This exhibition features an overview of paintings by St. Louis artist Wallace Herndon Smith. Born in St. Louis in 1901, Wallace Smith was a traditional painter who absorbed the visual language of artists like Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Edward Hopper. Smith was fluent in many subjects including still-lifes, landscapes, interiors, and portraits. The artist’s strength was in capturing psychological nuances, and the exhibit has been selected to illuminate this area of his work. In the late 1930s, his work gained attention from important American artists like Edward Hopper, Walt Kuhn and Peggy Bacon. During these early years, his work was characterized by its affinity to American Regionalism and his portraits were highly finished, quiet examinations of his subjects. Smith studied at Princeton University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His works have been exhibited widely including in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and many other cities. The exhibition is organized by the Sheldon Art Galleries and is drawn from the collection of the Bellwether Foundation.

Additional works by Wallace Herndon Smith can be viewed at http://www.wallaceherndonsmith.com/index.htm

With photographs by Charley Taylor, Jennifer Silverberg and others, illustrations by Kevin Belford, ephemera and biographies on key musicians, this exhibition tells the story of the rich history of blues music in St. Louis. Building on its key role in ragtime music, St. Louis became a gathering place for early blues piano players such as Speckled Red, Roosevelt Sykes, Peetie Wheatstraw, and "Barrelhouse Buck" McFarland. Blues guitarists also made St. Louis their home – including "Blind Blues" Darby, Lonnie Johnson, Clifford Gibson, J.D. "Jelly Jaw" Short, Big Joe Williams and Henry Townsend. There were outstanding women singers Mary Johnson, Edith Johnson, Alice Moore, Irene Scruggs and Victoria Spivey, as well as big name recording stars like Walter Davis and the twins Aaron "Pinetop" Sparks and Milton "Lindberg" Sparks. W.C. Handy's famous "St. Louis Blues," the many versions of "Frankie and Johnny," the Staggerlee story and many other songs are landmarks from the St. Louis blues tradition.

The exhibition uncovers important St. Louis musicians, songs and blues music styles that have influenced our musical heritage, including jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and roll, and a continually evolving blues tradition. The St. Louis blues tradition has shaped the music of artists from Clark Terry, Miles Davis and Ike and Tina Turner to Johnnie Johnson, Chuck Berry and Nelly. The exhibition is based on research by Kevin Belford and is organized by The Sheldon Art Galleries.

Exhibition Text (PDF)

The exhibition is made possible by Kenneth and Nancy Kranzberg, The Engelhardt Family Foundation, and Steve and Andi Schankman.

Since 1999, Jay Wolke has captured the complexity of a landscape called the Mezzogiorno in southern Italy. What he found in this storied landscape is an elaborate set of physical, social and political structures, manifesting in an extraordinary fusion of visual information. On one level, the images he creates are referential and documentary—but on another level they are about what is hidden and implied. These large-scale color photographs tell stories that expose the rise and fall of various colonial, political and commercial powers, as well as the inspired, but often faltering, inventions of ambitious individuals.

Born in Chicago in 1954, Wolke received a B.F.A. in Printmaking and Illustration and Design at Washington University, St. Louis, and an M.S. in Photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Since 1981, Wolke has taught photography and art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Institute of Design- IIT; and Studio Art Centers International, Florence, Italy. He is an Associate Professor at Columbia College, Chicago and served as chair of the Art and Design Department from 2000-2005, and again resumed his duties as Chair in 2008. Wolke's work has been featured in one-person exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the St. Louis Art Museum, Harvard University, the California Museum of Photography, and Foundation Studio Marangoni, Florence, Italy. His photographs have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others, and has been the subject of two monographs: All Around the House: Photographs of American-Jewish Communal Life (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998) and Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway (Center for American Places, 2004). The book Architecture of Resignation will be released later this year.

Gallery Talk: Jay Wolke, Saturday, June 5, 11 a.m., Gallery of Photography, admission free.

Additional Resources

Exhibit Brochure

The exhibition is made possible by Joan and Mitchell Markow.

Organized as a companion to the Legends of St. Louis Blues Music exhibit in the History of Jazz Gallery, this exhibit celebrates the rich legacy of blues music through song lyrics and vibrant works of art in many mediums. Participating schools and art groups include Airport Elementary School; Ames Visual and Performing Arts Elementary School; Cathedral Basilica; Central Visual and Performing Arts High School; the Freedom School; Gateway Middle School; Jefferson; Lee-Hamilton Elementary School; Metro High School; Oak Hill Elementary School; Peabody E-mints Academy; Rebecca Boone Elementary School; Shaw Visual and Performing Arts Elementary School; Studio W; and Soldan International Studies High School.

Companion Book
Nothin' But the Blues: Art and Writing by St. Louis-Area Students was created as a companion to the exhibition of the same name in the AT&T Gallery of Children's Art of the Sheldon Art Galleries, February 19 – August 14, 2010. Soft cover, 28 pages, Published by the Sheldon Art Galleries, 2010, $14.95.
Click here to purchase

Since 2007, many of Erik Spehn's paintings have involved applying strips of masking tape to the surface of his canvases, then painting over them, peeling them off, and taping and repainting again and again. Over time, Spehn recognized that the discarded tape might offer a new avenue of formal investigation, so he began to make works on paper by applying the used tape to matboard. Each piece echoed the specific paintings on which he was working, but visually these "drawings" became a distinct and separate body of work. Exhibited for the first time at The Sheldon, the drawings are exploratory works that the artist has made primarily for himself. Unlikely to be exhibited under other circumstances, Spehn chose this body of work to offer insight into his working process.

Erik Spehn was born in 1970 and received his B.F.A. in painting at the University of Michigan in 1992. He has exhibited regularly in St. Louis since 1995 and is included in the permanent collections of The Saint Louis Art Museum, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Daum Museum. Spehn is represented by Schmidt Contemporary Art, St. Louis.

More of Erik Spehn's work can be viewed at http://www.schmidtcontemporaryart.com/artists/erikspehn.html

Click here to read the Post-Dispatch's take on Spehn's exhibit!

The exhibition is made possible by Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg.

Jim Dine Sculpture

The Ann Lee and Wilfred Konneker Gallery at the Sheldon Art Galleries is the site for the Jim Dine sculpture, The Heart Called Orchid, 2003. The sculpture is dedicated to the life and accomplishments of Dr. Leigh Gerdine, a founding trustee of the Sheldon Arts Foundation who devoted himself to the saving and renovation of the historic Sheldon Concert Hall and the creation of the Sheldon Art Galleries.

A beautiful bronze work on long-term loan from the Gateway Foundation St. Louis, the sculpture is a glowing golden heart that balances on its point on a trompe d'oeil "wooden" pallet, which on further examination is seen also to be made of bronze. A recurring theme in Dine's work since 1966, the heart emerges in prints, drawings, paintings and sculptures.

Jim Dine was born in 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio and rose to prominence in the 1960s with his performance and assemblage works. From the 1960s, Dine also began to incorporate representations of simple everyday objects into his works. His object-based imagery seen in paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures include tools, men's suits, bathrobes, hearts, and household objects among others and are metaphors for childhood memories, personal psychological states and self-portraits. Like Dine's suit and bathrobe images make reference to the artist's body and persona, his hearts contain layered metaphors about the body, sensuality, love, and as the artist describes them, he sees the heart as "the agent and the organ of my emotions."

Scott Raffe, David Balding, Circus Flora, June 2009, digital silver rag print, 11 x 8 inches, courtesy of the artist.

Oklahoma-based photographer Scott Raffe has photographed Circus Flora for more than a decade. A selection of portraits of Circus Flora performers taken with his iPhone reveal the photographer's passion for the circus, as well as his mastery of the craft of photography.

More of Scott Raffe's work can be viewed at http://www.raffephoto.com/