Cape Girardeau to unveil fourth annual outdoor sculptures exhibit on April 6

The city of Cape Girardeau will unveil its fourth public outdoor-sculptures exhibition April 6 with a kickoff celebration at 6 p.m. at the Vasterling Suites Courtyard along Broadway.

The reception will be open to the public and include free beer tasting hosted by Minglewood Brewery, organizers said in a news release.

After the reception, participants are encouraged to walk Broadway and view the seven streetside sculptures.

The sculptures will remain along Broadway for a year, ending in April 2018.

Chosen sculptures include the “Bird House” by Andrew Arvanetes of DeKalb, Illinois; “Eyes of Dawn” by Carl Billingsley of Ayden, North Carolina; “T.H.E.B. Caution” by Jeff Boshart of Charleston, Illinois; “Urban Forest” by Richard Herzog of Athena, Georgia; “The Seeker” by James Johnson of Charleston, Illinois; “Portal” by Tommy Riefe of St. Louis; and “Grandiloquence” by Jillian Springer of Murphysboro, Illinois.

Award-winning sculptor Jennifer Torres juried the 2017 Cape Girardeau Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit with input from the city’s public-art committee.

The committee includes representatives from the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, Old Town Cape, city of Cape Girardeau and Chris Wubbena, sculpture professor at Southeast Missouri State University.

Torres, born in Queens, New York, has lived for the past 17 years in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she has her studio. She teaches sculpture at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

“A few works that really stand out are James Johnson’s ‘The Seeker,’ as it strives to draw the viewer into its architectural landscape with its surrealism-like bending of forms,” Torres said in the news release.

She also singled out Springer’s “Grandiloquence,” which she described as having a “playful disposition and interactive notion, allowing the viewer to get on and go along for the ride.”

Torres said Arvanetes’ “Bird House” sculpture is “intriguing for its nod to the well-known, homogeneous birdhouse, but yet throws in an impression of an industrialized environment that seems becoming of our modern times.”

The city’s parks and recreation department, the National Endowment for the Arts and Old Town Cape provided funding for the outdoor exhibit.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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