Amy Potts & Jeff Joiner

January 9 - March 31, 2004

Amy Potts:

Photographs of the St. Louis Arch

Artist's Statement

"There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass cover e d and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it," ( Cry, The Beloved Country , Alan Paton).

"...lovely beyond any singing of it." Is the Arch that beautiful? Perhaps not, but these words belonging to Alan Paton bring to mind the solitary, monumental, modern beauty of Eero Saarinen's monument to westward expansion of the United States . These photographs attempt to capture the stunning quality of soaring solidity carried to the sky in St. Louis .

I believe that everyone has some creative talent. Some can see beauty, some can make visual art, some make music. There are all kinds of beauty. I am glad for every person who takes the time to wander in this gallery and take the time for beauty. If less is more, this is a good place to start doing less and enjoying more.

Biography

Amy Potts' life as an artist has roots in her Great-Great Aunt, a photographer and painter in the early 1900s and her Grandfather, a painter and wood carver in his late 80s. Amy is an artist and teacher presently teaching K-8 Art. She has lived in Missouri eight years. After receiving a Bachelor's degree in Art she returned to school and obtained a Master of Science in Teaching. She has been teaching ever since.

Jeff Joiner:

German Past And Present In A Small Missouri Town

Artist's Statement

Arguably no other group of people have had such an enduring impact on the history and culture of Missouri than the hundreds of thousands of Germans who immigrated to the state over the course of its nearly 200-year history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many places in Missouri looked and sounded as much German as they did American. One such place was Cole Camp and sur r ounding Benton County where the first German settlers arrived in the 1830s speaking Plattdutsch, or Low German, a dialect that can still be heard today in Cole Camp, a town fiercely proud of its past and just as anxious to preserve it.

It is here that my journey to document a group of people began several years ago and continues today. Through my photographs I want to show how a people adopt and change a place and how a place changes them. The German past in Benton County can be found in Lutheran Church sanctuaries and cemeteries, in century-old farm houses and log barns, in the Lord's Prayer printed in German and hanging on kitchen walls, as well as occasionally still recited, and, most recognizably, in the faces of the descendents of those early German immigrants. Though time has changed the community, if one looks closely, the German past in Cole Camp is not so far removed.

Biography

Jeff Joiner has been a photographer, writer and editor for 20 years. Most of that time has been spent exploring his native Missouri as a member of the staff of Rural Missouri Magazine.

Anyone wishing pricing or other information about the items exhibited are encouraged to contact the artist directly.

To contact Amy Potts about her work:

(573)635-0339

To contact Jeff Joiner about his work:

jjoiner@mchsi.com

(573)659-7319

1603 Independence Drive ,

Jefferson City , MO 65109