Street Cred

With his easy smile and crinkly eyes, we took Michael Converse for someone who was just as likely to be the center of attention at a party as he was to be holed up in his studio. With his thoughtful, laid-back style, he didn’t immediately strike us as the type to work his ass off. But everyone tells us that’s what he does.

It wasn’t until we stopped by Grand Arts to take a look at his installation-in-progress for the Charlotte Street Foundation Awards that we understood just how much time this guy must devote to his art. Converse has been affixing small pieces of paper thick with abstract sketches to much of the gallery’s south wall to form massive, sprawling branches of vaguely figural drawings. The dense fragments, assembled on-site, project an energy that belies Converse’s recurring themes of decay, power and perversion.

He’s pleased with how the project is advancing. “It’s very organic,” he says, nodding approval toward elements that are working and stripping down areas that aren’t. He might add more drawings done in his studio, or he might create another layer by drawing directly on the wall. Process trumps product in Converse’s art, and he rarely considers a work finished. “It’s kind of a life metaphor,” he says without a hint of pretension.

In recognition of his contributions to the area’s art scene, Converse has been awarded one of the Charlotte Street Foundation’s unrestricted cash grants. The cash flow began eight years ago; since then, the foundation has supported 46 artists and distributed a total of $225,000. This year’s grants topped out at $8,500 — the largest awards to date.

Five other locals also earned that tangible recognition. To the east of Converse’s installation is Rachel Hayes’ “Billowall,” a curtain of writhing fabric and vinyl. The gallery’s west window is occupied with the modernist light designs of husband-and-wife team Rie Egawa and Burgess Zbryk, including an expansion of their highly touted “Sweater Lamp.” In the gallery’s north room, Jay Norton’s opulent paintings face Seth Johnson’s examination of violence and wrath in Eastern and Western societies.

This is Grand Arts’ first year playing host to the exhibition, and its director, Stacy Switzer, is in charge of the show. “The aspects of each artist’s process led to them working with me in different ways,” she says. “Some have made new pieces that connect very directly to ongoing bodies of work … like Egawa and Zbryk, who are including a puzzle screen … as well as a new light installation. Others have tried to experiment or have taken some risk in scale or in medium — for example, Seth has never done a sound installation before.”

Another first for this year’s installment is the inclusion of a visiting curator, Paul Ha, director of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. In an important effort by the foundation to introduce new perspectives, Ha joined the committee of Raechell Smith (director of the H&R Block Artspace), Bruce Hartman (director of the Johnson County Community College Gallery of Art) and Mark Spencer (director of the Creative Library at Hallmark) to select this year’s recipients.

But we don’t care who says Converse works his ass off — it’s still there. We, um, checked.