Art on the Greenways

The City of Oakland commissioned a pair of acorn sculptures at Backstoppers Park. Each ceramic acorn weighs almost 500 pounds. NOTE: In 2011, one of the acorn sculptures was cracked and removed.

This 30′ tall sculpture has three flower heads, each made out of 22 bicycle wheels. Each leaf on the flower stem is a bicycle frame.

This bold, colorful illustration features the limestone geology of the site, collaged drawings of the Mississippi River, and birds that frequent the Mississippi Greenway. The artist’s goal is to educate, celebrate, and help connect us to the ecological history of this place, and cultivate connections with the non-human living beings that live in these spaces with us.

Gathering Place is an effort to spotlight the presence of the past. Inspiring engagement with the region’s geological history and a deeper understanding of the earliest settlements. Beginning with the formation of the river during the Pleistocene Ice Age, to the Kaskaskia and Tamaroa settlements in the 1600s, followed by the arrival of two Catholic priests from whom the name, River Des Peres (River of the Fathers) originates. The wildlife burgeoned until it became a civil sanitation project that subsumed and spoiled the flourishing area whose ramifications linger today. When reflecting upon the River’s past, I see “an ecological being”, to quote from Micheal R. Allen’s 2010 piece titled, “The Harnessed Channel: How the River Des Peres Became a Sewer”. I share in Allen’s vision of advocating for a future where the river reemerges from its century-long abuse to be wild once again. The history of European and American painting consists of imagery that encapsulates what can at first, only be imagined. Offering a vision that communities may congregate and draw power from; transforming myth into a reality. What exists as fiction imagined by a single person can ascend to truth through a people.

Youth from the West End neighborhood worked with Creative Exchange Lab to learn metalsmithing skills while fabricating benches, trash cans, bicycle racks, and decorative planter rings for the St. Vincent Greenway.

This sculpture builds on the previous conceptual design created by youth art apprentices from St. Louis ArtWorks.

This work calls upon the 19th-century American “Missouri” artist George Caleb Bingham. I would have been remiss not to consider the work of arguably one of the greatest river scene painters of the era. Bingham captured an ethereal glow of joyful ennui in striking horizontal images of recess on a languid river. His work includes the titles, “The Jolly Flatboatmen”, “Jolly Flatboatmen in Port”, and “Fur Traders Descending the Missouri”. As a Missouri-born artist myself, I have always felt a kinship with Bingham. I feel his capturing of the light, sounds, and details of the Midwest is unmatched. The central figure with arms raised is a direct reference to one of his works. Localized details reside throughout the image including the central figures’ sweater which is peppered with hawthorn blossoms, the official Missouri state floral emblem, a St. Louis ‘Stars’ baseball jersey, and The Great Forest Park Balloon Race. The setting is an optimistic imagining of one of several permutations the River Des Peres could serve the St. Louis community. One in which recreation, gathering, and the natural wildlife cohabitate and thrive.

These images show the topography around this section of the Meramec River, the extraction of natural resources from this area, and the people, plants, and animals who live here together.

More than 50 students helped design the mural with artist Stuart Morse, and more than 1,000 volunteers helped paint this mural on Make Your Mark Day in 2011. The mural depicts scenes from the area’s history, from Lewis and Clark on one end to a cityscape on the other.

This mural was designed by teen art apprentices who were inspired by historical reenactor Angela da Silva’s performance of an escape from enslavement that occurred at this location in 1855. Shoreline rocks with chains represent bondage in Missouri. The enslaver’s threat to “put you in my pocket” means selling a person in exchange for money and is represented by enslaved people melting into gold. Mary Meachum is depicted as larger than life and is shown throwing cotton into the air as if tossing away the burden of slavery.

Pillars of the Valley is a permanent public art installation by St. Louis resident and nationally acclaimed artist, Damon Davis. It commemorates the once-thriving Mill Creek Valley neighborhood, which was destroyed in the name of “urban renewal,” displacing 20,000 Black residents.

Reflecting on a River began with the goal of reconnecting community to the natural environment and rebuilding an identity of St. Louis as a river city. This 240 foot-long permanent public art installation celebrates the rich natural history of the Mississippi River. The sculptured ceramic mural interprets diverse flora and fauna. Insects, fossils, and migrating birds and butterflies appear as colorful abstractions as well as nature studies.

Coming soon!

Artist Thomas Sleet’s approach is to merge organic materials with synthetics to create new hybrid material structures and ways of building. The work is informed by matrices, logarithms, paradigms and the intellect in ways of building, found in nature. Thomas Sleet creates art on both traditional and non-traditional levels, habitat and functional furnishings as well as utilitarian, ecclesiastic, and public works.

This mural features local wildlife, including the rare Mandarin Duck from East Asia that occasionally appears at St. Ferdinand Park in Florissant.