86. Buy art so original, you can crow about finding it—either in May, at the newcomer, Belleville’s Art on the Square, still pinching itself after ranking first in the nation in the 2007 Art Fair SourceBook, or in September at its older sibling, the Saint Louis Art Fair in Clayton, which has been reaping similar accolades for years.
I’ve been working down in Clayton for the past 6 years and I always see the city setting up for the Art Fair and each year I say to myself, “We should go to the Art Fair.” Then, as soon as I get home, I totally forget about it. Well, not so this time. This year, I made a point to mention to Katie that the Art Fair would be cool and so now that I had said it out loud, we were going to go.
I knew going into this that I was not going to be able to buy anything because art is expensive so I did the next best thing: I got their business cards with their websites printed and so now I can go and gawk at their fabulous pieces of works from the comforts of my own home.
Some our favorites were:
Bruce J. Peeso has some really awesome, extremely horizontal, photo-realistic landscapes. These paintings were probably 3-5 feet long and at most 6 inches tall. The gave a really tremendous expression of space and distance and were Katie’s favorite artist at the show.
Chris Roberts-Antieau is a fiber artist that has some large, colorful, and quite humorous works. Bob’s favorite was the Celebrity Mugshots, but Household Safety Techniques was really nice as well.
Bryan Cunningham has some really great mixed media pieces that had that old-timey look that would make you think that Jack White probably owns a piece or two.
Xavier Nuez brought some large, super-saturated photographs showcasing the beauty of urban decay. He had shot many of his most recent series here in St. Louis, a prime choice for finding urban decay.
Michael Hoffman was another of Bob’s favorites. He had some large abstract colorfied paintings with really bright, slick looking colors that would look great over a fireplace. Bob has sworn that he will purchase some of this when we can afford Capital A Art in our home.
Heinrich Toh’s contemporary Asian art was my favorite. His works mixed printmaking and photography to give a really interesting vibe.
In addition, we ran into Bob’s friend and ex-coworker Alex and hung out on the Il Vicino patio with him and a couple friends shooting the breeze. A great night for all, even if it made us want things well outside of our price range. :-(
I like that for 6 years you forgot to tell Bob, an artist, that you wanted to go see it, but this year you remembered to go home and tell … Katie. You have a weird brain.
Whenever I tell someone other than my husband, then I’m more likely not to punk out. Bob and I have this knack for planning things to do but we’ll end up not doing it because we’re too lazy.