It was 1949—the year NATO was formed and Silly Putty was first sold. St. Louisan Cecil Norton had grown weary of his job as an architect-engineer (at the time a single discipline) and the pressure of working with contractors. Norton’s wife Ruth, an interior decorator whose clients include Stan Musial’s wife, was framing artwork for her customers. Cecil wanted to frame artwork too, son Doug Norton said. The couple opened Norton's Fine Art and Framing in the Central West End. Business flourished, and eventually the Nortons took over all three floors of the building. Doug Norton, who now runs …

In August 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast, Spencer Bohren, like many New Orleans residents, didn’t want to leave his home. Bohren, an “American roots” musician who spends about 150 days a year on the road, had just returned from an out-of-town gig. “I had just gotten home, and I did not want to go,” he said. In fact, Bohren hadn’t looked at a weather report until his son’s girlfriend was “literally coming unglued,” he said. Reluctantly, on Aug. 28, the last day of the evacuation, Bohren consulted a weather report. Bohren, his wife Marilyn, and Tucker, the only child of …

Back in 1983, when Maplewood resident John Shewmaker was trying to put together a morris dance team, hardly anyone in St. Louis knew what morris was. Morris dancing is a high-energy dance with highly rhythmic steps. Dancers often wear bells on their legs and wave cloth squares called hankies, or clunk wooden sticks or poles together and pound them on the floor. The problem was, Shewmaker himself had no idea how to morris dance, a type of English folk dance, and no one to teach him, said John Long, Shewmaker's brother-in-law. “What really got it off the ground was this little English bird …

David Cerven didn’t set out to become a photographer. In college, his career path was music. He’s trained as an operatic baritone. But a year after graduating from Washington University, Cerven walked away from the opera star dream. Through sports and serendipity, the southern Illinois native became a professional photographer and opened Studio Altius in Maplewood, the city where he now resides. Two years ago he was elected as a councilman for the first ward. Following graduation, Cerven spent a year performing at venues around St. Louis. The next step was to attend a conservatory, get a …

Unless you’re keenly tuned into the folk music scene, you might not know that Focal Point draws some of the best performers in the genre—as well as others who might not be strictly considered folk artists.You will find bands playing everything from blues and bluegrass to swing and hip-hop at Focal Point. And it’s not unusual to hear what Stein calls “old time rock and roll,” mostly acoustic but with an occasional electric group thrown in.“We do lots of different things but we’re kind of choosy,” Artistic Director Judy Stein said. “I look for traditional music from as many different cultures …

By the time you read this—at least if you have young children in the family—the gifts have all been opened and the excitement of Christmas 2010 is on its way to being a memory. Now it's time to turn your attention to the next task of the season: making those New Year's resolutions. Resolutions can be a touchy subject. Too many of them seem more like a list of things you can't do with hidden negative implications: "Lose weight," which means give up a lot of the things you like to eat  "Save money," which means quit spending money on the things you enjoy "Exercise more," which means spend more …

If you haven't finished your holiday shopping by now, it's time to get moving. As you ponder the possibilities, consider deviating from usual. After all, does Dad really need another tie? Does your sweetie really look forward to another sweater? It's time to stray from the predictable and go for the unexpected. Buy the gift of art. You can find plenty of great art gifts in Maplewood's galleries and specialty shops, or you can pick up some creative items from Artmart in Brentwood, but you can also take your gift-giving in a whole new direction with a gift of music or theatre. Best of all, you …

If you weren't at Crossroads Presbyterian Fellowship Church last Saturday night, you missed something very special. The church's "Acoustic Christmas" concert was truly one of the highlights of the holiday season. The soft, warm sounds of the dozen nine-person ensemble playing and singing rarely-heard carols were a sweet counterpoint to the harsher sounds and commercialism of the season. Saturday night's program included a few familiar carols that members of the audience were invited to sing along to, but the bulk of the performance featured rarely-heard carols from various periods of …

It's really not surprising that Allison Norfleet Bruenger became an artist. The surprising part is that after preparing for and pursuing a career in fashion design, the Maplewood resident and Detroit native found her passion in jewelry-making. As the youngest of three children born to artistically inclined parents, Bruenger and her brother and sister experienced art at an early age. "I've loved art since I was young," Bruenger said. "I remember even at my birthday parties, my parents would have this long, huge piece of paper where everybody would draw on it. It was always pretty much art-…

Shirley Eley Nachtrieb wanted to be an artist since she was 7 years old but a twist of fate took her down a different route. She had to postpone that goal but she never gave up her dream. Today the St. Charles woman is a versatile and accomplished artist who is at home in a variety of media. She is also a member of the Best of Missouri Hands, a nonprofit organization representing artists from across the state. As kids, Nachtrieb and her twin sister "were constantly drawing and painting and doing whatever we could in art," she said. But the girls didn't have the opportunity to take art …

With Thanksgiving only a few days away, it's time to think about the things we are thankful for. There are the obvious ones—health, a job, family and friends—but we sometimes overlook nonprofit organizations that add so much to the fabric of community life. With money still tight for many, it's not always easy to support the organizations we value. It's even difficult to stretch the budget to help with fundraisers held by your kids or your neighbor's kids. But Schnucks' eScrip program has made it easy to support your favorite nonprofit. When you buy groceries at a Schnucks store, you can put …

The Maplewood Lions Club takes the city's well-deserved reputation as an arts-friendly community to a new dimension with its murder mystery dinner theatre performance of Murder at the Gatsby's Speakeasy tonight. So what makes a motley group of people with virtually no stage experience think they can pull off a dinner theatre experience for its audience? The can-do spirit of the Lions Club and its belief that, in working together, they can do whatever it takes to raise money for its worthy causes—and the enthusiasm and confidence of member and play director Georgia McGuire. The story of how …

Early on, Mary Barge Hoar showed an affinity for art. She even entertained the idea of becoming an art teacher. "I always wanted to go into the arts ... but I decided when I was younger making money would be more important to me," she said.  So the Kirkwood native earned a business administration degree from Louisiana State University. Following her graduation, she worked in sales for large companies like AT&T and Pitney Bowes in Louisiana and Alabama. Later she moved back to St. Louis and into the health care industry. Around that time, she and her husband Bill learned they were to be …

Bon Rasmussen's childhood could be a blueprint for how to raise an artist. Growing up as the daughter of a Brentwood home builder, she and her older brother had access to scraps of lumber and other materials that became fodder for play. By the time the children were 8 years old, they knew how to construct a building because they had watched so many go up. "We built ... a little clubhouse which was maybe 8 feet by 8 feet," Rasmussen said. "You could stand up in it and it had a door and windows." Rasmussen credits her parents with laying the groundwork for a creative life. She recalls that she …

The Folk School of St. Louis builds community one class and one performance at a time.  The non-profit school—dedicated to promoting the "learning, teaching, reneewal and perpetuation of traditional music and folk arts"—has been teaching people to make great music and have fun doing it since 2001. But the Folk School is doing more than teaching music. It's building a community of people who love to make old-time and bluegrass music, and it's forging a greater bond with the city. "We try to work with Maplewood," Executive Director Clinton M. Shurtz said. "Maplewood really tries hard to have …

Steve Manion and Ellen Gomez breathe new life into the adage "you're never too old"—to learn to fiddle anyway. Neither one played the fiddle in their youth. They came to the instrument they each love as adults. "I learned to play the fiddle eight years ago, when I was 52 years old," Manion of Villa Ridge said. "I never played nothing."  Manion picked up the instrument after a friend, who is a fiddle-maker, introduced him to the Folk School of St. Louis in Maplewood. "I never heard that kind of music before in my life," Manion said. "I walked in, set downs and listened and said, 'Aw, I gotta …