Alma Visit

I love these small towns. One of the women I work with lives in Alma and another was born and raised there and lives in another small town close to Alma. Since the town comes up in conversations I decided Wilma and I needed to make a visit. Their retail stores close at noon on Saturday since they are so small so we had to get there early.

As much as I wanted to sit and sketch, it was just too cold and windy. I shot a few pictures on my cell phone and sketched at home. I focused on the hardware store because it's been in the family of one of the two coworkers I mentioned since the 1970's. My 4-H Shooting Sports kids compete here in a couple weeks for air-rifle competition. We've made it here for the last six years, so I see some of the town then, but by the time our competition is done on Saturdays, the sidewalks are rolled up.

The Fabulous Fox, St. Louis

Although the city block on Grand Avenue is anchored on either end by the spectacular Craft Alliance gallery and the excellent City Diner, the Fox pretty dominates the street with its grand marquee and elaborate facade. Impossibly ornate both inside and out, the theatre is a venue for top name musical acts and touring Broadway shows. While in City Diner for coffee to go I heard the server manning the counter ask the couple next to me if they were from the show. The gentleman said "Yes we 're rehearsing the music for Priscilla and we are sounding good!" I walked across the street to take advantage of the very unusual 65 degree morning temps for some urban sketching in the nearby vest-pocket sized park. Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert opens it St. Louis run tonight. Next up, The Book Of Mormon which according to posters along side the box office is "the greatest musical of the century!" No matter how good the show is that seems to be overstatement until I remember that Oh yea, we are still at beginning the 21st century.

Fabulous Fox, 01/29/2013, Pogo stylus, Brushes3 for iPad. Drawn on location with slight modifications, signature and date added later.

Where shall I meet you?, St. Louis

During baseball season anyway the best answer to that question has always been and forever shall be "at the Musial statue." Sadly Stan The Man passed away last Saturday night. A public visitation was held Thursday at the New Cathedral on Lindell Ave. His private funeral will be televised this Saturday followed by a processional to the statue where family members will place a wreath. A brief paragraph cannot contain all there is to be said about Stan Musial. He had a monumental total of 3630 career hits. Remarkably exactly 1815 were at home and exactly 1815 on the road, only one of many statistics that reflect his consistency as a player. Sportscaster Bob Costas once noted with gentle irony that the only thing Musial ever did was sustain a 20-year career of baseball excellence and human decency.

The inscription on the base of the statue reads "Here stands baseball's perfect warrior. Here stands baseball's perfect knight." Musial has said that at first he did not care for the sculpture because it didn't look like him. So many people pose in front of it for pictures, even entire wedding parties often gather there for photos, that he came to appreciate it's special significance. Although this watercolor was done in 2011 it seems right to repost it at this time. Videographer Joel Anderson produced a piece appropriately called Urban Sketching of the painting the image. By the time we arrived at the statue that morning people were already beginning to show up for a Cardinals game later in the day. Even members of the city fire department drove up to the spot for a photo shoot of a new fire truck. It has already been written that St. Louis is not the same place without Musial. That may be true but St. Louis is certainly a much better place because of him.

Marcia Milner-Brage's colorful art of metro area on display at Hearst Center

Check out this link to the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier features article about my exhibit:

Marcia Milner-Brage's colorful art of metro area on display at Hearst Center

In the Good Ole Summertime

I don't know about you but for me the summer days seem to fly by faster and faster every time they roll around! Here are are a few sketches from recent weeks. Not all winners but the time spent doing them was delightful!

Caldwell Lily Pool, Lincoln Park, Chicago 

Fourth of July Parade, Glenview, IL

Seneca Park, Chicago

Tomorrow is the 36th World Wide SketchCrawl. I'm really looking forward to it and, for me, the sheer indulgence of sketching all day! Urban Sketchers Chicago is meeting near the Chicago River  on Wabash. If you'd like to join us check the details on USk-Chicago's FB page. Where ever you are I hope you draw and have a lazy-hazy summer day!

Cavalia Big Top Redux, St. Louis

I couldn’t resist returning to the Cavalia big top for another sketch, see  2/17/2012; this time on a larger format page. I blocked in the sky piece with a wash brush but finished with waterbrushes which are so handy for sketching with watercolor. The challange though on this day was the relentless wind which kept blowing over my backpack and other supplies.  After awhile I had to retreat to my car to complete the piece.

Cavalia Big Top, 04/15/2012; Michael Anderson, watercolor on Arches 140lb cold press, 12″ x 16″.

Legal grafitti, St. Louis

While grafitti is considered to be criminal defacement of property and a sure sign of urban decay there is a place in St.  Louis where it is completely legal, even encouraged.  Since 1996, Paint Louis, has attracted local and nationally known grafitti artists to tag a 20′ high concrete flood wall with distinctive signatures and murals creating a work of art that extends for 2 miles starting  just south of downtown. The wall runs through industrial areas rarely seen by the public but most of it is just a few blocks over from Broadway, a major thoroughfare.  It is easily accessible but admittedly I have always felt that the area was a little sketchy, the other kind, even in the daytime.   The Paint Louis blog links to a Google Street View which shows a  portion of the length of the grafitti wall.

Grafitti Wall, 04/15/2012, Michael Anderson, watercolor heightened with gouache, Arches 140lb cold pressed, 10″ x 14″.

Up on the roof, St. Louis

The stair well on top floor of the Keiner Plaza East parking garage bristles with satellite dishes. Like all forms of clutter after awhile they become invisible and just another piece of the urban landscape. I completed this sketch over a period of several days working 15 to 20 minutes at a time during the lunch hour. I have recently noticed a few other seemingly mundane infrastructure set pieces in the downtown area such as electrical transformer stations that are monumental in scale and intricately complex. They now are my “sketch worthy” list.

Satellite Dishes, Keiner Plaza East Parking Garage, 03.30.2012, Michael Anderson, waterbrush, water color, Canson 140lb cold press, 7″ x 9″.

Portico, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis

Now preserved as a garden feature in the Temperate House, this classical stone portico was the entrance to St. Leo’s Catholic School built in 1902.  According to the info on a nearby wall plaque the school was on Mullanphy Street  and was demolished in 1978. Thankfully the elegant  portico was salvaged by the Saint Louis Architectural Art Company. Although the day was unseasonably warm it was too windy to attempt sketching outdoors. I commandeered an empty bench, broke out my supplies and sketched this sunny but completely indoors scene.

Portico, Missouri Botanical Garden, 02/28/2012, Michael Anderson, waterbrush, watercolor, 7″ x 9″, Canson 140lb cold press.

Wainwright Tomb, St. Louis

Louis Sullivan designed one of the most sublime architectural creations anywhere for Ellis Wainwright in 1891. The arrangement of simple forms and the restrained use surface embellishments must have seemed way ahead of it’s time. The millionaire brewer had commissioned Sullivan to design an office tower downtown still referred to as the Wainwright Building and generally considered to be the world’s  first skyscraper. The tomb was commissioned upon the death of Wainwright’s young wife and has been nicknamed the Taj Mahal of St. Louis.

Wainwright Tomb, Bellefontaine Cemetery, 03/01/2012, Michael Anderson, watercolor, waterbrush, Canson 140lb cold pressed, 7″ x 9″.