Interview with artist Margaret Keller

by Roxanne Phillips

Margaret Keller. (Installation detail) “Botanica absentia.” 2019. 10’x12’x11’. NFS. Presented at CAMSTL. Photo by Josh Rowan.

Margaret Keller. (Installation detail) “Botanica absentia.” 2019. 10’x12’x11’. NFS. Presented at CAMSTL. Photo by Josh Rowan.

Roxanne Phillips: What is the best thing about St. Louis for your art practice?
Margaret Keller: The massive support here!! I guess this is me cheering for St. Louis as a place for artists and art. I know there is A LOT wrong with St. Louis in so many ways. I have found St. Louis to be a place with significant opportunities, non-profits, and institutions for artists to receive support. One of these especially, is the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis with their programs that award major fellowships and grants. Receiving their Support Grants first and then being selected for the 2019 Fellowship Award made a quantum leap forward for my art career possible by providing funding of $20,000 to use for whatever I needed – materials, fabrication, equipment, travel, etc. Some of those funds went towards the many unusual, expensive materials I needed for my exhibit "Botanica absentia," installed at CAMSTL in Fall 2019 and at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts in 2020 as part of my solo exhibition Leaning on Nature.

Margaret Keller. (Installation detail) "The Space Between Series." 2020.  Oil on Canvas, Mixed Media, 32’x14’. NFS. Presented at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts. Photo courtesy Rusty Freeman, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts.

Margaret Keller. (Installation detail) “The Space Between Series – Link.” 2020. Laser-cut Sculpture, 14’x26”. Presented at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts. Photo courtesy Rusty Freeman, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts.

We are lucky to have Critical Mass for the Visual Arts; they support artists in many creative ways, with grants, interviews (I participated in their 5 Questions Podcast), community gatherings, competitive projects, sharing of information/opportunities, and exhibits. Critical Mass made possible my public art sculpture, Riverbend, at The Gateway Arch through their Public Works Project Award in 2018.

 

Margaret Keller. “Riverbend at The Gateway Arch.” 2018. Alumigraphics Silver, 133’.

Alternative art spaces play a major role in making St. Louis a vital home for artists too. Here are four I’d like to highlight:

1. The Luminary presents art as a voice of our time, a means of building new futures, and as a lens to pursue a more equitable and interconnected community.
2. The artist-owned cooperative gallery Monaco "follows in a long tradition of artist-run spaces where we can collaborate to create opportunities for ourselves and our communities in places where they are few or nonexistent” as explained by Jose Guadalupe Garza and by Edo Rosenblith, who explains they are “engaging with a community of trusted peers and sharing resources in order to support one another. This is how artistic communities survive and thrive.” 
3. G-CADD (Granite City Art Design District) is a consortium of multiple creative project spaces -- located on the 1800 block of State Street of downtown Granite City, IL--that works to show ground-breaking art and artists.
4. STNDRD is a gallery project run by artist and curator Sage Dawson. Based in G-CADD, its exhibitions examine the power and potential of flags; the physical site consists of a 15-foot outdoor flagpole. Currently I’m fabricating an experimental flag for my exhibit there in 2021. All these spaces challenge tradition through collaborative practices that connect with the local community while also engaging with regional/national/international practices. Importantly, they focus on positive social change, along with environmental activism.

Besides the alternative spaces, there are many crucial art galleries, museums, and institutions that make the St. Louis region an art center with opportunity. Among these are Gallery 210 at UMSL, where I showed "Surveillance Series" in 2017, The Kranzberg Arts Foundation (where I will exhibit the next iteration of "Surveillance Series" in November), the William & Florence Schmidt Art Center (where I had my solo exhibit "The Space Between" in 2019), Art Saint Louis, COCA, Paul Artspace (which plays an important role is offering residencies for local, regional, national and international artists), The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (where "Botanica Absentia" was shown in 2019 as part of their Teen Museum Studies Program),  Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Saint Louis Art Museum (where I used to be Coordinator of Adult Programs), The Sheldon Art Galleries, The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, MOCRA, SLUMA, and The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts (my solo exhibit "Leaning on Nature" is currently on display), among others.
 
Artists here also have the support of art writers and major publications including St. Louis Magazine, Alive Magazine, STL Today, All the Art (which recently ceased publishing), The Webster-Kirkwood Times, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and December Magazine, all of which have been really encouraging to me personally.
 

Without all of the above, and more, my art practice would not be where it is today. There is a certain synergy in St. Louis.

RP: Would you be willing to talk about how Art Saint Louis has had an impact on your life and/or the lives of artists with whom you've directly worked through your career as an art educator?
MK: Art Saint Louis is a phenomenal presence in this region. Ever since I moved here in 1987 to attend graduate school, I have seen that it plays a major role in the arts. It offers continuing opportunities for artists to show their work in juried exhibits that have an impressive thematic/conceptual diversity. In the highly competitive art world, artists need to have opportunities to exhibit their work, along with a chance to receive recognition and monetary awards; this is what Art Saint Louis provides. The annual "Varsity Art" exhibit for regional college students has given many of my college students their first opportunity to exhibit, to understand the professional process for preparing and presenting work, and to interact with a gallery. This opportunity has been an exciting highlight for so many students! I have entered the annual "Art St. Louis, The Exhibition" and also the "Honor Awards" exhibit and was so proud to have the juror acknowledge my art with acceptance and with awards. Later I juried several of these exhibits. We are really incredibly lucky to have Art Saint Louis and its committed, hard-working, and talented staff working for St. Louis-area artists.

Artist Margaret Keller. Photo by Rick Puller.

RP: When did you begin to know what your art is about?
MK: I think always! Because as a child, I lived on rural land that was a former university apple orchard. Surrounded by woods, farms, and creeks, I pretty much lived outdoors. There weren’t any sidewalks or a neighborhood, but my two brothers and I loved exploring, trespassing, and playing in the woods. Then as an adult, at one point I lived on 400 acres of Ozark wilderness. And although I have moved back and forth between city and rural, I have always been focused on nature. My parents took us camping in the National Parks and always had something going on with nature: growing corn, strawberries, cantaloupe, and zucchini, planting trees, putting up purple martin and bluebird houses, identifying butterflies, growing flowers, etc. About age ten, I built a giant model kit of a Luna moth that I considered pretty amazing!

Margaret Keller in her St. Louis studio. Photo by Rick Puller.

 

At the start of my career, I made art about nature without political content; I painted unusual landscapes. Then my art evolved to advocate for nature and the environment. Now my work deals with climate change as an urgent threat. It comes from my sense that at this precise moment, we are at the tipping point of a world gone wrong. My concern is with the impact of humans and technology on the survival of all interdependent species on earth, as we stumble into the future.

Work in-progress in Margaret Keller's studio. Photo by Margaret Keller.

"Riverbend" public art installation in-progress in Margaret Keller's studio. Photo by Margaret Keller.

RP: Why did you choose the medium in which you work?
MK: Maybe unlike most artists, I work across so many disciplines and different media that I don’t have a chosen media. To me, the media itself is only important for how it contributes to my vision.
I guess I am pretty impractical and impetuous because usually I just jump into a brand-new process  or material I often know nothing about, because I think I need it, in order to express my ideas. I don’t usually stop to think about how hard it might be to pull something off. Instead, I work backwards from the concept. This leads to using new media that I am not familiar with, if it suits the needs of my concept. Because of this experimentation, I recently learned to laser cut and used it in a major way for my latest installation. I like utilizing new and unusual media and really enjoy brain-storming solutions. Lately, my new materials/techniques have included holographs on vinyl, embossing and die-cutting stainless-steel, dichroic Plexiglas, wood sculpture, fresco, model-building, and mold-making. And I just learned to use a debarking tool!  Although I still do a lot of painting and drawing, for over ten years I have diversified and learned new techniques such as animation and video. Starting out with unrestricted potential is how I prefer to begin a project, because ideas can always be scaled-back later. Creating immersive, large-scale environments really attracts me. I need to offer the public an interactive/participatory experience. Probably the source of this is hearing museum guards tell viewers to ‘not touch’ and ‘stay back’. Like most artists, I started with drawing, then began painting and print-making. Later I started working in installation and sculpture and then in digital media (video/animation/digital art). Pulling all these things together gives me the most options!

Margaret Keller. “Studio Window: Disaster Series – Slow Roast.” 2020. Watercolor, Graphite on Arches Paper, 30”x22”. NFS. Presented at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts. Photo by Margaret Keller.

Margaret Keller. “Studio Window: Disaster Series – Enervation AM.” 2020. Watercolor, Graphite on Arches Paper, 30”x22”. NFS. Presented at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts. Photo by Margaret Keller.

Margaret Keller. (Installation detail) “Studio Window: Disaster Series.” 2020. NFS. Presented at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts. Photo courtesy Rusty Freeman, The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts Arts.

I work with multiple but related series, including The Space Between, Studio Window: Disaster Series, Surveillance Series, Botanica absentia, and Leaning on Nature. These series just keep developing and growing over time. Several started twenty years ago and conceptually have more and more to express as time goes by. These series don’t end, although sometimes my focus is on just one, while the others temporarily go dormant.

 

Artist Margaret Keller. Photo by Rick Puller.

RP: What was the biggest opposing force that you encountered on your creative journey?
MK: Time. Working full-time, first at so many different jobs (as a historic preservation consultant for a regional planning commission, at a box factory, as a fiscal analyst for the Missouri State Legislature, and at The Saint Louis Art Museum, among others) and then working full-time teaching college art while running a college art gallery, plus having a family, all means that it has been hard to have the time I want for my art. I have a studio in Soulard and I always manage to get some art done, even if it’s never as much as I want. And I work at home, in the garage, the basement, the driveway, the library, the dining room, and the laundry room. Art has taken over the space, in a good way!

Margaret Keller with her installation at CAMSTL. “Botanica absentia.” 2019. 10’x12’x11’. NFS. Photo by Rick Puller.

Margaret Keller. (Installation detail) “Botanica absentia.” 2019. 10’x12’x11’. NFS. Presented at CAMSTL. Photo by the artist.

RP: What is your future creative life?
MK: Intensifying!
I continue to work toward my goal of increasing public awareness of climate change and nature with plans for new art that I want to bring to fruition. The ideas in Leaning on Nature link human and non-human life with ecology and the environment.

In conflict is human dependence on the natural environment and our simultaneous exploitation of it.  Seeking to unground our sense of entitlement, security, knowledge, and futurity on earth, my art continues to examine the relationships between nature, culture, and technology. My focus is the Anthropocene - the age of mankind - and our false nature/culture dichotomy.

And I’m growing my involvement in our community. Even though it’s not easy during a pandemic, increasing interactions with the community around me is more important than ever.  
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St. Louis-based multi media artist Margaret Keller is a full-time studio artist who works with installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, laser-cutting, 3-D printing, video, and mixed-media. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the U.S. and abroad. A solo exhibition of Keller's work, “Leaning on Nature,” is presented through July 19, 2020 at The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, Mt. Vernon, IL. In 2018, her public art commission "Riverbend," a 133-foot-long aluminum installation representing the Missouri River, was installed at the Gateway Arch National Park. This project was made possible with support from Critical Mass for the Visual Arts’ Public Works Project.
Her education includes Post-Graduate Study in Experimental Electronic Media (video game design, animation, digital drawing and video) at Webster University, a Master of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis (Painting), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from University of Missouri-Columbia (Drawing).
As a writer with a focus on the curatorial and critical aspects of contemporary art, her reviews have been published in Art in America, delicious line, All the Art, the New Art Examiner, and temporaryartreview. Margaret also curated over fifty exhibitions at The Meramec Contemporary Art Gallery, St. Louis. Awards include Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis’ $20,000 Fellowship Award for Excellence in Visual Art (2019).
As an art educator, Keller has taught full-time as Professor of Art at St. Louis Community College Meramec in St. Louis and has served as Visiting Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and in Florence, Italy. More recently, from 2019–2020, she was the Artist-in-Residence at The Forsyth School, St. Louis, MO. In addition, Keller has held varied positions as a Historic Preservation Consultant for NEMO Regional Planning Commission, Fiscal Analyst for the Missouri State Legislature, self-employed cake decorator, box factory worker, writer, wife, and mother of three.
Learn more about Margaret Keller: https://margaretkellerstudio.com and https://www.instagram.com/margaretkellerstudio/
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Roxanne Phillips is an artist and art educator based in St. Louis since 2001. She earned a MFA in Printmaking & Drawing from Washington University in St. Louis and BFA in Painting & Drawing from University of North Texas. Roxanne is an adjunct art instructor at Washington University in St. Louis and has worked with Art Saint Louis since 2017 as Administrative Assistant and Installer. From 2018-2020 she was Master Printer for Pele Prints. Her works have been featured in numerous exhibitions throughout the St. Louis region including at Art Saint Louis, Crossroads Art Studio & Gallery, and St. Louis Artists’ Guild. Her work is currently available at Union Studio in St. Louis. She has served as exhibit Juror for several regional exhibits & art fairs. Roxanne is past Board member of St. Louis Women’s Caucus for Art.