Currently on view at the Saint Louis  Art Museum, Photography on the Street, showcases a selection of ten works on paper. These prints are displayed on the second floor of the museum in a small gallery where visitors are invited to view the exhibition and surrounding exhibits at their leisure. The selection dates from the 1930s through the 1970s tracks the development and use of smaller, portable cameras—the combination of smaller cameras and faster film allowed artists greater freedom in the medium, enabling them to capture fleeting scenes of urban life. The photos are primarily black and white with the exception of two color prints from the 1960s and 70s. The variety of subject matter ranges from the hardships of post-war depression to the glamour of celebrity culture. Ironically, what these photos have in common is that they portray the isolation and ambiguity that befalls individuals in the midst of city life.

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Former prisoners became actors and art historians in front of the masterworks currently on display at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in their exhibition, Ideal (Dis)Placement: Old Masters at the Pulitzer.  In preparation for an ongoing succession of shows, the performers took a six-week class led by Prison Performing Arts director Agnes Wilcox.  After writing about their impressions of the art pieces, their own words were made into a series of dramas they acted out in front of the pieces.  The result was a captivating, participatory production that showcased humorous routines of personal histories bravely intertwined with modern day interpretations of the paintings.

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When Zoe Hillenmeyer was 16 years old, she was strolling through the streets of Boston reeling over the prospect of transitioning from a young girl to a young adult.  Later that day she ran into a man who gave her a pink balloon.  This seemingly meaningless and childish object brightened her day and eased her fears of the world beyond.  Although strangers stared and ogled at the audacity of carrying such a large and brightly colored object through the crowded streets of Boston, this gift gave her the confidence to face her fears and renewed her faith in the goodness of the human spirit.

Now a Senior Sculpture Major in the Sam Fox School at Washington University, Hillenmeyer seeks to spread the joy of simple gifts around the greater St. Louis area and the world with her independent venture entitled The Pink Balloon Project.  The young artist places pink balloons inflated with helium in random places and attaches to these balloons two things: a small gift worth no more than a few pennies and a note wishing the random recipient a happy day and directing them to the online portal for her project (www.pinkballoonproject.blogspot.com).  On the blog, those who have found a pink balloon are invited to share their story, but they are also invited to participate in this project by placing their own balloons and gifts around St. Louis and the world.

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The Berlin-based artist Claudia Schmacke explores the questions of temporality and perception in Currents 103.  This exhibit, consisting of two videos and an installation, opened at the St. Louis Art Museum on April 2nd and will continue through the 5th of July. Although Currents 103 is a small exhibition, it brings substantial questions about the very nature of time and space to the forefront. All three of Schmacke’s works use the ephemeral nature of a moment in order to connect with the viewer. She uses subtle allusion to the human body as well as time as an organizing structure in order to induce self-awareness and self-reflection.

Primarily, Schmacke uses her work to subtly mimic the human body in order to investigate experiential and physical phenomena. Immediately upon entering the gallery space, her work hits a visceral nerve. I am first confronted with her twenty-five minute video Umbilicus, which consists of what seems to be water being sucked through a pipe. The water pressure makes loud, rude, and almost uncomfortable sounds. Though almost abstract, Schmacke’s video refers to physical experiences in the body, almost as if I am looking at an orifice. The large screen and dark room consumes me as I plunge into an awkward and mesmerizing trance. As the video continues, I search for a recognizable visual clue. Occasionally, Schmacke seems to present a reflection of a tree or possibly a human figure. However, the object disappears as quickly as it had come. When watched in entirety, Umbilicus becomes more like an experience than a visual object. I am forced to abandon the search for meaning and to consume what is presented.  Because I cannot recognize exactly what is being depicted, the video forces me to turn inward in order to find meaning. I become increasingly conscious of myself, my own body.  The sights and sounds around me are both awkward and provocative, and they start to reveal my self-consciousness and self-awareness.

Schmacke continues this exploration of the self in the installation Time Reel. The piece stands alone in a room across the walkway from the video pieces. Strands of plastic tubing penetrate the wall of the gallery. The tubing hangs limp, creating loops that exit and then reenter the wall. Green liquid appears to be pulsing through the hoses. Air bubbles shoot through the liquid, forcing their way through the twists and curves. The wall acts like a veil, concealing but also revealing just enough information for the viewer. The strange green dye seems to be sterilizing the vein-like strands as the liquid pulses through and is carried to and from an unknown source. We are again compelled to look towards our own materiality in order to connect with the work.

Secondly, Schmacke tries to communicate the fleeting nature of a moment in order to comment on the temporality of both time and space. Her second film, Dark Matters, reveal this new layer of viewing and thinking. The four-minute video consists of black tar and the movement of gas bubbles penetrating the tar’s membrane. The oozing and bursting black liquid immediately infiltrates my senses. It also presents an obvious tension between the ephemeral and the enduring.  The tar swells with each new gas bubble, expanding to a seemingly intimidating size. However, at its peak, the bubble simply pops, leaving only a subtle footprint in the surface.  That footprint is quickly consumed by another bubble. This process repeats throughout the video as the tar undulates only to disappear. In the glassy surface of each bubble, I can see a figure. The figure vanishes along with each “pop” only to reappear with the next resurgence. Schmacke uses this natural phenomenon as a clear metaphor for the fleeting nature of a moment.

She continues to explore this cyclical nature of life and death in Time Reel. The title seems to suggest that this piece refers to the storage of time. The liquid is constantly moving. Each instant is different from the one before. The work consists of a constant flow or a continuous rise and fall. The tubing protruding from the wall refers to a complex network that is partly visible and partly invisible. This blurs the line between the functions of the external world and those occurring internally within a system. Schmacke seems to be suggesting that both entities contain and store time in a similar way, thus connecting the self with the greater world.

Despite its size, Currents 103 brings substantial questions about the very nature of temporality and perception to the forefront. All three of Schmacke’s works use the ephemeral nature of a moment in order to connect with the viewer. Her subtle allusion to the human body as well as her use of time as an organizing structure induces self-awareness and self-reflection. Her honesty and poignant point of view forced me accept the difficult task of examining the truth about my own place within a greater context. Currents 103 is a valuable experience, even if it may be a little uncomfortable.

The Good Friday exhibition, tucked away off of the main walkway of the Saint Louis University campus in the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art, displays the works of multiple modern artists, most of which are from the last twenty years.  The artists’ styles vary greatly; the majority of the work is paintings as well as a small representation of sculpture and textiles, ranging the full spectrum from realism to abstraction.  The MOCRA exhibition room is divided into a large central space flanked by three smaller alcoves of on either side.  This division of space serves to create a personal and spiritual experience for the viewer, as each piece is experienced by itself or in the context of a small number of other works.  Even in this modern exhibition, timeless Christian symbols are very prevalent, including Jesus’ crown of thorns and his burial shroud.  Oftentimes these common symbols are in danger of losing the power of their original biblical context.  The exhibition created a meditative space for contemplating the events of Good Friday by creating new meaning from these “overexposed” symbols.

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As the wind breezed between the buildings during the last hours of daylight on Friday, April 3, 2009, a lively group of about two hundred people gathered on the patio connecting the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to Steinberg Hall on the Washington University campus. Sipping on cocktails and munching on crudités, the mostly twenty- and thirty-something crowd bubbled with conversation as jazzy music wafted through the early evening air. A current of excitement seemed to pulse through the whole scene, as this was no ordinary reception before no ordinary lecture at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. Instead, this gathering celebrated the admission of one hundred graduate students to the prestigious art and architecture school. But this party on the patio was simply a prelude. The real treat for these acceptees lay ahead in the lecture to be delivered by Lorcan O’Herlihy, a well-established California architect and head of the LOHA firm, who was invited not only to discuss his successful projects but also to inspire those about to embark on their own architectural journeys. And inspire he did.

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On Friday, April 10 the Des Lee Gallery on Washington Avenue opened the one-weekend show for the Senior Painting Majors of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University. The show featured the major’s seven current seniors whose work demonstrates a high level of young painting talent. The artwork of these seniors demonstrates an overall trend in the Sam Fox Painting Department of a representational mode of painting—with a particular affinity for the figure—expressed in distinctive individual styles.

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Ravi Vakil, Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, gave a lecture at Washington University in St. Louis entitled “The Mathematics of Doodling.”  He actually began his lecture by doodling an outline around the words “The Mathematics of Doodling”. He continued outlining until there were multiple rings of outlines surrounding the words.  His main question about doodling was: “Are the outlines getting more and more circular?  Why?”  After stating this question, he proceeded to reword it with mathematical symbols in order to form an equation that was solvable.  Through various mathematical comparisons and solutions, Vakil concluded that indeed the outlines progressively became more circular.  While this rational and concrete approach to doodling is helpful in mathematical terms, it greatly differs from the spontaneous doodling processes of surrealist artists.

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Claudia Schmacke’s lecture took place at the Saint Louis Art Museum on April 3rd, directly preceding the opening of her solo exhibition Currents 103. The beginning of the lecture was more poetry than introduction. Schmacke spoke in a darkened room with her film Umbilicus (2006) playing quietly in the background, and the sound of her clear, German voice mingled with the soft sounds of flowing water in the film. The gurgle and drip of the water was a constant undertone to Schmacke’s voice, as she discussed her fascination with liquids, particularly water, and the multitude of ways in which water is important is life. Her language itself was much like water, flowing from once sentence to another in an ethereal, sensuous manner. She described our life experiences as “seeing the world through water spheres”, and made a connection between the fluidity of water and the constant changes that take place in art. Schmacke’s lecture went on to describe several of her previous artworks, in order to provide the audience with the context for her current exhibition, which opened immediately following the lecture.

Umbilicus itself was more than just a backdrop.

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British art magazine writer and printmaker Richard Noyce’s presentation on “The New Ecology of Printmaking” discussed the constantly evolving field of printmaking, which relies on both traditional techniques and advancing technology. Students, faculty, and members of the St. Louis community gathered in Washington University’s Givens Hall, where Noyce defined the art of printmaking. He connected it to the modern world by relating printmaking to the field of ecology, which is the study of life and interactions between organisms and their environments.

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