This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Dec. 13, 2012 - This coming Friday, Dec. 14, The Tavern of Fine Arts will welcome all comers to their “Winter Art Show Opening Celebration.” The event runs from 6 p.m. until 12:30 a.m. The photographic images, line drawings and mixed media canvases lining the walls are just part of delicacies lying in wait.
From the moment you walk into The Tavern of Fine Arts your blood pressure is likely to drop a bit. Part of that may be from the calming effect of photos at the entry of clouds lying heavy on mountains and orange clad monks in Tibetan monasteries. This gallery-bar-restaurant also has a warm, mellow feel, exactly as a weekend winter destination should.
The first room is long like a galley, with the bar and kitchen at one end. The wall of photographs comes from St. Louis local Patrick Nobles. Nobles’ easterly travels (over oceans, not the river) are made evident in his direct, sometimes intimate, images.
Many of his photographs are portraits closely shot images of men and women in bright colored fabrics adorned by giant flowers.
A large print of a plaza in Istanbul centers on a food vender protecting his wares from the rain as countless pigeons dance about him on their little red feet that somehow resemble galoshes. Nobles’ photographs suggest that he is often a fast-friend, made welcome wherever he goes, even among pigeons.
The wall opposite is reserved for the drawings of Bulgarian artist, Galina Todorova. These works could be confused as the product of many due to the variety of Todorova’s subjects and idiosyncratic technique. Their relatively smaller scale requires close attention, which can easily be achieved by sitting down at one of the café tables.
Art enthusiasts need not rotate through a room to see everything, but can linger with an evocative image while sipping hot chocolate spiked with espresso or laced with liqueur.
The back room is referred to as The Salon. This suits its purpose as a place for spoken-word and musical performance as well as for displaying visual art. The large, demanding canvases on the salon room walls come from recently deceased St. Louis artist Robert Lombardo.
Lombardo’s creations are not so much painted as constructed by applying paint and other elements to canvas. Some include lettering, the letters often join to form worded messages, like “NO TIME,” which Lombardo has stamped into an endless pattern over a white painted surface to create a black barbed wire fence out of repeated block letters. “No Time” and his “What Everybody Wants and Nobody Needs” series are dryly humorous instruction. Lombardo’s other, larger works appear as camouflaged landscapes. Without too much imagination one can see a cold winterscape hanging beside a summer field. Each canvas is a discrete environment.
The Tavern salon is luxurious but not formal, like a Roman dining room in which everyone reclines on eating couches and philosophizes. By 5 p.m., opening time, the atmosphere is already inviting. The lights are soft and low and your host knows music.
Photography, drawing and paint on canvas are but a fraction of the tableau The Tavern will offer at Friday’s “Winter Art Opening Event.” Pete Lombardo, son of Robert, will provide jazz along with his quartet. Anyone outside The Tavern’s windows looking in will see what looks like a raucous private party full of friends whose cheeks are red from the well-chosen house wines.
And though the culinary arts are not my beat, it is not possible to keep from remarking upon the many greatly underpriced epicurean delights prepared (well) with classic top-shelf ingredients. Vegetarians and connoisseurs of fine cheeses be warned, you’ve been planned for, too, and decadence awaits.
Sarah Hermes Griesbach is a free lance writer.