One of the gifts that my mother bestowed on me was an appreciation for the arts. To that end, Anne and I went to the Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) to see the new Ian Monroe exhibit. This exhibit is a tribute to architect Minoru Yamasaki and his iconic airport terminal at Lambert. If you have never flown to Saint Louis, you might still have seen Yamasaki’s design. It was featured in George Clooney’s movie, Up in the Air. More recently, Lambert was featured in the news, because of tornado damage.

Monroe, a WashU BFA graduate, presents a series of collages based on archive photographs of Lambert’s day-to-day operation. My favorite work, called arc, is a large-scale collage depicting a jet engine with a distant view of Lambert’s terminal and its undulating roofline. Monroe’s works are primarily cut-vinyl collages on aluminum plates. Copyrights prevented my photography of the exhibit, but this link, back to the SLAM-mer includes images from the exhibit.

In place of images from Ian Monroe’s exhibit, the images with this post are a collection of wall murals from The Grove neighborhood. None of them are examples of particularly high art, but they are all colorful, dynamic and freely available for photography. These murals represent examples of the only reason why anyone should ever paint brick, at least, in my humble opinion.

In our comings and goings to the SLAM-mer, we also spied the site of this year’s Saint Louis Shakespeare Festival. It looks about ready to go. This year’s production is The Taming of the Shrew. After this cold wet weekend, I find it hard to believe that this annual Shakespeare festival starts this next week. Speaking of cold and wet, Anne and I biked in the rain. This weekend counts as Seattle weather. We got 10 miles and Anne continued her riding streak in May.