The Artists of SCOSAG: Faculty and Students When local artist Jenna Bauer founded the South City Open Studio and Gallery, she may not have realized she would revolutionize art education in St. Louis. But the evidence is all here in a wonderful survey of works by young students and their SCOSAG teachers. Using every imaginable material, these students are allowed to freely explore process rather than concentrate strictly on results -- but the results are amazing anyway. On view are prints, murals, ceramic work and things that can only be described as conceptual. What's even better is seeing the works that result from collaborations between students and their SCOSAG teachers, who include Bauer herself, Jason Wallace Triefenbach, Carmelita Nunez and a host of others who rank among the best artists in St. Louis. If everyone learned about art the SCOSAG way, we wouldn't need to argue the benefits of having art in the world. They'd be obvious. Through October 13 at the 3rd Floor Gallery, 1214 Washington Avenue (third floor); 314-241-1010. Gallery hours noon-4 p.m. Wed.-Sat. (Closing reception Friday, October 7, 6-10 p.m.)
Currents 95: Julie Mehretu Those who saw Mehretu speak at the Saint Louis Art Museum on September 8 can attest to the fact that she had a certain amount of trouble articulating the concepts of her work. Take a look at her four paintings on view there and you'll see why: They are so very complex, deeply layered and astonishingly beautiful that they defy description. Mehretu appropriates remarkable architectural plans, combines them with her own idiosyncratic drawings and overlays all of that with vaguely familiar nationalist symbols and signs, to generate explosive scenes -- of war? of sports? of schizophrenia? -- that may be the most accurate blueprint ever to have been rendered of psychic experience in the post-industrial, late capitalist Western world. If that sounds like excessive praise, then mission accomplished: Mehretu's works are absolutely brilliant. These paintings act like a buoy, a lifesaver in the sad chaos of the daily news; to think that someone has been able to get it down legibly on a flat surface provides hope that we might just survive this insanity after all. Through November 27 at the Saint Louis Art Museum, 1 Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park; 314-721-0072. Gallery hours 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sun. (10 a.m.-9 p.m. Fri.)
Ron Laboray: After C.E. Laboray combines observations on cultural hegemony with critical takes on formalist art to make some of the smartest, prettiest and funniest works imaginable. Schematic maps and globes are overlaid with melted plastic blobs whose colors signify pop-culture institutions -- from Barbie to McDonald's to Wild West theme parks -- and whose oozy spread suggests an insidious takeover. These paintings engage postmodern theory but aren't weighed down by it; they also suggest what a populist redemption of high-modernist formalism might look like. And there's an interactive digital project that allows visitors to rearrange star constellations. What more could you want from an art exhibit? Maybe just a six-sided gallery guide with a brilliant essay by local art hero Michael Byron. They've got that too! This is a beautiful five-year survey of pieces from one of the best artists working in St. Louis. Through October 15 at Gallery 210, TeleCommunity Center, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1 University Boulevard (at Natural Bridge Road); 314-516-5976. Gallery hours 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat.
Pearls Are a Nuisance: A Retrospective of Art Chantry Chantry is the undisputed reigning master of contemporary American poster design, but his ragged, edgy style of graphic sampling and razor wit have been mimicked so often you may not even realize he's the source. Chantry came to prominence in his native Seattle during the post-punk 1980s engineering ads for groups like Gang of Four, but he hit his brutal stride in the 1990s, channeling Raymond Chandler to shape a nasty noir aesthetic that was the visual equivalent of grunge music. This retrospective, smartly curated by Todd Hignite, delivers up a smorgasbord culled from Chantry's vast oeuvre, including poster work (ads for concerts, theater, art galleries and political posters), album covers and a group of "original" mechanicals that reveal Chantry's painstaking design and print processes. This may be the most fun any of us will have at an art gallery this year. And if you have any doubts about whether this is art, put them to bed: The guy's in the Louvre, for Pete's sake. Through October 15 at the Philip Slein Gallery, 1319 Washington Avenue; 314-621-4634. Gallery hours 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat.
Textiles as Emotional Landscape Despite the confining title, this first installment of the sixth biennial, multivenue Innovations in Textiles event hints that this year's textile extravaganza will be a good one. There's a lot of variety here: thirteen artists, dozens of works and plenty of stuff beyond what you'd expect. Sure, there are the inevitable quilts, but they're unusual in their richness and experimentation (don't miss Hannah Gilk's Relationship Torment [2005], which contains fragments of images that tell the story of a love gone bad). A handful of aprons take humorous feminist turns, such as Libby Reuter's Two Ways of Being Male (2005) and Dawn Ottensmeier's Has Anyone Seen My Hormones? (2005). Kay Wood and M.J. Goerke have created books out of old photos transferred to fabric and then quilted -- they're the ultimate in family keepsakes. Sue Eisler's pieces, a wire sculpture from 1976 and a paper piece from her "Ongoing Permutations" series (2003), are refreshing to see in this new context. But the most striking works are two sculptures by Jane Birdsall Lander: Ancestor (2005), a wall fetish of knotted waxed linen and thorns, and the astonishing In This County (1992), which taps into the sublimated strains of ritual and sacrifice that run through rural cultures. Through October 5 at the Regional Arts Commission gallery, 6128 Delmar Boulevard; 314-863-5811. Gallery hours 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. -- Ivy Cooper
