• Art Organization: The Pulitzer

stylus: a Project by Ann Hamilton Calls to You Tonight

stylus: a project by ann hamilton opens tonight at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Ann Hamilton will be present for the reception that runs from 5-9pm and is free and open to the public.

Hamilton, with the collaboration of Composer and Sound Designer Shahrokh Yadegari, has installed stylus, a multimedia exhibition that works in harmony with the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando building.  The installation incorporates, among other things, video projections, jumping beans, taxidermy birds, an opera singer, over five hundred paper hands and church bell speakers, which sound from the Pulitzer’s rooftop. Have a look-see at a Disklavier in the Lower Gallery:

http://www.vimeo.com/13209208

Visitors will have a chance to play that player piano in a most unusual way, and there will be other opportunities to participate in stylus. You can phone a google voice account and leave a message that may be weaved into the sound system of the building. You can wave to your friends while wearing a pair of your favorite paper hands. And as you arrive this evening, you can wave back to a hand the size of a building (you’ll know when you get there).

These factors add up to an immersing sensory experience, in which visitors are free to listen or participate in exercises of call and response.

From the Pulitzer’s website:

“The installation asks the following questions: How do we communicate? What external forces act upon or inhibit our collective need for social contact and response? How are relationships enacted (or not enacted) by the architectural spaces we inhabit?”

For more information, please visit www.pulitzerarts.org.

• Art Organization: The Pulitzer

Free Art/Food Tomorrow

Kathryn Adamchick, an Art/Food organizer, talks about how Art/Food relates to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark and a 1971 pig roast under the Brooklyn Bridge.

As part of the Contemporary’s “Homegrown Summer,” and to celebrate the closing of the Pulitzer’s Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, the two institutions will together host Art/Food tomorrow, June 5, from 1-4pm. For full event details, please visit our event page.

To get an idea of how this multi-layered event came together, I interviewed one of the key organizers, Anna Poss, Administrative Assistant to the Departments of Curatorial and Community Engagement at the Pulitzer.

AB: What has your role been for Art/Food?

AP: I have been working with Kathryn Adamchick, an independent art education consultant, and Alex Elmestad, from Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, in developing and planning this event. We wanted to create a collaborative event that represented the themes of our respective shows. For the Contemporary and their Great Rivers Biennial, the goal is to feature local and sustainable food. For the Pulitzer, the aim of the event is to incorporate the ideals of Gordon Matta-Clark from his restaurant Food and his performance pieces that incorporated food, like the pig roast he had under the Brooklyn Bridge. Food and art both have this amazing capability of bringing people together from diverse backgrounds and uniting them. Art/Food really highlights this connection and celebrates it in a way that is rarely done. Read the rest of this entry »

• Art Organization: The Pulitzer

This Saturday: Transformation Project Walk

http://www.vimeo.com/10633699

Holy Trinity Catholic School students make a video with 2010 Whitney Biennial winner Theaster Gates about what they want to see in their neighborhood. Gates’ exhibition Dry Bones and Other Parables from the North will open this Saturday as part of the Transformation Project Walk.

Join the Pulitzer this Saturday, May 15, for the Transformation Project Walk, the grand finale to the Transformation projects. Since last fall, the Pulitzer has been implementing community programs in relation to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, which combine art, social engagement and the urban landscape. On Saturday, these programs will showcase their achievements at various sites in Grand Center and the neighborhood of Hyde Park. For a full description of this event, visit the Pulitzer’s website.

Robert Longyear spray paints a battered trashcan inside the Woolworth Building. The St. Louis-based artist collected various objects around Grand Center to be incorporated into his show for Transformation. For an explanation on this exhibition, visit the Urban Evolution blog.

• Guest Blogger: Amy Broadway

Catching up with Laumeier

Mike Venso, the director of Communications at Laumeier Sculpture Park, interviews Kim Humphries, Director of Exhibitions and Collections, and Mark Newport about Newport’s art in the exhibition Self-Made Man.

• Art Organization: The Pulitzer

Panel Series Starts: The City as Studio

Panelist Juan William Chávez talks about the art experience provided at Boots Contemporary Art Space, an alternative art space in St. Louis, MO.

Tomorrow at 7:30pm, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts will begin its panel series related to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, alongside its current exhibition Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark and tailored programming entitled “Transformation” (tour the show’s mind-blowing catalogue for a primer). The basic question posed in these conversations will be, “How do communities evolve, and in what ways can their members guide the process?”

Tomorrow’s “The City as Studio” will focus on how art spaces and creative acts invigorate urban neighborhoods, spotlighting examples of this happening in St. Louis. Panelists include Juan William Chávez, Theaster Gates, Mary Jane Jacob, Luis Croquer, and Christy Gray, all of whom have exceedingly impressive bios you can read on the event’s webpage. The intention, though, is that the panelists won’t be the only ones comparing notes, and that the occasion will provide an arena for all attendees to contribute thoughts on revitalization.

We hope you’ll join us tomorrow and for future panel discussions. For more information on upcoming events at the Pulitzer and to subscribe to our e-newsletter, please visit www.pulitzerarts.org.

• Guest Blogger: Amy Broadway

Catching up with White Flag Projects

Matthew Strauss, the founder and director of White Flag Projects, describes the current and upcoming exhibitions for 2010.

• Guest Blogger: Amy Broadway

Catching up with the Sheldon Art Galleries

Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Director at the Sheldon Art Galleries, gives an overview of the Sheldon’s current exhibits.

• Guest Blogger: Amy Broadway

Catching up with the Contemporary

Alex Elmestad, a graduate research assistant from University of Missouri–St. Louis, describes new media he’s working on at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.

• Guest Blogger: Amy Broadway

Catching up with Boots

Here on Saint Louis Art Map, we’re launching a video series, “Catching up with ______,” in which I visit St. Louis Art Map spaces and ask people there, “What have you been working on?”

Let us begin with words from Nicholas Kania, an intern at Boots Contemporary Art Space.

Nicholas Kania, an intern at Boots Contemporary Art Space, describes recent art shows he’s worked on at Boots.

• Art Organization: The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

Community Engagement and Environmental Advocacy

As my friend Courtney said the other day of Ideal (Dis-) Placements, stick a fork in it. It’s done. St. Sebastian has peered down from his post in the Entrance Gallery for nearly a full year, and in one month, he’ll journey back to Harvard Art Museum, as the other masterworks return to their respective dwellings.

We have another show to look forward to—Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. As the title suggests, this exhibition will focus on how Gordon Matta-Clark, an artist in New York in the 1970s, transformed what was labeled useless–mainly abandoned buildings–into enchanting elements. One piece to be in Urban Alchemy is Garbage Wall, which will be of course a wall made from garbage. Might it be more than that, though?

The original Garbage Wall (Matta-Clark made three) was built in 1970 at Manhattan’s St. Mark’s Church. Celebrating the first Earth Day, Matta-Clark orchestrated its construction over three days by inviting passers-by to dump urban refuse into a mould with tar and plaster. For our 2009 re-creation, the Pulitzer is also asking the community to partake.

Our garbage collection is led by Jenny Murphy, a freelance “Garbage Specialist.” Yesterday, she went to two neighborhood schools to call for contributions, leaving behind cardboard bins. She’ll visit two more to again talk about Matta-Clark and the possibilities of art classes working on their own garbage sculpture; similar to what happened for last year’s Community Light Project, when students were invited to make light pieces during The Light Project.

To prevent the Pulitzer from becoming a landfill, we’re mostly taking donations from those specific schools at the moment. In addition, Jenny, and sometimes I, will make garbage runs. (Bulk trash days are coming up.) Jenny is also organizing a neighborhood trash clean-up with Big Brothers Big Sisters and Washington University Undergrads. You can get updates about these excursions on 2buildings1blog.

If you’d like the chance to play with urban waste, come by the Pulitzer’s booth during Earthways Green Home Festival on September 26. Jenny will be there crafting kites, seed starter cups, and handmade paper out of old newspapers with anyone who would like to join her. A tall Plexiglas box, trash, and gloves will be available  for people to simulate their own garbage wall. We’ll also be taking public donations there–nothing perishable please.