Family Culture Day Kicks Off Sunday at the Revamped Foundry

The staff at the has had a busy summer. It has done a significant revamp of its website, hired a new development director and filled up the artists' studios. This weekend the studio launches the first in a new series of "Family Culture Days."

The Family Culture Day Kickoff takes place Sunday with opening remarks at 1:30 p.m. by St. Charles Mayor Sally Faith and Jacob Prado of the Mexican Consul. The Foundry is at 520 N. Main Center.

The free event will feature ethnic food, cultural displays and art activities for children from 1 to 6 p.m., cultural music and dance from 1:45 to 4:45 p.m., a talk by featured artist Gloria Parsley at 2 p.m. and music by Javier Mendoza from 5 to 7 p.m.

"We wanted to broaden our outreach in the community," said Laura Helling, director of the Foundry. "I wrote a grant and submitted it to PNC Arts Alive, and they agreed to fund it. The program emphasizes latino contributions to the arts."

Parsley, a photographer, will have some of her work hanging in the main hall. She will talk about her work in a lecture entitled Nostalgia, an Open Door to Mexico. 

"We hope that this will be the beginning of a cross-culture dialogue," Helling said. "We have four events planned—the remaining ones will take place in October, January and April and will have a different emphasis, like fiber arts and printmaking."

The Foundry is also busy breaking in its new development director. Gretchen Jaspering joined the staff in July. Jaspering was formerly the president of the Giant Screen Cinema Association, which she ran from her home in St. Charles for six years, she said. Before that, she was vice president of marketing and sales for the St. Louis Science Center.

Jaspering had been taking a year off when someone told her about the opening at the Foundry.

"I was interested in doing something in my own backyard and doing something positive for St. Charles County," she said. "My son had just graduated from art school, so that made a neat tie-in to the arts."

Jaspering said her job is to create a development program focused on membership, annual giving, sponsorship and underwriting. "I'm here to put in place systematic processes and procedures the Foundry can follow year after year to increase its sustainability," she said.

"I think this is a fantastic resource for St. Charles County. The exhibit space, plus the opportunity to interact with artists in their studios—it's an inspirational kind of place. Inspiring, invigorating, unusual. One of my goals is to raise awareness in the St. Charles business community of what a fantastic community resource the Foundry Arts Centre is."

It's also a jam-packed resource. The 20 upstairs studios available for artists to use are currently filled. Seventeen artists have taken up residence at the Foundry, and visitors can come in and purchase their art, watch them at work and talk to them about their skills.

"The studios are completely full, we have a waiting list of artists at this time," Helling said. "We've been full before, but not for several years."

If you'd like to learn more about the Foundry, check out its newly renovated website. The site features information on programs, performances, exhibits and features on the studio artists. 

"We realized we had to do something and went live with the new version a month ago," Helling said. "It's a living thing. It will change."