Every September, Rocheport becomes a canvas. The Columbia Art League’s Rocheport Plein Air brings painters from across the region to set up easels along the Missouri River bluffs, at the Katy Trail bridge, beside vineyard rows, and on the sun-warmed brick of the historic main street. The 2024 event — the third annual — drew artists outdoors for three days of work-in-progress painting, workshops, and the kind of creative energy that makes this small town feel alive. The event awards purchase prizes to its top finishers, so the work made here has a chance to be collected and kept.
The Plein Air weekend is a concentrated burst, but Rocheport’s art scene runs all year. Second Saturdays — held on the second Saturday of each month from April through October — turn the historic district into an open-air gallery crawl, with music, vendors, a farmers market, and studios and shops throwing open their doors. It’s an easy excuse to take the long way down the Katy Trail.
The permanent gallery scene is worth the trip on any day of the week. At Shirahaze Gallery on Second Street, Yukari Kashihara — a ceramicist with an MFA from the University of Missouri — makes wheel-thrown porcelain that’s both meticulous and warm; her hand-painted slip and underglaze details reward a close look. Photographer Thomas Scharenborg rounds out the gallery with landscapes and portraits printed on silver, canvas, and metal. Two artists, one address, a full afternoon’s worth of looking.
On Central Street, Art Off the Trail is an active working studio, not just a showroom — paintings, metal sculpture, and handmade clothing share space with whatever’s in progress. And at Manitou Studio on Columbia Street, John Preus brings 40-plus years of studio pottery into every wheel-thrown teapot and sculptured box, while Margaret Preus’s loom weavings — scarves, table runners, hand towels — carry the same unhurried craft in textile form.
Rocheport has always made things by hand. Come see what’s on the walls, the shelves, and the easels right now. Check our events calendar to plan your visit.
Sources:
Columbia Art League — Rocheport Plein Air (event details)
Columbia Art League — Rocheport Plein Air (registration & prizes)
Preus Ceramics — Manitou Studio