and reshaping the work, and watching it evolve through the various stages.
“Unanswerable Questions” will be on display in the upstairs gallery.
Philip Slein Gallery
Philip Slein Gallery checks its vision with a new exhibition, 20/20. As we move into a new decade, the gallery is taking a look back at many of the artists which they have shown in the past, and looking ahead to envision the future of serious painting.
Philip Slein Gallery is first and foremost a painting gallery, that is their passion. The gallery’s first exhibition of 2020 will demonstrate this powerfully, with a show featuring 20 painters spanning the Modern to Contemporary era. The show includes some of the most important painters working today in the country. The exhibition clearly represents the gallery’s serious dedication to painting, and includes a very wide group of artists with one thing in common — excellence in painting.
Featuring: Jamie Adams, Andrea Belag, Ernestine Betsberg, Richmond Burton, John Dilg, Lori Ellison, Keltie Ferris, Alison Hall, Warren Isensee, Valerie Jaudon, Richard Kalina, Tracy Miller, Arthur Osver, Ann Pibal, David Row, Jackie Saccoccio, Robert Sagerman, Cary Smith, Dan Walsh, and John Zinsser.