http://tmpierson.com/rss en-us info@tmpierson.com Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:48:52 -0500 Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:57:38 -0500 http://tmpierson.com To raise awareness about the Missouri River Communities Network and the issues caused by storm water runoff, local artists painted 14 plastic drums. The containers work by collecting water from your gutters and holding on to it until you need to water the lawn, wash the dog or use the non-potable H2O in some other way, according to Rain Barrel Art Review organizer Julia Karll.
Beginning at a reception at Orr Street Studios on Friday, the barrels will be auctioned off on eBay with the proceeds going back to the network’s programs.
“The minimum bid will be $75 per barrel,” Karll says. “We sell them for $60 normally, so for $15 extra, you can have an art barrel, something that was made to look beautiful by a local artist.”
The artists who volunteered used acrylic paints and the theme of water conservation.
Local artist Carol Brown participated in the event for the second year. Her design features bare winter trees and a forested landscape filled with Missouri animals such as squirrels, deer and birds.
“Then I wrote around the top, ‘Every body needs water,’” she says. “It sat in the middle of the dining room table for about a month. The kids and I would eat dinner around it.”
Brown says over the course of painting the barrel, she educated friends about the blue plastic cylinders and the water’s many uses, such as washing a car or cleaning garden tools.
Participating artist Josie Cozean, a junior psychology major at MU, says she hopes people will see the decorative rain barrels and think about using one. She painted a pair of cupped hands on hers to remind people that they should conserve as much as they can. “I thought it was a pretty cool idea to be able to do something that would help out in some way,” Cozean says.
A 2007 Memphis College of Art graduate, Matt Pierson, who lives and works in St. Louis, decked out his cylindrical surface using layers of epoxy resin and rubber ducks, a concept that evolved as he worked.
“I didn’t really factor in nature and the beauty of nature because mine is more of a contemporary piece,” he says. “I was thinking more of it being juxtaposed in the different space.”
Whether the cisterns are contemporary or not, Karll says she hopes the artsy barrels will make more people interested in using them outside their home.
“Even if they can’t spend the money since it’s more than just a regular barrel, they will at least learn about where they can get rain barrels and start to use them,” Karll says.

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Mankind loves to demarcate eras, but it’s always done after the fact. Take now, for instance. Are we living in the tail end of the Industrial Age, the fat days of the Information Age or the early days of something beyond, some era not yet named? (Cast your vote for “Age of Confusion” now.) The Industrial Age seems the least likely, because it started two centuries back. But it’s not really gone, is it? We’re surrounded by remnants of this black-and-white era. Ghosts of Industry, a new art show at Gallery Visio, tackles the remains of the Industrial Age through works by Julie Deken (oil paintings), Matt Pierson (“inflammatory illustration”) and Danny Reise (process photography). Pierson’s drawing of a cartoon animal-man holding a steam-powered hand tool in a raised fist against a backdrop of indeterminate machinery, suspicious red splatters and the word “COPY” stamped maniacally throughout one corner hearkens back to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle while commenting on the incomprehension with which we face rapidly advancing technology. It ain’t easy living in this transitional nexus of the Industrial Revolution, the Information Age and whatever’s coming round the bend next. Ghosts of Industry is on display in Gallery Visio on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus (1 University Drive at Natural Bridge Road; 314-516-7922 or www.umsl.edu/~galvisio). Gallery Visio is open Monday through Thursday; the exhibit remains up through Thursday, July 2.
Mondays-Thursdays. Starts: May 7. Continues through July 2, 2009



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