Best Local Artist

You may not even realize that you know Kim Humphries. He's the "kh" who posts all the "calls for artists" on the Critical Mass listserv. He's also president of Critical Mass itself, the organization that promotes art and artists in St. Louis. And he's a project manager at Arts in Transit, working to bring more public art to the region. He mostly shows his work at the funkier venues, places like Mad Art and Fort Gondo, but in July he exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis as one of three recipients of the Great Rivers Biennial award. Humphries is a rarity in the art world: a selfless artist who works just as hard for the local art scene as he does on his own art. Which, by the way, is fabulous -- Humphries specializes in thoughtful, funny installations of pieces of cast-off culture, culled from estate sales and auctions. As an artist, he's definitely going places. Let's hope he stays in St. Louis.