This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Comments (0) Wednesday, Jun 4 2003

"Fountain Lakes Commercial Center, St. Charles County, 2003," a photo of the dead zone by Barbara McDonnell, is on view at the Sheldon Art Galleries starting Friday.

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Tuesday, June 10Sprawl is what we've made of our cities. Homogeneity is our watchword. The suburbs are our shrines to utilitarian death. Sound dramatic? Check out The Automobile in the Garden: Suburban Photographs by Barbara McDonnell, a new exhibit opening at the Sheldon Art Galleries, 3648 Washington Avenue. The photographer has captured an empty St. Charles industrial park, as sterile as an operating room; a cluster of Cottleville backyards subdivided by a web of white fences, slicing a greensward into tiny protectorates; a bank egress in Fenton, lined with ATMs, cutting into a forest; and the dormant cinema at Chesterfield Mall, which might as well sit under a blinking neon sign reading "Capitalist Waste." McDonnell's horizontal-strip images taken with a "banquet camera" depict "strip malls, subdvisions, parking lots and corporate structures ... an endless expansion of pavement," according to press materials. Experience them from 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, beginning Saturday, June 7, and running through Sept. 27, with a reception from 5-7 p.m. Friday, June 6. Call 314-533-9900 or visit www. sheldonconcerthall. org for more. These photos are like stills from the latest film in the Koyaanisqatsi series, shot in our backyard, starring us. Cue the Philip Glass music. Go west, young man.