[chesterfield]
Public artist Catharine Magel is no slouch when it comes to creating mosaics that inspire. She’s the creative force behind numerous mosaic sculptures throughout the metro. Air, Land & Rivers is an ambitious project comprised of the mosaic-covered sides of three fountains located throughout St. Louis Premium Outlets mall (pictured above). No matter how cold it is, the panels evoke spring and summer with flowers, dragonflies, frogs, fish, turtles and water birds common to a bottomland environment where zillions of peepers peep in the spring. Earth Rabbit and After Hours are in Grand Center in Strauss Park, located at N. Grand Boulevard and Washington Avenue. Magel refers to the rabbit as “our cultural hero.” (Um, très obscure, but OK.) After Hours features the tiled images of jazz trumpeters Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong—makes sense as Jazz at the Bistro is a few short steps away. Bix was white, Louis was black; Magel designed the piece “to remind us of how jazz was the precursor to the Civil Rights movement.” At Laumeier Sculpture Park is a whimsical, cat-headed piece with openings that kids love to clamber through. Perhaps Magel’s most recent public piece is Inflorescence at Webster Groves Sculpture Garden, which opened last spring. As she has with many of her whimsical, curvaceous works, Magel covered a welded framework with wire mesh, covered with foam that she carved and coated with fiberglass, then imbued the work with a sparkling mosaic of ceramic, glass and mirrored tiles. Yes, the owner of Riverworks Studio means business, indeed. Because, subjected to the harsh vagaries of Missouri’s seasons, these captivating creations are constructed to be rugged. Let’s hope they’ll be here quite a while. (Pictured, above)
[clayton]
Awhile back, tire slashers sliced up the rubber doughnuts of a dozen Des Peres vehicles. Hate that sentence? Well, as observers of the news, we find the following recent TV headline just as silly: “30 Vehicles Hit by Car Clouters.” Oh, well; maybe we’re just jealous. Or not. At any rate, on occasion vandals take out their unbridled, perhaps youthful, aggression on other people’s property. Since many cars are on the street in quiet neighborhoods, these knuckleheads hurriedly smash windows and grab whatever they can get their hands on inside. And TV stations tend to air images of busted-out car windows to illustrate the mayhem. Understandably, owners are angry, but doesn’t insurance soothe that, at least a little? But, wait … could this mob of mobile marauders be on the move? Clayton cops reportedly are investigating whether the rash of recent auto break-ins is related to any others in the area. Calls to mind a sequence on a news blooper reel, where a reporter is hoping to show just how easy it is to break into a car. Using a claw hammer, he tries the shot several times, but the hammer just bounces off the window in about a half-dozen takes. Obviously frustrated, the intrepid newsman swings at the window one last time, much harder. But the window still won’t break. Instead, a split-second after the massive blow, the window simply slides down. The reporter’s befuddled expression? Priceless.
[creve coeur]
Want a chopped-to-order salad that is probably awesome if you’re fond of noshing greenery? Fans of Crushed Red, which debuted in Clayton in 2012 and then opened a second location in Kirkwood, are delighted there’ll be a third installment of the ‘fast casual’ restaurant in Creve Coeur come spring, in the City Place complex. The eatery, which concentrates on what some might call rabbit food, as well as hand-stretched pizzas and savory soups, will take over the space vacated by a hair salon at 11635 Olive Blvd. Plans to open another location in the CWE were shelved in 2013. Of course, many of the hungry hares that eat at a Crushed Red are omnivores, enjoying salads, pizza and soups that include chicken, turkey, steak, shrimp and tuna. Yes, some prefer animal flesh to the flesh of the lettuce, fresh though it may be. Moi aussi.
[st. charles]
Would the person who left $1,200 in cash inside the pocket of some clothing donated to Goodwill recently please raise his hand … er, her hand … um … their hands? Tell you what. How about we give 50 cents to each of the 2,400 of you who’ve come to claim the missing money. Criminy. Like calls from distant relatives to lottery winners, this has to bring out the worst in people. Folks at the Goodwill store in St. Charles, 2420 West Clay St., must have heard all kinds of likely stories since an employee found the cash a few weeks ago. Or, maybe a surveillance camera caught the image of the car whose driver made what is believed to be an oversight. At any rate, anyone who would like to come forward to claim the money is asked to call 314.982.8802. Go ahead; try to discern the license plate in the photo of the car. Oh, your aunt has the car today? Hmmm. Operators are standing by.
[st. louis]
It’s a very big airplane. And it’s a very big deal, both here and in Washington state. Most of Boeing’s 777X commercial airliners will be constructed in Everett, Wash., but a whole bunch of parts will be made right here in the Show-Me State at a composite parts plant near Lambert Field and Boeing headquarters. And, as someone once said, parts is parts. It may not be the whole shebang, but if you remember there sure was a lot of hoopla surrounding the fierce competition awhile back over who would get to build what, and where. At least this big bird will be built in the good old U.S. of A. Construction has begun on the wing factory in Washington, which will produce the 114-foot-long, 23-foot-wide, composite wings, the largest Boeing has ever made. And groundbreaking was held here last month for the parts facility, with the guv and local congressional dignitaries Ann Wagner and Lacy Clay on hand to inaugurate the manufacturer of various gizmos and whatchamacallits for the aircraft. (We hope they design tray tables that don’t have to remain in the fully upright and locked position during takeoff and landing.) There are 300-some orders for the plane so far, which is projected to roll off the assembly line in 2020 to compete with the Airbus A350. Our parts plant will be fully operational in 2016.
[webster groves]
Fred Teutenberg Sr., who died last month at 75, was locally famous as the announcer and star of the wacky and notoriously tacky commercials for Dirt Cheap, then Fred’s Cheapo Depot, deep-discount liquor and cigarette stores. That is, if you could ignore the big yellow chicken he always had nearby in the red-and-white striped bathing suit. Teutenberg, who had a unique skill at self-deprecation, was a Webster Groves native living in Brentwood when he passed away. He would say, “The more she drinks, the better you look.” Dirt Cheap was well known throughout the metro as “the last refuge of the persecuted smoker.” Then Cheapo Depot was where you could get “all your favorite vices at cheaper prices.” Despite all his on-air silliness, Teutenberg was no stranger to tragedy. He lost his son, daughter-in-law and five grandchildren in the 2011 Alabama crash of a small plane Teutenberg Jr. was piloting.
[wildwood]
‘Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,’ goes the tired screed of some Americans who read the Second Amendment a certain way. Last summer in Wildwood, kids playing inside found a handgun atop a dresser and one of them shot the other in the leg. So, little kids shoot little kids. Well, the grandma whose house the young reprobates were in at the time was charged last week for endangering the life of a child. Her 6-year-old grandson may have accidentally shot himself, or another kid may have done it, and the unholstered, unlocked-up handgun wasn’t set out there on purpose, of course. In what could have been a tragedy, the lucky boy was treated and released. Regardless of who’s to blame here, somebody got hurt because a gun was where it wasn’t supposed to be. Wildwood isn’t the only well-to-do community with the occasional gun problem. Last month, a student brought a loaded handgun to Ladue Horton Watkins High School. It was confiscated and the student arrested before classes started. Obviously there’s a lot more to the gun debate than one pat phrase.
