The Gallery at the Library

08/21/2026

This week's featured artist is Jane Birdsall-Lander! https://dictionarypoemproject.com/

Artist Statement:

My career as an artist, writer and an interdisciplinary curricula specialist has been driven by my interests in art, language, arts education, community and the human condition.

I received a Project Room Grant from the Forum for Contemporary Art now CAM (Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis) where I had a one-person show of poetry and sculpture titled Girlslife: Artifacts and Testimony. I am the recipient of an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission for my Dictionary Poem Project (link) and I am a graduate of the Community Artists Training Institute (CAT) , also through the Regional Arts Commission. I have had solo exhibits at the Kranzberg High Low Gallery in St. Louis, the Schmidt Art Center, Belleville IL, Elliot Smith Contemporary Art and Duane Reed Gallery both in St. Louis. Most recently I exhibited my sculpture at Lambert International Airport. My poems have been published in numerous journals including the Dictionary Poem Project, Edition II in December Magazine.

I have taught and supervised teachers in the public schools and worked at the St. Louis Art Museum as a museum educator in the Arts in the Basic Curriculum Program. I am the author and project manager of St. Louis Metro Arts in Transit’s Public Art Curriculum Kit which was supported by a National Endowment for the Arts grant. I am the coauthor and project manager of the St. Louis Public Art Curriculum Kit, which was supported by a consortium of ten regional arts organizations and is a national model for interdisciplinary arts education. Both kits are interdisciplinary, free, educational resources for teachers and the public. As vice chair of the Clayton Art Commission, I worked with Via Partnership to write and implement Clayton’s first public art plan and to raise funds for and to commission Clayton’s first public artwork, Uncertainty of Ground State Fluctuations by Alice Aycock.

My work is in private collections in California, Missouri, New Jersey, Washington DC, North Carolina, Michigan, Oregon, New Mexico and New York as well as in Washington University’s Special Collections, The Writer’s Place in Kansas City, the Mitchell Museum in Mt. Vernon Illinois and the Missouri Historical Society.

Contemporary Visionaries is free and open to the public until September 18. All artwork is available to purchase. This exhibit is sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of New Haven.

08/21/2026

CALL FOR ART: URBANSCAPES - The Gallery at the Library invites artists to submit work for "Urbanscapes," an exhibition celebrating the city as living art. From weathered storefronts to glittering skylines, this exhibit explores the textures, rhythms, and stories woven into urban life.

All art mediums are encouraged.

Visit us at scenicregional.org/gallery to find the online entry form and additional information. All artwork entered into the show must be available for purchase.

The Gallery at the Library is located in Hermann, Missouri.

08/14/2026

This week's featured artist is Margaret Keller! https://margaretkellerstudio.com/

Artist Bio:

With related series in media that includes immersive gallery-sized installations, oil painting, watercolor, drawing, printmaking, 3-D printed sculpture, and laser cutting, Keller examines the interrelationships between our contemporary culture, the natural environment, and technology. Current series encompass looking at landscapes, natural disasters, and surveillance in our digital age. Her art is surprising, constantly morphing, and far-ranging in concept and experimentation.

Keller's installations include a 130 foot-long aluminum sculpture of the navigable Missouri River, Riverbend, for The Gateway Arch National Park; a holographic and aluminum memorial to future lost trees, Botanica absentia, for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; a view of how we see nature with The Space Between Series in multiple public institutions including The Mitchell Museum in Mt. Vernon, IL; a spherical eyeball surveillance 'flag', Eyes Wide Open, for the flagpole gallery STNDRD-Gallery in Granite City, IL; Studio Window Series at The Arkansas Art Center Museum in Little Rock; surveillance artworks including an animated video at Gallery 210 in St. Louis; a 54 foot-long installation Studio Window Series at Lambert International Airport; and Disaster Series upcoming in May 2026 at the Climate Imaginarium gallery in Brooklyn, NYC.

Margaret Keller's art has been exhibited and/or collected by over fifty galleries, museums, and art centers, including Square, BJC Healthcare, The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, and The William and Florence Schmidt Art Center. Currently working as an environmental artist, Keller is a former full-time professor of art at Meramec College STLCC and visiting associate professor of art at Washington University and Santa Reparata In Florence, Italy. Keller taught studio art while curating and reviewing contemporary art exhibitions. Her critical writing has been featured in Art in America, the New Art Examiner, All the Art, and temporaryartreview, among other publications. She is a signature member of The National Watercolor Society and The Transparent Watercolor Society of America.

Contemporary Visionaries is free and open to the public until September 18. All artwork is available to purchase. This exhibit is sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of New Haven.

08/10/2026

A call for art for January exhibit is now open! Urbanscapes will explore the city as art, from weathered storefronts to glittering skylines and the people in between. All mediums are encouraged.

Go to scenicregional.org/gallery to submit work.

08/07/2026

This week’s featured artist is Sue Giannotti! https://www.suegiannotti.com/

Artist Bio:

Sue Giannotti is a classically trained mosaic artist, a graduate of Washington University,
and the founder of Mosaic Opus Studio near St. Louis, Missouri. She creates fine art
and architectural mosaics, often grounded in meditation and introspection using a
subdued palette. She has been creating mosaics for twenty-five years and focuses on
works of minimalism, quiet and peacefulness-- inviting the viewer to discover the
calming presence of silence.

Originally trained in Venice, Italy, she is captivated by the history and ancient language
of the mosaic medium and continuously seeks to uncover and decipher its myriad
nuances. As visiting artist instructor at The Chicago Mosaic School and across the U.S.
for twenty years, she is a strong advocate that the roots of this millennia-old language
not be lost to passivity or modernity, while in her studio she simultaneously explores the
medium’s contemporary expression.

Her art has been exhibited and collected in the USA, Italy, France, Australia, and Japan,
and her architectural commissions are part of homes, offices, and liturgical sites in St.
Louis, Indiana, and New York City.

Contemporary Visionaries is free and open the public until September 18. All artwork is available to purchase. This exhibit is sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of New Haven.

07/31/2026

This week’s featured artist is Luanne Rimel! https://www.luannerimel.com/

Artist Statement:

My work explores the passage of time and lingering memory of the present. I find beauty in ephemeral “found” cloth. I am drawn to the ability of cloth to reveal, hide, obscure and protect. In the Bed Series, images of the unmade bed – one third of our lives spent with that piece of furniture - from birth, sleep, love, illness and death – reveal a body just there. In the Cloth in the Landscape Series, photographs of protected cloth-draped buildings under construction become metaphors for existence and memory, alluding to bones and skin. Images of once cherished linens hint to history and memory of those passed, becoming small landscapes as they stack in layers in the Strata Series. And the accidental marks and folds on a painter’s drop cloth, laid to protect the ground, fall leaves scattered on the surface, create intimate and abstract still lifes in the Groundcover Series. All of these images take on new meaning and significance as I navigate the surfaces. In the earlier Stitched Figures Series, photographs of statues frozen in stone, from museums, historic sites, and cemeteries are densely hand quilted, each piece quietly taking its own shape as the threads are gently drawn and pulled through the cloth.

Merging domestic textile practices and contemporary technology, the found cloth images are printed onto prepared silk with a wide format printer and archival inks and detailed sections are collaged and stitched onto the cloth, referencing earlier domestic practices of mending and repair. I carefully investigate the colors and patterns in the images and utilize embroidery and quilting stitches to slowly activate the surface, creating shadows and textures, alluding to the marking of time.

Contemporary Visionaries is free and open to the public until September 18. All artwork is available for purchase. This exhibit is sponsored by Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of New Haven.

07/24/2026

This week’s featured artist is Andrea Vadner! https://www.vadner.com/

Andrea will be doing an artist talk in the Gallery tomorrow, July 25 at 2pm. This is an exciting opportunity to learn about her creative process and explore the 24 pieces exhibited with us.

Artist Statement:

In Fresh Air

ART STILL HAS TRUTH. TAKE REFUGE THERE.
Matthew Arnold 1822-1888

“Of all of the games of childhood, making pictures was the Best.
Of all of the substrates One could color on, Paper IS the Best.
Of all of the topics one could attempt to illuminate, The Earth and its Creatures are the Best.

I think by now I have tried or done "Everything" in the Visual Arts: movies, video, oil acrylic ink and watercolor, paper canvas wood and steel, leather and clay, high, low and raku, painting, sculpture, pots, small and monumental, writing illustration and bookbinding, chainsaw carving, construction and deconstruction, welding, metalsmithing, stone setting, knapping, costume, set, and interior design, backdrops, light shows, enameling, glass blowing, paper making, poster design, all printmaking, framing, photography, Happenings, Opera, furniture build and finish, murals..... across all genres...you get the idea.

Of all of this, paper and Crayolas and Grandma's watercolors were the First and have carried me through and brought me Home. I have come to focus finally, on things which are Basic, True, and Receptive: Earth, Trees, Teachers, Water, Women, and Living Spaces. These are things I know about. These are things I see acted on and changed by the busy lesser doings around us, things which are mortified but endure.

I began making things because it was fun, challenging, rewarding, and finally a refuge from Chaos and despair. I stop and paint when things are so quiet, so busy and Alive, so beautiful and basic that you know someone will come to plunder and change them forever. I treasure the many places I have been, and admit that by my going, I am a Plunderer myself. That's why I continue to make, and why I make images of Women who Continue walking through Every Challenge of our culture. I can choose the Beauty and put aside the Fear, every time I Color.

Do what you need to do. Help where you can. Leave it better than you found it. This is my Raising, I take refuge here.”

Contemporary Visionaries is free and open to the public until September 18. All artwork is available for purchase.

07/24/2026

Our call for art for our January-March 2027 exhibit is now live!

Go to scenicregional.org/gallery to find out more information and to submit work.

07/22/2026

One of our featured artists for Contemporary Visionaries, Andrea Vadner, is giving an artist talk on Saturday, July 25 at 2pm. Andrea will take viewers through her creative process as she explores the 24 pieces that she is currently exhibiting with us.

To sign up, go to https://scenicregional.librarycalendar.com/event/andrea-vadner-art-talk-placeholder-57263

07/15/2026

ARTIST TALK: ANDREA VADNER - Meet nationally renowned watercolorist Andrea Vadner as she explores her artistic journey, then take a guided tour of her exhibited work. Limited to 60 attendees. To RSVP, call 573-486-2024, stop by the branch, or register online at https://bit.ly/4gGe2oG

The Gallery at the Library is a 2,000-square-foot art gallery located inside the Hermann branch of Scenic Regional Library, which hosts four three-month-long exhibits each year. The gallery is free and open to the public. All artwork is for sale.