New Exhibitions Showcase Jazz, Landscapes and Organic Imagery

Posted on November 02, 2016 in Art Media Releases

Jazz greats, a series of colorful landscapes, and organic imagery that mimics parts of the human body are part of a new set of exhibitions for the Lambert Art and Culture Program at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. Two of the three artists showcased are based in St. Louis, and one collection features a prominent local press.

In Terminal 1, near the entrance to the A Concourse Checkpoint, features the paintings of St. Louis artist Robert Ketchens. His two works, Miles and Birth of Jazz, celebrate that uniquely American genre of music that flourishes in New Orleans and elsewhere. His paintings honor jazz pioneers Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Ferdinand LaMothe (aka ‘Jelly Roll Morton’), Buddy Bolden, Freddie Keppard, and King Oliver.

In Terminal 2, near Gate E12, features the colorful works of St. Louis artist Jenna Bauer in a collection entitled Thunder Fields. The collage of imagery portrays landscapes manifested as a twice-pixelated abstraction. The pieces are created through an analog process of monoprinting on canvas using a printing press. The muse for this work was a road trip Bauer took through Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Nevada, and the powerful but isolated storm systems in her midst.

A second exhibition in Terminal 2, near gate E18, passengers can view the works of St. Louis’ Wildwood Press, which is featuring three photolith reliefs by Valerie Hammond, titled Traces.  These 6-ft high prints depict hand forms, but if you take a closer look, you see the delicate traces of organic material. Starting in the late 1990s, Valerie Hammond took up tracing hands and arms, mostly of women and children, then using layers of wax to secure pressed ferns and other organic material within the perimeter of the tracings. Experimentation in Photoshop resulted in dark, deep blue backgrounds, while the plant material, placed in such a way as to echo bones, veins, and circulatory systems, turned a ghostly white. 

The three temporary exhibitions will be on display through March 31, 2017, and are supported by the Regional Arts Commission. The Lambert Art & Culture Program is dedicated to promoting local cultural works and institutions to area residents and St. Louis visitors.

The Lambert Art & Culture Program is led by the seven-member Airport Art Advisory Committee. Current members are Shelley Hagan, Wells Fargo Curator Corporate Art; Laura Helling, Director of Development for Wings of Hope; Marilu Knode, Director of Laumeier Sculpture Park; Leslie Markle, Curator of Public Art, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum; Kiku Obata, Founding Principal of Kiku Obata & Co.; and Roseann Weiss, Director of Community and Public Arts for the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission.