Just a few months ago, I shared stories of some of the bright lights in the St. Louis arts community. Today, I return with a deeper spotlight on three artists whose brilliance has only grown—now illuminating not just our city, but the international art world.
Let’s begin with Dominic Chambers. His solo exhibition, “Birthplace,” recently was on display at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM). Chambers, whose work is now part of esteemed international collections, remains rooted in his love for this city. One standout piece in “Birthplace,” an oil painting on linen, revisits his childhood classroom in St. Louis—a tender homage to formative spaces that ignited his imagination.
The gallery guide fittingly quotes Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Proust’s words echo the emotional undercurrent of Chambers’ work—how distance from home sharpens our sense of belonging, memory and gratitude. In returning to St. Louis, Chambers honors the nurturing influence of family, as well as his teachers at Hazelwood East and Florissant Valley Community College.
His recent contributions include a mural for St. Louis University’s Literary Award, this year bestowed upon author Colson Whitehead. Painted on one of the iconic “Walls off Washington,” the mural reflects on the legacy of the Underground Railroad, underscoring its deep roots in Missouri and the St. Louis region.
Then there’s Katherine Bernhardt, a native St. Louisan who had already achieved international acclaim when the pandemic called her home. What began as a temporary stay quickly became a renewed commitment to the city she grew up in—and St. Louis is all the richer for it.
Bernhardt’s art buzzes with the energy of pop culture and the layered textures of global influences—from Moroccan rugs to African textiles. She blends brushwork and spray paint to create rhythmic compositions that channel the bold aesthetic of the 1980s, which she calls her artistic home. Her pieces, often playful on the surface, contain deeper commentaries on consumerism and environmental degradation—think sea creatures entangled in a soup of household waste.
This summer, her work will be featured at the Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul’s Arts Center. Her collaboration with fashion designer Jeremy Scott, “A Match Made in Heaven,” is currently on display at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kan. And her 60-foot mural, “XXL Superflat Pancake,” still enlivens the walls of CAM.
In a short video I watched, Bernhardt described her creative philosophy: a love of color, experimentation and sheer scale. “The bigger, the better,” she said—her large works channeling the immense energy she pours into her craft. “Art is my therapy,” she added with disarming honesty.
As art writer Isabella Meyer once observed, Bernhardt’s “distinctive style captures the energy and visual overload of modern life,” offering a lens through which we can reflect on the intersection of pop culture, commerce and society.
Finally, we turn to Kahlil Robert Irving—a dynamic voice in contemporary art whose work excavates the overlooked layers of our shared reality. Born in San Diego but long based in St. Louis, Irving creates multimedia assemblages of sculptural and photographic elements that examine systems of power, control and historical erasure. His work invites us to dig beneath the surface—literally and metaphorically—to uncover the buried narratives of anti-Blackness and systemic inequality.
A graduate of both the Kansas City Art Institute and Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Irving has pieces in prestigious institutions around the world: the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Riga Porcelain Museum in Latvia, among others.
His recent exhibition at the Kemper Art Museum, featured in a conversation with Ruth Ezell of Nine Network Public Media, explored the symbolism of urban streetscapes. His installation invited viewers to reconsider the city street as a space not just of transit, but of memory, safety, loss and resistance. The questions Irving raises—Which neighborhoods are preserved? Which are destroyed? Who decides?—are drawn from personal experience in St. Louis but resonate far beyond.
As Ezell noted, Irving could easily live and work anywhere. But he chooses to remain in St. Louis, drawing creative strength from its history and its people.
So here’s to these artists—Dominic Chambers, Katherine Bernhardt and Kahlil Robert Irving—whose talent and heartfelt ties to St. Louis continue to make our city shine on the global stage.
