While selecting images for the art show “On the Street Where I Live,” Amanda Verbeck of Pele Prints saw certain themes emerge in artists submissions: impermanence, restlessness, transition and instability.
She wants the show at Webster Arts to explore the places where people live and their relationships with their neighbors.
“When we think about a street where we live, we’re talking about home, we’re talking about place, we’re talking about all these that affect our environment – nature environment or social environment,” Verbeck said. “Those are both really important points to me, to not only have [the show] reflect the social context in which we live, but also the physical context in which we live.”
Those themes emerged even though artists who submitted work for the show hail from more than 17 states. The exhibit is open at the new gallery at Eden Theological. Webster Arts is known for an annual art fair the organization puts together. The show inaugurates the new gallery and gives the organization a chance to pivot attention from supporting local work to engaging with artists throughout the country.
Webster Arts executive Jeane Vogel said the gallery will provide a space to present work that strays from what viewers might expect to find at an art fair.
“Sometimes artists produce two bodies of work,” said Vogel. “They might produce a body of work for an art fair which might be a little bit more commercial, and then they’re going to have some social commentary or some other kind of comment that they want to make in exhibition work.”
The new gallery will provide a type of permanent home for Webster Arts. To acknowledge that fact ,Vogel says they put on a show that aims to provoke conversations about community.
“I think in St. Louis right now we need to have many, many, many, more conversations about what community means to us, what the boundaries of our community are, how do we step outside of those boundaries and how do we interact with other people,” said Vogel.
The show opens tonight at 6 p.m.
If you go:
What: “On the Street Where I Live”
Where: Webster Arts Center, Eden Theological Seminary
When: Nov. 16 through Dec. 23.
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