Tony Renner painting Zak Marmelefsky playing banjo

We have here the painting "Zak Marmelefsky Playing Banjo in Tower Grove Park," by Tony Renner, as lifted from his artist blog.

It's the first image I've seen of a finished piece from the show "Crescendo" that Cindy Tower organized for Contemporary Art Musem St. Louis' Open Studios event on Saturday. She had tge concept of musicians playing together while painters painted them.

Poetry Scores provided some help going in - we mostly rounded up the musicians, while Cindy mostly rounded up the painters - and our board member John Eiler fed everyone and bought the first rounds of drinks.

Actually, Tony was one of the few painters that we rounded up, and this Zak character was one of the few musicians that Cindy rounded up.

I myself was mostly useless on the day of the event, owing to a 25-year high school reunion I celebrated the night before, with somewhat more enthusiasm than I had expected. I have been working triple overtime trying to get out of the country to attend a family funeral, and my mind and body must have needed a party more than I was aware.

I expect more images of work from the show to pop up. Laurent Torno III has made and posted a cool short video of the day's events, and one of the painters Carlie Trosclair has posted an album on Facebook, snapshots from the day.

It was Cindy's idea to do this as a benefit for Poetry Scores, and though I left her with all of the work on the day of the event, at the after-party (notice, after missing the work, I did make it to the afterparty) she was still talking like that was the deal.

So, sometime this winter we will round up all of these paintings and do a show and a silent auction, maybe with a more slightly structured musical presentation - that is, maybe the guy who was supposed to structure the music (me?) will show up this time.

Looking forward to it.