Art After Dark

By AU(STL) Director, Brad Edwards

On May 15th, Art Underground will be co-hosting Art After Dark: a concert featuring St. Louis soul/pop-rock sensation Fundamental Elements, a silent art auction featuring new work from our Quarterly Artists, and a social fund-raising event for one of St. Louis’s most passionate and effective non-profit organizations directly addressing the education problems in St. Louis City: Succeeding with Reading.

Succeeding With Reading, founded in 2004, inspires a love of reading and writing and builds hard skills in low-income youth that struggle with literacy. We implement classrooms which have a 3:1 student to teacher ratio, so that students are almost always next to a strong lead teacher, reading specialist, creative writing instructor, or trained volunteer tutor.  Our curriculum is termed “Balanced Literacy”, a best practice method used in the best schools across the country. This year we will give away 5000 books for students to practice their new skills.

Our goal is to raise $25,000 to buy books, train tutors, and otherwise empower hundreds of grade school kids in the city.

This event is connected to and will follow Urban Expression (event description here, details here), a comprehensive arts program for inner city students, inspiring them to tell the stories of their lives and neighborhoods through digital photography, creative writing, and visual art.  The project is a collaboration of The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 3 renowned local artist-educators (Stewart Halperin, Janie Ibur, Juan William Chavez) and Chicago-based visiting artist Theaster Gates. Student art and artist work will be exhibited in Grand Center, with the opening occurring on May 15.  Art After Dark is the after-party to this landmark event.

Representing Art Underground are a variety of mediums, including photography, paint, mixed media, and live painting.  We welcome back Featured Quarterly Artists Mike Bolton, Angie Griffith, Jennifer Everett, Kim Wardenburg, Maria Boehm, Mark Grapengater, Seth Caplan and Brad Edwards.  Their work will be up for silent auction, with 50% of the proceeds going to benefit Succeeding with Reading.

Purchase tickets in advance here, and RSVP via Facebook here!