pink = where I went
This was my first time in Missouri. I stayed in St. Louis for a week doing a residency at Paul Artspace. I was not totally over the flu when I left for the trip and as I was getting into bed that first night I marveled that I had successfully gone through all the necessary steps to get myself there. Airport. Rental car. Drive. Arrival and tour of house. Dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. Grocery shopping at a discount store where thousands of wieners spilled out of cardboard boxes in teetering towers along a refrigerated wall, yet there was no garlic. Drive back to the house in a lightning storm with comical amounts of water hurled at the car from all directions. Bed!
Paul Artspace in Florissant, Missouri
Paul Artspace is located in the childhood home of the director of the program. He named it Paul after his beloved uncle. I was there with Alexis Rivierre, a local artist doing the residency while also serving as the program coordinator. The house is in on a large piece (6 acres I think) ≠of undeveloped land, with trees, some sculptures and installations by resident artists, and even the director’s childhood treehouse.
There’s art everywhere by past residents
On adjacent plots of land are similar houses. Alexis said the neighbors are friendly and very curious about what goes on in the strange house with all the artists. She’s seen them creeping around, peering in at the windows, waving cheerfully/sheepishly.
Alexis grew up in St. Louis, all over St. Louis. Her family moved around a lot and she’s lived in every neighborhood. She did some of her schooling at predominantly white schools where she was one of only a few Black kids, as well as at schools that were predominantly Black. She told me I should go to Forest Park, one of her favorite places. The people who designed Central Park designed Forest Park; the two parks have a lot in common as vast green spaces in the middle of the city, lined with grand cultural institutions - which, in St. Louis, are taxpayer funded. Alexis didn’t realize St. Louis’s wealth of resources until she left and discovered that museums aren’t usually free.
Forest Park is beautiful, and walking around fountains and over bridges I felt more like I was in Paris than the Midwest.
On my way back to my car I saw a man set up on the sidewalk painting. I went over to look at his painting and we started talking. When I got out my sketchbook to take notes while we talked he became concerned, “Are you a cop or something?” I explained what I was doing there, told him about my project, and showed him my website on my phone. We both love color. I was noticing all the different colors he used to make the green in his water, the blues in his sky. He was using a CD case as his palette. His name is Frank.
He told me how he has been scammed in his life and with his art. He said he feels like Job in the Bible. Knocked down over and over until you think you can’t be knocked down any more, and then you get knocked down again. “You reach the point where you got to change the way you think in order to cope with life.”
Once, a well-known local politician saw him painting at the park and wanted Frank to give him a painting for free, in honor of himself, the well-known politician. He said he saw the man walking towards him and his first thought at seeing a white man in a suit coming towards him was to run the other way. I had asked him early in our conversation if I could take his picture and he said no. Then after talking for a half hour he laughed and said, “Let’s take a picture.” He gave me his number to text the picture to him, and I did.
Frank said I should go to Tower Grove Park, another expansive oasis in St. Louis
Nearly every evening, Alexis or I would walk in the door, meet the other in kitchen, and then sit for hours at the table talking. We talked about so many things: St. Louis, being an artist, our country as it processes its stories about race, day jobs, politics, representations of identity, goals personal and professional and the sensitive place where they intersect. It felt like the eager urgency of catching up with a dear friend except we had just met.
One night she told me, “In St. Louis a lot of our issues hide in plain sight.” She paused. “We have a Workhouse.” I was confused as my imagination conjured a Dickensian horror, so she explained details of the contemporary American version.
The police set up these zones with traffic cones and everyone trying to go down that road at that time has to go through them. They call them sobriety checks, but they check everything. If they catch you with no insurance and you can’t pay the fee, you go to the Workhouse. People get a parking ticket, can’t afford to pay, and end up there. These checks are most often performed in Black neighborhoods. There have been many protests of the Workhouse, and many efforts to convince the city to redirect its resources towards something more useful.
I found the Workhouse. I parked and got out and took pictures. The feeling of stale dread was oppressive. Weeds grew in the two inches between landscaping fabric and the sidewalk. I got my hand slapped by a cop who’d probably thought he’d seen everything in his SUV, shaking his head, not amused by my explanation that I am just taking pictures to make paintings. He circled me in the parking lot until I got back in my car and drove away.
In addition to Alexis and myself, there was one other artist doing the residency. Shawn’s residency was studio-only; he is a local artist with a house 30 minutes away. He came by one morning with his daughter Aurora, 7. He brought her because he didn’t realize her spring break was two weeks long, not one. The three of us sat at the kitchen table and talked for a bit.
Shawn grew up in St. Louis. He said he’s always felt that St. Louis has a rural mentality, that even in the city there’s this pervasive idea that St. Louis is this small farm town. So it feels culturally very small. He goes to other cities to feel a connection to things he’s interested in. “We have to go to another city to see an exhibition that isn’t a big name artist.” He had a hard time thinking of a place to recommend, but then decided on his favorite record store, Planet Score, where he goes to escape. He described it so tenderly as the most honest record store. He said it’s owned by two guys. “I think that’s all they’ve ever done is work in record stores or own record stores. I don’t know their names. I used to be the guy that knew everybody who worked in the record store, now I’ve kinda scaled back. I kinda like the anonymity.”
I gleefully note that I have been told to go to a record store.
He said he knows it’s a really racist town, “But who are all these people? Where are all the people who voted for Trump? You know it’s here everywhere but you don’t see it.” Then a few seconds later, “You know what. I did see it.”
Shawn’s family recently moved. The cable guy who came and switched their cable was Black. The neighbors saw the cable guy approaching Shawn’s house and called the cops on him. The cops stayed like 20 minutes talking to Shawn, the homeowner, confirming, “Is this guy working on your cable?” Yes. Yes. Yes. The cable guy was late to his next job. Shawn heard him on the phone explaining this (to his boss, or maybe to his next customers) and was pained to hear him have to say, “I don’t know, I guess I looked like I was lurking around or something.” The cable guy had been wearing a florescent lime green vest and driving an AT&T truck.
Shawn went downstairs to his studio and Aurora and I were still in the kitchen as I cleaned up from breakfast and packed my lunch to take with me. My phone chirped and she said “What was that?”
“My phone. I got a text message.”
“I wanna see.”
“Ok.”
I showed her and explained. “I texted my wife that I was instructed to go to a record store and she wrote back this emoji.” It was the wide-eyed “oh shit” emoji. “She’s worried I’m going to spend all my money at the record store.”
She eyed me up and down. “Wait. You’re a boy?”
“No.”
“But you have a wife?”
“Yes.”
“Girls can’t marry girls.”
“They totally can.”
“What.”
“You can marry whoever you want. Boys can marry boys too.” She had been earnestly surprised but accepted the news easily. Kids these days. Gay agenda: check! Then I showed her on a map where I was from and told her about the Pacific Ocean.
A few minutes later she was reading aloud the welcome message Alexis left for me on the white erase board and had a hard time reading my name. “Wellllllllllllcccoooommme Ssssssssssss…...SANTA?” Then she eyed me up and down all over again, this time bug-eyed. Surprise, children of St. Louis! Santa is a lesbian from the Pacific Ocean!
THEN I was telling my wife about our conversation and when I got to the part of “I was telling her my wife was worried I was going to spend all my money at the record store” and how she said, “Wait, you’re a boy?” And my wifey CRACKS UP and says, “What, because only boys can buy records?!” That was fun.
I went to Planet Score, which lived up to Shawn’s recommendation. After perusing for a luxurious amount of time I would never have at home, I found a Mulatu Astatke record and when I went over to pay for it I asked the guy behind the counter if he could recommend a place for me to go. A fellow record store goer joined the conversation and we talked about my project. Joe, the owner, told me I should go to the City Museum, a big art playground creation. The eccentric creator died few years ago under mysterious circumstances. His wife and son are claiming foul play; there are rumors the mafia was involved. Joe got married there in 2010.
Derek, a regular at Planet Score, was born and raised in Ferguson, in the same neighborhood where Michael Brown was killed by police in 2014. Derek said that growing up as a white kid, the only racial issues he witnessed were those caused by the police. He had Black friends and white friends, and driving around the city, he routinely got pulled over when he was with his Black friends but never with his white friends. Once he and his buddies were stopped while just driving down the street - the cop didn’t even bother with a pretense for pulling them over. He made them all get out and handcuffed them. He searched the car. He pulled everything out of the car, all the trash of teenagers, and threw it all over the street. Then he said, “If you don’t pick this up I’m gonna pull you right back over for littering.”
Derek said that overall he feels fondly towards Ferguson. He said the farmer’s market is really nice, and his mom still lives there and he enjoys visiting her. He told me I should go to the spot where Michael Brown was killed. He expressed that it’s an important place to see. And it’s important to see what Ferguson is actually like, rather than what we all saw on the news.
Ferguson is 10 minutes away from Florissant, the neighborhood Paul Artspace is in. Michael Brown was murdered by police on the sidewalk of a tree lined street near apartment buildings.
A plaque has been installed at the site, along with fake flowers and teddy bears. I parked in the lot near one of the apartment buildings. As I walked to the spot I started sobbing. I stood there and took pictures and cried. Cars drove by, people walked past. A young man walked by and saw me in my state and nodded. I went back to my car and wept.
Then I saw a young man coming up to my car, kind and concerned. He asked if I was ok. I opened my door and got out. (While I do not usually get out of my car to greet strange men who approach in empty parking lots near murder sites, I did this time. And I also was aware that he, as a Black man, was risking his safety approaching a crying white woman in her car just as much as I was risking mine.) I told him that I’d come to see where Michael Brown had been killed. He nodded. He offered a hug and I accepted. He seemed young and old at the same time. Are you real?
“I’m.” [crying] “doing. this. art. project” [crying] “because” [crying] “I don’t want to. hate. our.” [ugly crying] “country.” Then I dragged snot across my red splotchy face with shredded Kleenex.
Then the beautiful boy man said, “That’s beautiful. There’s no time for hate. No time for hating.” Who are you?
His name is John. I would guess that he was 22. He said he’s really interested in art. He told me he’s reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, “just to get my creative mind going.” When I stopped crying, I asked him how he had found that book. Was he taking a class? Did he just happen to see it in a bookstore? No, he said he just likes things that get him thinking creatively and so he googled “creative book.” That was the book that came up so he ordered it. Where am I? Is Wim Wenders or Miranda July going to jump out from behind a bush?
I told him there was probably an artist inside him and he said, “Yeah I think there is but I don’t have time with work and everything.” He was there right now for work. He inspects areas before they lay a gas line. He was wearing a fluorescent vest.
We hugged goodbye and got into our respective cars. Then it occurred to me that I had a postcard for my project in my bag and dug one out. I tend to not give them out on these trips because it feels like, “Look, folks! I’m a traveling artist and I’ve come to your state, and I bring propaganda!” But in this instance I was glad to have remembered I had them and I went over and gave it to him and he was glad to have it and we said goodbye again.
a grocery store in St. Louis
I wandered around the City Museum - where Joe at Planet Score got married - in an awestruck stupor. It mostly looks like a city building outside, but inside it’s another world.
It was packed because it was spring break. People of all ages crawled over misfit indoor playgrounds while gargoyles spat water into pools between spiraling staircases with neckties hanging above. A wall of doll heads, a cabinet of jars, a bank vault, a piano. Who are we if we have no precious things? What do we do if we don’t make anything?
The night before I left, Alexis and I sat at the kitchen table and talked like normal, then she pulled out presents for me! She went to the corner store her family’s been going to for generations and got me some essential Missouri snacks. I ate them as I drove across the state to Kansas the next day.
