Salon 2021
St. Louis, USA
29 April - 2 May 2021
Hosted by Margaret von Kaenel
Salon Saint Louis in 2021 proved to be a doable Salon, despite the pandemic and the cancelled Salon Shanghai 2020. I felt it was important to host this Salon for continuity. The event was held at the Saint Louis Artists’ Guild located in Clayton, Missouri just 11 miles west of Downtown. The venue was large enough to allow for social distancing as well as providing masks. Financial sponsorship helped to offset expenses, and sponsor/donors gave product and help for the website development, canvas, swag, happy hour, event set up and tear down. A locally owned hotel gave us an excellent room rate!
With 30 Salon participants in attendance, a further 21 panels were shipped to us, so we had 51 Salon members from 11 countries represented in our exhibition. Yaeko Kurimata (Japan) exhibited a panel that included the endangered wildlife along the Missouri/Mississippi Rivers, Michiel van de Laar (Netherlands) exhibited a hand painted wall paper featuring the Saint Louis Arch and Caterina Manisco (Italy) exhibited a poster style panel honoring Laura Schnupp, the daughter of a Salon member who recently died from breast cancer. There was even a love story happening between two Salon members who met at Salon Chamonix, France and blossomed at Salon Saint Louis!
The venue provided Zoom access/electronic capabilities which enabled participation from those who could not attend due to Covid travel restrictions. Master classes and lectures were held onsite as well as via Zoom. There were daily Facebook Live walkabouts featuring all the exhibition panels as wells as the artists working on their demos. The group painted two small and colorful murals which were donated to Doorways St. Louis and to the Finishing Trades Institute of the Midwest.
Those of us who attended had a fabulous time together and look forward to participating at the next Salon and seeing all those we missed in Saint Louis.
-Margaret Von Kaenel, host
