Photo of three women clustered together, wearing dark blue pants and spaghetti strap tops

Olivia Emert | MISGUIDED CONVERSATIONS, from Creative Intersections
dancers clockwise from left, Amelia Messiner, Mei McArtor, Sarah McGuyer
photo by Ryan Andrew Bruce

Print of multimedia artwork: background is painting of abstract blue, green, and black circles and line; foreground is sculpture of little house built of flowers

Maria Ojascastro | Sparkles of Rain on the Porch
flowers from artist’s garden, photo and collograph print on arches

Impressionistic painting of close-up of small black calf looking straight at viewer, standing in field of tall grass

Rose Anne Stanard | Angus Calf, acrylic

Black and white photo of elderly man and woman embracing

Joe Craig | The Dodsons, photograph, from The Farm Project

FEATURED ARTISTS PROGRAM

Meet our newest artists—and explore all the others we’ve highlighted

Since we founded our Missouri Featured Artists Program in 2020, we have highlighted over 250 imaginative makers from throughout the state. We’ve brought you painters, pencil artists, sculptors, dancers, singers, instrumental musicians, poets, novelists, filmmakers, ceramicists, jewelry artists, glass artists, and many more who create in myriad other ways. You’ll find them all in the ever-growing gallery below our current highlighted quartet.

FAQs

Artist application form

Olivia Emert
dancer, choreographer, and artistic director
Kansas City

Maria Ojascastro
visual artist, well-being instructor, mentor
St. Louis

Rose Anne Stanard
landscape painter
Poplar Bluff

Joe Craig
portraitist
Dexter

Impressionistic painting of stream in forest rushing past large rocks sticking up in the middle of the water

Rose Anne Stanard | Cave Spring, acrylic

ROSE ANNE STANARD

landscape painter | Poplar Bluff

My tagline is “A creative force for good.” That is my life’s goal, ultimately to be a force for good.

The serene scenes in my art reflect my love of the peacefulness of nature. Several generations of my family have called the Ozarks foothills home. My interest in art began as a child when my mom, Rose Barbour, inspired me. I studied art at the University of Missouri in Columbia and design at Kansas University in Lawrence. I continue to take courses from artist who inspire me. I am a perpetual student! The art of the Impressionists and the Hudson River artists takes my breath away.

For most of my professional career, I have been a graphic designer and illustrator working with clients in the United States and abroad. I am represented by Artfully Framed Gallery and Archer Gifts in Poplar Bluff.

thecreeksidestudio.com

Olivia Emert | Choreography highlights video

OLIVIA EMERT

dancer, choreographer, and artistic director | Kansas City

My performances are a shared visceral experience that captures a fleeting moment. Audiences don’t get to walk away with a physical art piece they can hang on their walls, but they walk away with moments they feel, remember, and question.

Movement is my medium. I am invested in creation and process. Building relationships and worlds on stage, I focus on emotional awareness, tactile interweaving partner work, and kinesthetic experience. I self-produce work: short standalone pieces, evening-length works, dance films, and collaborations. I choreograph for dance companies, colleges, and institutions. I teach release-based contemporary dance for academies, universities, and companies.

In 2025, I became artistic director of Creative Intersections; a performance founded in hopes to bring together the Kansas City dance community to connect and share in art. At the end of my two-year residency with Charlotte Street, I founded CLOUDS Dance Company. CLOUDS has become a space for my work to live and grow, to further foster community and expand my own artistic trajectory.

oliviaemert.com
cloudsdancecompany.com

Painting of huge pink flowers and lemon slices against solid blue and multi-colored stained glass background

Maria Ojascastro | Magenta Door Bistro, acrylic on canvas board

MARIA OJASCASTRO

visual artist, well-being instructor, mentor | St. Louis

My art and life interweave resilience, community, and creativity—offering reflections on healing, and metamorphosis.

I strive to harness the transformative power of the arts to bring people together. My passion project, the Arts and Healing program with Prison Performing Arts, brings writing, visual art, and theatre to individuals transitioning out of the criminal justice system. You can see my artwork this summer featured on the cover of A Moth Collection, a beautiful book of poetry published by Finishing Line Press, and in 2027 in a solo exhibit titled Barometric Pressure Change at COCA (Center of Creative Arts) in University City.

I was recently recognized as a 2026 Saint Louis Visionary Awards honoree as Outstanding Teaching Artist, completed the Anthropedia Well-being coach training, received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Washington University in St. Louis, studied at Santa Reparata in Florence, Italy, and am a proud alumna of St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana.

bextraordinaire.com/ojascastro-gallery

Dramatically lit black and white photograph of woman sitting on chair underneath seven floodlights with illuminated fog swirling above her head

Joe Craig | RAPT, photograph

JOE CRAIG

portraitist | Dexter

I’ve spent my life chasing something one can’t quite explain—those quiet, honest moments where a person simply is.

I don’t just photograph people; I try to see them, even if only for a moment, and let that truth rise into the image. My camera is only a tool. The Art of Connection is the real craft.

As an educator, I have welcomed photographers from 49 countries to my Dexter studio, sharing both craft and life philosophy. My Soulmarks Lecture Series has taken me across four continents, yet I continue to find my deepest light here in Missouri—in the barns, backroads, fields, and quiet strength of its people. Through The Farm Project, documenting farming families across our state, I honor those families and the deeper story where land, legacy, and identity meet. I do not chase beauty. I look for truth—and follow the light.

soulmarks.com