Out of the ordinary

Tonight the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri will have what few Cape Girardeau art galleries ever do on First Fridays -- a featured artist who's black.

And while February is officially Black History Month, this situation was not created by design.

This month's featured artists at the arts council are St. Louis-area artist Robert Ketchens -- a black oil painter, most of whose subjects are also black -- and the 18 students in Louise Bodenheimer's summer computer art class at Southeast Missouri State University. The artists will be on hand for a First Friday opening reception from 5 to 9 tonight.

Arts council executive director Delilah Tayloe admits the arts advocacy group doesn't feature many black artists, but the majority-white trend is not by choice. Tayloe said she hopes more black artists in the area will submit their work to the arts council, as Ketchens did.

"We want to reflect everybody's artistic world, and we want this to be a home for all art," said Tayloe.

Ketchens won't be the first black artist to show his work at a Cape Girardeau gallery, but he is one of few. However, the arts council didn't pick February as a month to pigeonhole Ketchens in because he's black, it just worked out that this is the month he's showing his work, Tayloe said.

"It was an element that wasn't actually considered," she said, adding that she doesn't think black artists should only be recognized one particular month of the year.

Ketchens was born and raised in New Orleans, living there until he was 19 years old. He then joined the Air Force, where he started a career as an illustrator. He would use that skill to become first a portrait artist, before starting to paint figurative pieces focusing on the human form.

"That process reminded me so much of illustration, it got to be a point where I was finding something was missing," Ketchens said of his portrait work. "I needed to express what was happening in my community, that's what led me into fine art."

Stripes by Sharon Smith

The artist says his experiences in New Orleans in his formative years influence his art today, from the bright colors he uses in his oils to the culture of the city's black community.

Tonight he'll display a series of four paintings honoring the city's jazz heritage called "Juice," each of the four depicting a musician.

"That's just a natural subject for me to go back to," Ketchens said.

Ketchens said his work often concentrates on social themes. Tonight he'll display another series called "Stereotyped/Communion" that depicts human faces with shadows covering their eyes. The nine-panel series is meant to shed light on the preconceived notions people form when they look at other people's faces.

"I have a social conscience," Ketchens said. "Most of my paintings are dealing with contemporary subjects, things that happen in my community, my country and my world."

His social conscience extends beyond his artistic creations. Ketchens is also active in the St. Louis area and Southern Illinois mentoring young people.

Still Life by Lin Wang

The human subjects of his paintings are black, Ketchens says, because that's the community he lives in.

"It's what I know, it's my community, so when I'm dealing with social issues, I have a tendency to reflect from an African-American perspective," he said.

If Ketchens' presence as an exhibiting black artist is a rare occurrence in Cape Girardeau, so is an entire exhibit dedicated to computer art. The arts council is the only local gallery known to host such an annual exhibition.

The computer art pieces portray cityscapes, people, mythological figures and other familiar items altered on a computer using color and other means.

Southeast Missouri State University art professor Louise Bodenheimer taught the class, a four-week course in which students were required to make at least 22 pieces of art on computers. Each student then selected two pieces for showing.

This is the second year the art will be exhibited at the arts council. Even though the class has been in existence for more than 10 years, Bodenheimer said computer art is still a relative newcomer on the local art scene.

"I think it's who has access to equipment, who has the know-how, the training, who's comfortable with it," Bodenheimer said. "There's people who are not comfortable with a computer, and some people think it's not art."

Every year the class is filled up with students, Bodenheimer said. The class isn't an exhaustive approach to computer art, but provides students with an introduction to the genre, she said.

"We don't get to cover everything, you just can't in four weeks, but what it does do is give the students a real nice immersion into creating imagery ... in different ways they couldn't do with more traditional methods," Bodenheimer said.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

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Want to go?

• What: Robert Ketchens, computer art class exhibition and new pieces by the Visual Arts Cooperative
• When: 5 to 9 tonight
• Where: The Arts Council of Southeast Missouri
• Info: 334-9233