West Side Paintings

Introduction

These paintings reflect images of 100 years of life on the West Side of Saint Paul.

The faces, the landmarks, the symbols, the images portrayed here are a glimpse of our heritage.

The paintings, in a sense, are frozen glimpses of the collective consciousness of our West Side life. I hope these glimpses allow each of us the freedom to dream our own dreams. I hope these serve as starters which trigger thousands of imagings and rememberings.

This work, the creation of Mr. Richard Schletty and Mr. Craig David, was made possible because of the generous gift of Mr. Gordon Barron in memory of his wife, Doris Barron. Other individual contributors and the COMPAS Community Art Fund through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the city of Saint Paul, the R.F. Bigelow Foundation, the Ford Motor Company, the General Mills Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the United Arts Fund made it possible to present to this community these six panels.

The occasion for this project is nothing less than the centennial celebrations of two West Side churches – Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and Saint Matthew’s Catholic Church. How fitting that these two Church communities join together to celebrate their common community as they celebrate 100 years of Church life.

The Rev. Stephen Adrian
The Church of St. Matthew
December, 1986