It's easy for time and space to fall away in Adrian Kellard's "The Learned Art of Compassion" exhibit. During my visit to the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) at St. Louis University last week, I entered the exhibit on a clear autumn day and was surprised to see the sun setting as I left.  

 "The Learned Art of Compassion" commemorates two important artistic and social milestones: the twentieth anniversary of the artists' death and the thirtieth anniversary of the identification of the HIV virus that causes AIDS. As an ambitious artist gaining international acclaim in the 1980's, Kellard's life was tragically cut short at the age of 32 because of complications due to AIDS.  Kellard was a New York native who left his working class background to study art at The State University of New York (SUNY) and to later receive training under a celebrated artist in his program. His work tells the story of his encounter with success, illness, and spirituality.

What I love about Kellard's style is that his art is practical. Almost every one of his works serves a useful function: a calendar-themed privacy screen, a decorative table, a prayer vigil with a built-in clock. Kellard's installations are not only captivating in their confident play with colors (blood reds, kelp greens, bumblebee yellows); they are also surprisingly hopeful. I forget that these murals and carvings are made by the hands of a man suffering from AIDS.

Drawing inspiration from his working class background and his academic study of German Expressionist printmakers, Kellard's work is an expose of "high" and "low" art. Themes of transcendent religious experience are rendered with hardware store materials like pine wood and latex paint, vestiges of his low-income background. In the same way, Kellard makes the divinity of the Christian tradition accessible by portraying it with a style that quotes pop culture icons.

I appreciate how Kellard's work rethinks the humanity of Christ. We witness Christ's sorrows and his joys, his good days and his bad days in carefully crafted woodcarvings. We also experience Kellard's own process of healing and how intensely he relied on the mercy of Christ. In his largest installation "Healing, Learned Art of Compassion" the face of Christ resembles that of someone with AIDS. His eyes are sunken in. He looks grey with illness. In this practice of empathy, Kellard sees himself as someone both broken and sanctified, sick and well.

When you go to see "The Learned Art of Compassion," you will be blessed by the honest storytelling of these works. Time spent in the exhibition leaves the viewer with a renewed sense of what it means to be well, and hopefully, a lesson on how to learn compassion.  

Regular museum hours are 11 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is free, though there is a suggested donation of $5 or $1 for students and children. Call (314) 977-7170 or visit the MOCRA web site for more information.

Photo: Adrian Kellard, St. Francis screen, 1985.
Latex on wood with hinges. Collection of Antonia Lasicki and
William Devia, Niskayuna, NY.

During yesterday's matinee performance of Billy Elliot the Musical at the Fox Theatre, I heard weeping in the seat behind me. I looked back to see tears streaming down the face of a handsome, bearded man in his fifties. As Billy took his last bow and the curtain dropped, the theatre lights slowly unveiled a crowd of people warm with the thrill of inspiration. And, to the delight of screenwriter Lee Hall, a fair number of them were men.

Billy Elliot is not only riveting in its inventive set production and impeccable choreography; it is also a great story. Set in a small town in England in 1984, the musical captures The National Union of Mine Worker's strike against the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. While the story is largely interested in the economic depravation resulting from the strike, it centers on Billy, a coal miner's son who wants to become a ballet dancer. More so than the film Billy Elliot, the theatre production focuses on the mining community: their struggle to find work, live with no hope of social mobility and, eventually, come together to send Billy to ballet school in London.

Director Stehphen Daldry teamed with Elton John, who wrote music specifically for the production. John saw the premier of the film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, and, like the sobbing audience member behind me, left the theatre deeply affected. John could relate to the elemental themes in the story (trying to be something out of the ordinary, breaking free from parents' expectations) and proposed the idea for adaptation to Daldry. Since its debut in 2005, Billy Elliot the Musical has received more than 70 awards and ten Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

The most creative element of the production shows itself in how the rowdy, angry miners and the delicate ballerinas share the stage and the same musical numbers. In the amalgam of little girls in leotards, bawdy drinkers with protest signs, and tried, homely mothers, the message of each scene never loses its focus.  The viewer at once experiences Billy's passion for the ballet and the econmic distaster with in the mining community.

Some critics are quick to caution parents that the language of Billy Elliot the Musical is at times ribald and quite crude. It's true. But these are the voices of kids who come from a working class mining town and so, reasonably, they speak with a little edge. Despite this qualm, Billy Eliot cannot be missed. Everyone from young children to theater gurus to teary-eyed dads will love the heart, grit and passion of such a legendary performance. 

See Billy Elliot the Musical at the Fox from now until November 13, 2011. Tickets are available at fabulousfox.com

Photo credit: Michael Brosilow

Photo by Peter Wochniak

It's a simple story. A young woman prepares to marry a good man, but her heart still draws her to a bad one. But, thanks to playwright Federico Garcia Lorca and the always-creative Philip Boehm and Upstream Theatre, Blood Wedding is a feast for the senses.

We meet a mother who mourns her murdered husband and son as much as she adores her surviving son. Her sense of dread at losing her only remaining family to marriage foreshadows a more permanent loss. We meet a father who wants his obedient daughter to make a profitable match and provide him grandsons to work his land. The daughter's passions seem to lie elsewhere, however, foreshadowing a sad end for this couple. And we meet a bloodthirsty moon and his friend Death, who will control these passionate characters to tragic effect.

Live musical accompaniment by Lliam Christy adds to the passion and pain. Set Design by Michael Heil creates a world so dry your throat yearns for water. And the gorgeous costumes by Michele Siler make me wish I could be transported just for a moment to early 20th Century rural Spain.

Blood Wedding, directed by Upstream Theatre's artistic director Philip Boehm and starring Elizabeth Ann Townsend, Michael James Reed, Linda Kennedy, Kelsea Victoria McLean, J. Samuel Davis, Alessandra Silva, Peter Mayer, Julie Lawton, Jef Awada and Aaron Orion Baker, runs through October 23 at the Kranzberg Theatre in Grand Center. Tickets and information are available at Upstream Theater's website or Facebook page.

Has passion ever led you to a dangerous place? Share your thoughts by clicking on "Comments," below.

Photo by John Lamb

The state wants to commit a woman to a mental institution because her doctor, her parents and the prosecutor believe her behavior is wildly inappropriate for a lady of her upper class background. She is not demure and prim; she speaks her mind; she is brutally blunt about her sexual life, and those closest to her simply cannot accept that these are the actions of a rational mind. No, this isn't the 18th Century. It's 1979, and it's the crux of the conflict in Nuts at St. Louis Actors' Studio.

Nuts was a Broadway success in 1980 and a hit film starring Barbra Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss in 1987. While we can hope that our attitudes about mental illness - and, frankly, about women - have since changed for the better, it's still a harrowing story to watch. Where is the line between protection and imprisonment, whether it's drawn by one's family or one's government?

Playwright Tom Topor began his writing career as a journalist for the New York Post, covering the police beat and spending hours in courtrooms and psychiatric wards, eventually turning that experience into "ripped from the headlines" tales (such as Nuts and the film The Accused, starring Jodie Foster) long before Law and Order did the same for television.

Nuts, directed by Milt Zoth and starring Keith Thompson, William Roth, Alan McClintock, Donna Weinsting, John Contini, Steve Callahan, Rachel Visocan, Bob Harvey and Lara Buck, is the current offering of St. Louis Actors' Studio's "Law and Order" season and runs through October 23rd at The Gaslight Theatre - 360 North Boyle Avenue, next to the West End Grill and Pub. Tickets and information are available at St. Louis Actors' Studio's website and Facebook page.

We have all been misunderstood by those closest to us. Hopefully your experiences aren't as extreme as those exposed in Nuts, but you can share your own story by clicking on "Comments," below.

When I was twelve years old, my father and I took a bus through the countryside outside of Paris to spend the day in the quaint village of Givereny where Claude Monet lived and painted.  We crossed the same rickety wood planks that inspired his Japanese bridge paintings, lunched on cheese and baguettes alongside little garden paths, and passed through the same threshold of the house where Monet and his family lived for over forty years.

Seeing the Saint Louis Art Museum's new exhibit "Monet's Water Lilies" refreshed in my mind the wonder of that day, and also unleashed a new, informed fascination with the life and work of the Impressionist painter. Upon entering the exhibit, guests are greeted by Monet himself as captured in rare footage from 1915. Shot with grainy, black and white film, the silent and serene observation of Monet at his painting stool (brush in hand, dressed in a white, crisp suit, smoking a cigarette) offers the kind of intimacy with the artist rarely seen in feature exhibits.  Monet looks tender, grandfatherly and kind, and perhaps this kind of introduction readies the viewer for an even more personal engagement with a world-renowned work.

The main event of "Monet's Water Lilies" is the famous triptych (or three-panel series), "Agapanthus." Named after the African Lilly, the painting once featured an Agapanthus plant, which Monet ultimately painted out. From the time of Monet's death until thirty years later, "Agapanthus" was stored in Monet's studios and largely ignored. It wasn't until the late fifties that the triptych was purchased by three institutions: the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City and the Cleveland Museum of Art. SLAM's momentous exhibit is the first time the three sections have been united since.

In the central room of the exhibition, a comfortable stretch of seating runs the length of the entire triptych and invites guests to take a seat and get lost in the Givereny landscape. For a painting absent of a horizontal line, this work achieves incredible dimension while working in a flat space. The gentle movement in color drifts from reflections of sky, to lily pads, to the vague point of shore. Guests whisper, a woman cups her face in her hand, and a group of students relish in the quiet romance of getting to know a man by the strokes of a brush: these are the small glories of "Monet's Water Lilies."

See the exhibit from now until January 22, 2012. SLAM is offering a series of classes and workshops centered on Monet's work from now until January 22, 2012. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for students and seniors, $6 for children 6 to 12, free for children younger than 6, free to Members every day, and free to all on Fridays. An audio tour accompanies the exhibition and is included in the price of $8 and $10 tickets. Audio tours are available on Fridays for $3. Purchase tickets at slam.org.

From now until January 9, 2012, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will showcase "Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany," one of my favorite exhibitions of the year.  The collection is a thoughtful look at the social and cultural responses to a digitized, globalized, and standardized modern era. "Precarious Worlds" tells the story of the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Cold War as Germany reimagines itself in light of a new political landscape. Just as much a history lesson as an art exhibition, guests of the Kemper will get a feel for the German identity in the '90s to the present.

When I went to see "Precarious Worlds," I was amazed by the range of expression within the exhibition. Each work deals with the tension between reality and fantasy with unexpected and unique technique.  Wolfgang Tilmans' photographs, for instance, challenge what we expect from enlarged photography by blowing up a standard-sized image to abstract, dreamy proportions. I really love the artist's approach in making "Silver 71." He creates a photo without a camera, pushing photosensitive paper through a processor to capture the imprints left by dirt and residue in the machine. His work is technically a photo, although it comes off looking more like a painting.

I watched in amusement as a family of five (baby in tow!) approached Corinne Wasmuht's "Llanganuco Falls," a dreamscape of inverted waterfalls and psychedelic pastels. The father turned to his darling, polka-dotted daughters: "What's going on here?" The urbane twelve year old with feathers in her hair spoke up: "For me, some of them look like waterfalls upside down." She hesitated. "I can't really explain what I see. But it's beautiful."

In a lot of ways, the experience of seeing "Precarious Worlds" on Community Day was the perfect rendering of exactly what the artists were getting at: rethinking reality with childlike imagination. I love that children seem to understand the secrets of these pieces with incredible intuition (perhaps more so than their musing parents!) They pick up on the adult issues (the pain of war, feelings of uncertainty, loss) but also celebrate the quiet mystery of the exhibit with sweet, innocent remarks.

"Precarious Worlds" is free and open to the public from September 9, 2011 to January 9, 2012. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum is located on the campus of Washington University. For more information, call (314) 935-4523 or visit kemperartmusuem.wustl.edu.

Image caption:  Corinne Wasmuht, Llanganuco Falls, 2008. Oil on wood, 117 1/4 x 153 1/2". Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis. University purchase with funds from the David Woods Kemper Memorial Foundation, 2011.

To improve accessibility to the five exhibition openings, the galleries are teaming up to provide a shuttle to connect the Kemper and the Steinberg Gallery at Washington University with the three featured galleries in the Grand Center District. Admission to all five galleries is free, as is the shuttle.

Getting Started
With public receptions are at different times, the smart money is on starting at the Grand Center District. There is an excellent selection of restaurants is within walking distance of the museums.

Bruno David Gallery
The opening reception at the Bruno David Gallery begins at 5 p.m. and features works by four artists: Leslie Laskey (also featured at the Steinberg gallery) - "S.E.N.T.:Security Envelopes Now Tampered;" Kelley Johnson: "Works on Paper Series;" "MoPA (Museum of Pocket Art): Retrospective;" and William Morris: "Atraxia."

Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
The exhibition generating the most buzz is Reflections of the Buddha at the Pulitzer. The exhibit brings together images of the Buddha from different periods and different parts of Asia.  It opens at 5 p.m. with a Buddist chant at 6 p.m.  Emily Pulitzer and senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra will make opening remarks at 6:30 p.m.

Contemporary Art Museum
Australian artist David Noonan has his first US solo next door at the Contemporary Art Museum. The public reception begins at 7 p.m. Noonan's art uses different mediums to create a sense of mystery and challenge perceptions.

Mildred Kemper Lane Art Museum
There are two new exhibitions at the Kemper opening at 7pm. "Precarious Worlds: Contemporary Art from Germany" explores the post-Wall zeitgeist found in these recent additions to the Kemper's permanent collection. Tomas Saraceno: CLOUD-SPECIFIC is a fascinating partially aerial installation that envisions a world of living in the sky -- not in the Jetsons' sense, but instead in natural constructs such as spider webs, clouds and bubbles.

Art is said to have the ability to take you to different places, and it's difficult to imagine that adage being more true than here in St. Louis on September 9.

You can follow Drew on Twitter

What better way to kick off the arts season in St. Louis than with a world-class, plein air symphony in Forest park? Trading the formality of Powell Hall's velvet seats for picnic blankets on Art Hill, the St. Louis Symphony's annual Free Forest Park Concert plays to the casual music-lover and the symphonic-savant alike.

Led by prepossessing Resident Conductor Ward Stare, the orchestra takes the stage as sunset begins and performs classical favorites from Strauss, Beethoven, Mahler and Stravinsky intermingled with fun and familiar tunes from West Side Story, Mary Poppins and even Harry Potter. By the time the Stars and Stripes Forever finale rings out under the stars and fireworks bloom over the Grand Basin, you may have a tear in your eye.

So, come out Thursday, September 8th at 7 p.m. and enjoy the arts and the outdoors as two of St. Louis's most prized institutions make sweet music together. 

See event information on the Saint Louis Symphony webpage.

By Danielle Sommer, Artszipper Blogger

Everything from comedy to experimental film is packed into the 2011 Stella Artois St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, August 14-18.  What these films have in common, in fact, the only thing they have in common is that they all enjoy a St. Louis connection.  There are four fictional feature films and three feature length documentaries – that sounds pretty manageable right?  Like having appetizers for dinner, it is in fact, the short films that make up the main course of the Showcase (94 films total). 

There is an interesting double feature of artistic and experimental short films on Monday.  At 5 p.m., the best of the films from the Citygarden and Dreamscapes film competitions will be screened – followed by the Experimental Shorts Program starting at 9:30.  The updated version of the hit cartoon Voltron will be screened at 7p.m. on Thursday.  Jeremy Corray, Voltron Supervising Producer, is excited about, "bringing a little Comic-Con to St. Louis," with Trivia, Q&A, and an appearance by Voltron right after the movie.

The jury of five St. Louis film critics will have the difficult job of determining the award-winners.  Artistic Director of Cinema St. Louis, Chris Clark, says, "This group of films is as strong or stronger as any we have seen."  The STL glitterati of the cast and crew of the films (and entourages/families) will be on hand at Blueberry Hill for the Thursday, August 18th Closing-Night Awards Party.  The twenty SLFS films selected to screen at the St. Louis International Film Festival November 20-20 will also be announced.

Films are $12 but there are discounts for students and Cinema St. Louis members.  All films will be Shown at the ornate Tivoli Theater in the U-City Loop.  If you are interested in volunteering to help with SLFS, contact Brian Spath brian@cinemastlouis.org

Follow Drew on Twitter www.twitter.com/svo1905/