On the Fourth of July weekend, the city of St. Louis opened a playground/garden/art exhibit called City Garden. It encompasses two city blocks with water features the kids can play in, native plants beautifully arranged, and sculptures.

The guide that the nice administrators give visitors says about the head spouting children out of its eyes:

Eros Bendato [Eros Bound] has the feel of an ancient relic that has been excavated and reconstructed. Artist Igor Mitoraj is inspired by ancient cultures and particularly characters from Greek and Roman mythology. In this sculpture, the dismembered head of Eros, the Greek god of love and desire, lies on its side. The bandages that wrap Eros’s face suggest that the eyes and mouth have been covered, indicating that desires and ideas have been imprisoned. The bandages also symbolize two opposing views of the world–either that civilization is broken beyond repair, or that it is being held together despite destructive forces.

Hmmm. Maybe. But the little girls just think it’s fun to peek out of the eyes. One of them told me that the statue needs to blow his nose.

Here’s what the park people have to say about Kindly Gepetto:

American sculptor, Tom Otterness, creates cast bronze sculptures inspired by fairy tales, cartoons and early animation. His work often appears comical but carries a serious message. In Kindly Gepetto, Gepetto, a carpenter and the fictional creator of Pinnochio, is about to hammer the poor puppet. Pinnochio wants only to be a real boy, but first he must prove himself truthful and be able to tell right from wrong. Otterness explores this complicated relationship between the creator and his creation.

Ya think? I dunno. That sounds like a fancy schmancy analysis of a sculptor with a slightly warped sense of whimsy.

“Sky Spirit” – Sabra Tull Meyer – 1998

“Sky Spirit”, a bronze sculpture by Sabra Tull Meyer, is located at Les Bourgeois Vineyards in Rocheport, Missouri – just up the hill from the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River .

Sabra Tull Meyer is a sculptor who has worked in bronze for over 30 years. Her sculptures include; human figures, small to monumental in scale, portrait busts, memorial plaques and wild life subjects. Her work may be seen in numerous public locations and found in private collections across the nation. She is a native Missourian with a Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees from the University of Missouri. Her experience includes teaching at Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri and William Woods University, Fulton, Missouri. She is listed in the archives of The National Museum of Women in the Arts. She is an Associate Member of the National Sculpture Society, member of the Oklahoma Sculpture Society, Museum Associates, Columbia Art League, and the State Historical Society of Missouri.

I stood next to a decorative sideboard (shown later) to take this picture and looked across the dining table at one of the fireplaces in the room. The other is to the right of where I stood, on the end wall.

Notice anything odd about the piece of furniture to the left of the fireplace?

The mirror was placed near the floor so that ladies in the olden days could check to make sure that their petticoats weren’t showing. That mirror is balanced by one at normal height at the other end of the room.

Looking across the table at the sideboard, you can see the docent in period costume talking to a tour group.

I should have found out what the purpose is for the cylinders on either side. Anybody know?

Take Wing! – at an entrance to the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine – on Hospital Hill in Kansas City.

…Take Wing is a bronze sculpture cast from a small carving made in 1952 by E. Grey Dimond, MD, Provost Emeritus for the Health Sciences, from a piece of driftwood he found on the beach while visiting Carmel, Calif. His daughter, Lark, had the sculpture enlarged and cast in bronze. That sculpture now stands in front of the UMKC School of Medicine encouraging students and alumni to “Take Wing” and soar to new heights in their careers after they leave the school.

“In that first stay at Carmel, I found a small piece of redwood drift and, there on the beach, carved from it a wing, a free-form wing. Forty years later, this carving was cast in bronze, large-size, and placed in front of the medical school. The wing, the memory of the moment of finding the wood, the beauty and free spirit of the location – all these things made me name the piece Take Wing, and hope that it stands there as a symbol of the life I wish for each graduate.” – E. Grey Dimond, MD

From his autobiography, “Take Wing! Interesting Things That Happened On My Way To School”

There’s lots of parquet to walk around on in the foyer of the governor’s mansion. Only this small seating area in front of the fireplace–and the docents–would keep a person from roller skating in here.

Opposite the seating area is this … hmm. I wonder if they actually store anything in that elegant cabinet.

Pictures of first ladies adorn the walls in the foyer and the main parlor. These two photos show the walls on either side of the door into the dining room.

Perhaps Thomas Hart Benton’s most well known work is the mural he painted on three walls of the House Lounge in the Capitol Building between 1934 and 1936. People were allowed to watch the work in progress–if they were quiet. He had a note posted asking them not to make suggestions.

All anybody had or has to do to see the work is go to the third floor on the west side of the building and walk through these doors:

Once it was finished, though, the mural suffered, from a variety of causes: from people picking at it with their nails to see how hard the paint was, not to mention from heat, birds and smoke from nearby factories when the windows were open. In 1960, Benton hired a preservationist to help him restore the mural, and from then on the room was air conditioned and humidity controlled. The mural will probably outlast the building.

The North Wall shows scenes from the early settlement of the state: pioneers heading here and tilling the soil, a settler trading whiskey with an Osage Indian, the use of slaves to do manual work, a worker swinging an axe, a blacksmth forging a wheel. Above the door, Huck Finn and Jim enjoy fishing on the Mississippi.

If you’d like to see the painting enlarged, click here and click on large.

The East Wall, the largest of the three walls, illustrates politics, farming, and law in the state, with many of its facets drawn from Benton’s own experience. For example, on the left side of the wall, the man breaking up a fight between two youngsters (Benton’s nephews) is Senator Ed Barbour of Springfield.

The towering funnel of smoke represents the Civil War, and in front of it is a freed slave who’s been lynched.

Click here to see a larger size.

The right side of the East Wall shows more farming scenes as well as the beginnings of smog from the industrial revolution.

Again drawing on personal experience, Benton showed his brother Nat, a prosecuting attorney, pleading a case.

Click here to see a larger size.

The South Wall shows St. Louis and Kansas City.

On the left are the shoe making and brewing industries that made St. Louis distinctive. On the right is Kansas City, with its stockyards and meat processing. Above the door is the famous story of Frankie and Johnny. Frankie found her man on a date with another woman and shot him dead. The affair was immortalized in song.

Click here for a larger size.

Jerry L. Miller – “Squares + Movement = ( )” – (1985) – on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg

…He installed this sculpture in 1985. It was built so the viewer could manipulate the parts and become actively involved with the work and the design process.

Outside Art

…If you some day find yourself standing in front of Garrison Gymnasium twirling squares on a large grid and asking yourself existential questions, such as, “Why am I doing this?” don’t be alarmed. The squares, part of a sculpture called Squares + Movement = Questions, were put there for just that purpose. The sculpture was created by faculty member Jerry Miller…

Pre-statehood Missouri history is carved in marble on the first floor of the Capitol building.

It is believed by many historians that De Soto explored our region while pursuing his dream to find a northern passageway to China back in 1541. After “discovering the Mississippi River”, he crossed from Kaskaskia (Illinois) into our region, meeting five different tribes of Native Americans along his trek through what is now Southern Missouri continuing on into Arkansas.

White men were sparse as hen’s teeth, though, for the next 130 years. Then the influx began.

It was not until 1673, when Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet (who are most often credited with the discovery of Missouri) sailed down the Mississippi River in canoes along the area that would later become Missouri. The two established that the Mississippi River ran all the way to the sea. In 1682, Robert de LaSalle claimed the Louisiana Territory for France (“New France” or Louisiana, was named to honor Louis XIV).

Soon French settlers were establishing trading posts and forts in the new territory. During the early years of French occupation, trade with the Indians was the only major industry.

More below the fold.

In 1750, the first white settlers founded nearby Ste. Genevieve as the first permanent white settlement in “upper Louisiana” (although there are some reports that Ste. Genevieve was founded as early as 1732-1734). It was a confusing time for these early settlers because in 1762, Spain gained control of the Louisiana Territory in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, but did not “officially assume control of the territory until 1770”.

Spain maintained control until 1800 when France was able to briefly regain some of their former possessions in North America from the Spanish. After a 20-day interlude of French control of Louisiana, Napoleon abandoned his dreams of creating a North American empire after his troops were defeated in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti).   The treaty between Spain and France was kept secret and Louisiana remained under Spanish control until a transfer of power to France in 1803.  Almost miraculously, the entire Louisiana territory was sold to the United States for $15,000,000 in May of 1803.

One of Missouri’s nicknames is “Gateway to the West”. In 1804 Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis not only to map this new region, but to also evaluate the potential of westward expansion at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of western expansion. The expedition led all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The California Gold Rush began in 1848 and Missouri once again became the departure point for those heading to California, earning Missouri its first nickname.

After Louisiana became a state in 1812, the remaining Upper Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory and was divided in to five original counties. Our present Iron and Reynolds counties were considered a part of the new county of Ste.Genevieve in the new Missouri Territory. In 1818 the first Missouri Constitution was drafted and in the same year, a request was made for admittance to the Union as a slave state. After a national controversy due to the delicate balance between free and slave states, Missouri was admitted as the 24th state in the Union in 1821.

“Petra” (1992) – Kathleen Caricof-Burns – on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg – installed 1993

Kathi [Caricof-Burns] grew up near the sea, and her work reflects the motion and the timelesness that the ocean holds. Her work is a balance between abstract motion, and representation of her subject. Kathi’s work as a stone sculptor is recognized in both commercial and residential spaces.

Kathi Caricof

For an artist to stand before a block of stone, a gift from nature, and begin to chip away at it takes real courage. For an artist to feel that the image they are about to awaken is worthy of that intrusion requires total trust that the parts eliminated will reveal a richer vision. For sculptor Kathi Caricof the concepts she wishes to liberate from the stone are, “those ideas that I am liberating from myself: independence, vulnerability, compassion, clarity, longing, sensuality and isolation…”

…Kathi Caricof is well known and much acclaimed for her marble sculpture and reliefs. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and has received many awards including the “People’s Choice” at the International Snow Carving Championships in Breckenridge. Caricof has installed major pieces of public art on the campus of the University of Denver, for the City of Broomfield, CO, and the cities of Cerritos and Burbank, California. Her main interest is stone but she also works in steel and other metals. Her work consists of three dimensional freestanding sculptures as well as large-scale bas-reliefs…

Artist: Caricof-Burns, Kathleen, sculptor.

Title: Petra, (sculpture).

Dates: 1992. Copyrighted 1992. Installed 1993.

Medium: Sculpture: white marble and black granite; Base: concrete and black granite.

Dimensions:

Sculpture: approx. 20 x 20 x 48 in.; Base: approx. 15 x 54 x 22 in.

Inscription: CARICOF (copyright symbol) 92 (On plaque on base, raised:) “PETRA”/BY/KATHLEEN CARICOF-BURNS/INSTALLED 1993 signed

Description: An abstract prone female figure with her head placed down suggesting extreme emotion. The sculpture is placed on a rectangular base. The sculpture and base are situated on a raised flower bed that is encircled by a multisided bench….

Philip Uyeda – “Equipondation”

Philip created “Equipondation” with attention to it’s surroundings in mind. The sculpture is meant to challenge all that pass by the piece, asking them to think and feel the piece. The piece was created with steel in a combination of welding and blacksmithing techniques.

Equipondation Equiponderation (1994) – Philip Uyeda – on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg