This summer CAM takes the St. Louis public into artist studios across St. Louis with our 6th Annual City-Wide Open Studios. City-Wide Open Studios offers a unique opportunity for the St. Louis public to explore the creative and personal spaces of local artists while providing the ability to enjoy one of the most exciting parts of contemporary art – the chance to talk with the artists themselves. Through the CWOS program local artists are connected to the museum, while the museum connects participating artists to the larger St. Louis arts community.

Eligible artists must maintain working studios in St. Louis City, University City, or Maplewood to participate in the program, and must be able to open their studios to the public from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm on either Saturday, July 30 or Sunday, July 31, 2011. CAM will allocate, based upon neighborhood, which day your studio will be open. On a first-come-first-served basis, a limited number of studio spaces will also be made available at an alternate venue to those artists whose studios lie outside the prescribed limits.

In addition to promoting a tour of your studio, CAM will display ONE work from your collection at the Open Studios Preview from July 26-31. Please note, the artworks act as a small representations of an artists’ studio practice. The Open Studios Preview allows visitors a glimpse into an artists’ practice and enables them to plan their weekend itinerary based upon the physical artworks they are most interested in. Because of the volume of artworks received, 2-D works will be hung salon-style and 3-D works will be organized appropriately within the limited floor space.

Click here to find out more information about City-Wide Open Studios and to register online. The last day to register is Monday, June 6.

You are invited to join us for the public opening celebration at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum this Friday, May 6 from 7-9 pm featuring two new exhibitions:

Cosima von Bonin: Character Appropriation
Conceptual artist Cosima von Bonin’s creative practice is distinguished by an exceptional interweaving of sculpture, installation, video, textiles, music, performance, and her own social network. The exhibition roughly spans the last decade of the artist’s career, including a selection of her textile “paintings,” her signature sculptures and outsized stuffed animals, as well as her latest pieces that embrace themes of idleness and mental and physical fatigue. more info >>

2011 MFA Thesis Exhibition
The exhibition will feature thesis projects by the 2011 Master of Fine Arts candidates in Washington University’s Graduate School of Art, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. 2011 MFA candidates: John Talbott Allen, Meghan Bean, Shira Berkowitz, Darrick Byers, Jisun Choi, Zlatko Cosic, James Daniels, Kara Daving, Andrea Degener, Kristin Fleischmann, William Frank, Nicholas Kania, Jordan McGirk, Zachary Miller, Esther Murphy, Kathryn Neale, Katherine McCullough, Christopher Ottinger, Maia Palmer, Nicole Petrescu, Lauren Pressler, Bryce Olen Robinson, Whitney Sage, Donna Smith more info >>

RELATED EVENTS
Opening Afterparty
Friday, May 6: 10 pm at Atomic Cowboy (4140 Manchester Avenue)
The celebration continues at an afterparty featuring Moritz von Oswald—an influential electronic music pioneer and frequent von Bonin collaborator—at Atomic Cowboy (4140 Manchester Avenue) starting at 10 pm ($3 cover; free passes will be available at the opening reception). 21 and over only

Gallery Talk
Saturday, May 7: 1 pm
Meredith Malone, curator of Cosima von Bonin: Character Appropriation, will lead a talk in the galleries offering visitors an in-depth look at the exhibition’s works and themes.

Reached just before naptime, St. Louis spoken word artist Brett Underwood said, “I don’t know what to expect, so how can you? Josh and I will be having some of the same kind of fun that we had when I followed him on the air all those nights. I have written one new piece for this session already…what’s it called?…oh, ‘The Liar Has a Squirrel’…and hope to write another or three this week. We are both flattered and excited about the opportunity to play Ear Doctors in such a setting.”

This Sunday, from 1-4pm, as CAM is celebrating Misterios de Mayo/Running of the Bulls Family Day Fun Run next door, the Pulitzer and 88.1 KDHX will offer Dream Sounds, the first in a series of music shows inspired by Dreamscapes. Read the rest of this story here.

April Highlights at the Pulitzer

Dream Matrix Review from St. Louis Magazine’s Look/Listen; A Love Letter From the Rust Belt; Opera at the Pulitzer; Videos of Panel Discussion on the Psychology of Dreams; Next Exhibition: Reflections of the Buddha

Design and print by Firecracker Press

South African artist William Kentridge talks about Max Beckmann’s manipulation of physical space and its influence on his work. Max Beckmann’s The Dream is on view in the exhibition Dreamscapes. Watch the rest of this panel discussion on the Pulitzer’s YouTube channel.

What’s happening this month and some recent Pulizer highlights:

Panel Discussion on Psychology of Dreams
Thursday, April 7, 7:30 p.m. (Doors open at 7:00 p.m.)

The artist Max Ernst noted that painting gave “objective form to what is visible inside him.” This panel explores the varied and complex symbolism of dreams from different traditions in Western psychology. Panelists will introduce their particular traditions and then interpret some of the artworks in the exhibition as they would dreams.
Panelists include:
Britt-Marie Schiller, Dean, Faculty Member at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute and Professor of Philosophy at Webster University, St. Louis

Rose Holt, Jungian analyst in private practice in St. Louis and Chicago and active in the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago Analyst Training Program

Moderator:

Francesca Herndon-Consagra, Senior Curator, The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

Social Dream Matrix

Saturday, April 9, 1:00 p.m.

Art therapist Shelly Goebl-Parker and artists Hap Phillips and Nita Turnage lead a dream matrix. The act of dreaming is normally a solitary one. Through dream matrices, it becomes a shared experience, building a small temporary community when participants enter a dream matrix together. Sharing dreams in this way enables the discovery of new meaning and significance in dreams. The dream matrices are followed by art making as a way to reflect on newfound discoveries, reflections and inspirations. 
Read the rest of this entry »

This Saturday at 1pm, Bill Wischmeyer, Architect of Record for the Pulitzer building, will share his personal knowledge of Tadao Ando’s St. Louis achievement for the second Exploring Art: Dreamscapes and Ando’s Architecture. Last month, Emily Pulitzer explained her vision of the building and the realization of that dream. Co-founder of Los Caminos, an apartment gallery on Cherokee Street, and a Pulitzer docent, Francesca Wilmott recaps that discussion here:

Speaking in front of the reflecting pool, Emily Rauh Pulitzer shared the lively deliberations that occurred between her and Tadao Ando, as well as artists Richard Serra and Ellsworth Kelly, whose work was commissioned for the building. Unlike the commissioning process in the United States, Mrs. Pulitzer explained, Japanese architects do not traditionally involve clients in each stage of their planning. However, Mrs. Pulitzer held to her vision, and together, she and Ando developed an art sanctuary that fulfilled both their aesthetic and practical needs.

Tadao Ando has discussed the tensions that often accompany a collaborative process, noting that: “Working collaboratively with such uncompromising artists was incredibly demanding. However, the numerous changes and modifications made with each visit to the construction site have given the works a vitality and reality unique to this place. For me, the exciting collaboration with these artists has provided a rare and stimulating opportunity to reconsider the architecture and to rethink what it means to create.” Ando made one such modification upon viewing Richard Serra’s plan for Joe, the enormous Corten-steel sculpture that occupies the outdoor courtyard. Rather than constructing wide vertical windows along the wall that looks onto Joe, as initially planned, Ando felt that narrow horizontal windows would better frame the sculpture from within the building.

Read the rest of Francesca Wilmott’s post at 2buildings1blog.

Francesca Herndon-Consagra, Senior Curator at the Pulitzer, describes Dreamscapes, which opened on February 11. For a longer version of this introduction, visit dreamscapes.pulitzerarts.org.

Do dreams mean anything? Are they just erratic firing of synapses, or do they actually tell us something about ourselves and our experiences? What was going though Philip Guston’s head when he painted Dark Room, and what is it that makes something surreal, nightmarish or simply dreamy? Over the next few months, the Pulitzer will investigate the significance of dreams and art through its current exhibition Dreamscapes.

It’s been almost a month since the Dreamscapes opening reception, and the Pulitzer is just beginning to scratch the surface of the dream-themed exhibition. As many of you art enthusiasts in St. Louis know, the Pulitzer typically has two exhibitions per year, and in the time that an exhibition is on view, the Pulitzer, as part of its identity as a “laboratory”, investigates themes in the exhibition through customized events and programs.

For the duration of Dreamscapes, the Pulitzer is offering free public programs, every Saturday at 1 p.m., which include art-making, storytelling and discussion-based tours among other activities. Next month, we’ll add dream matrices to the mix, and as usual, our team of social workers will test how art can empower people and build community, beginning with The Dream Journal Project (find out more here). 

On April 7, senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra will moderate a panel discussion, in which psychologists from different traditions interpret artworks as they would dreams. (Apparently, stairs in dreams have been interpreted in many ways.) You’ll be able to see an archive of this and all Dreamscapes happenings on an interactive Dreamscapes web catalogue, where you’ll also be able to virtually explore the exhibition in the Ando building.

If you haven’t seen the exhibition yet, this Saturday is a great opportunity to do so, since the curator will lead visitors on a journey through the building:

Saturdays at 1 p.m.

Gallery Talk with Senior Curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra
March 12, 2011
Senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra takes visitors on a walk through the exhibition. Experience the shuffling and reassembling of pictorial themes and fictions that evoke a journey from one dream to the next. At the same time, learn about the artists and the thought behind each work’s composition.   

Social Dream Matrix
April 9, May 14 and June 11, 2011
Art therapist Shelly Goebl-Parker and artists Hap Phillips and Nita Turnage lead social dream matrices. The act of dreaming is normally a solitary one. Through social dream matrices, it becomes a shared experience, building a small temporary community when participants enter a dream matrix together. Sharing dreams in this way enables the discovery of new meaning and significance in dreams. The dream matrices are followed by art making as a way to reflect on newfound discoveries, reflections and inspirations

Frame of Reference
Every first Saturday of the month
Members of the St. Louis community from diverse backgrounds, from psychologists to poets to art historians to social workers, talk about their favorite work of art from their personal perspectives.

Dreamtime Storytime
Every fourth Saturday of the month
In conjunction with the exhibition Dreamscapes, the Pulitzer hosts Dreamtime Storytime, a series in which writers, artists, readers and dreamers share stories related to dreams to people of all ages. Among others, storytellers include librarians from the St. Louis Public Library and members of the literary arts center StudioSTL.

Exploring Art: Dreamscapes and Ando’s Architecture
Every third Saturday of the month
During these open tours, docents encourage group discussions on how the artworks on view and architecture relate to one another as well as how the visitors individually relate to the exhibition. Space is limited. RSVP to Visitor Services Manager Courtney Henson at chenson@pulitzerarts.org.

The Pulitzer will announce additional event details on www.pulitzerarts.org as Dreamscapes continues.

The Pulitzer is open and free to the public Wednesdays from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Pulitzer is located at 3716 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108.  For more information about the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, visit www.pulitzerarts.org or call 314-754-1850.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will launch its annual Kemper Presents Concert Series with a performance by the Pernikoff Brothers March 4. The series, designed to showcase the talents and diversity of contemporary St. Louis musicians, will feature seven local acts working in a variety of styles and genres, from indie-folk and a cappella to American roots music and lush, melancholic jangle-pop. All concerts are free and open to the public and take place Friday evenings from 6 to 8 p.m. in the museum’s foyer — or, weather permitting, on the Florence Steinberg Weil Sculpture Plaza. Free food and drink will be available.

FULL LINEUP:
March 4: Pernikoff Brothers
March 11: Paper Dolls
March 18: Prune
March 25: Mosaic Whispers
April 1: Beth Bombara
April 8: Pretty Little Empire
April 15: Bob Reuter

The Kemper Presents Concert Series is made possible with support from 88.1 KDHX and Yelp.

Held in conjunction with the exhibition Ghost: Elizabeth Peyton, on Thursday, March 3 the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will host a FREE poetry workshop: “High Art/Low Language: Experiments in Poetic Style,” from 11 am to 1 pm.

Peyton’s subjects shift from Oscar Wilde to Andre 3000, from ultra-eminent Shakespeare to hip-hop antagonist Eminem. In Ghost high and low culture share a wall, the boundaries between them blurred and broken. In this interactive creative writing workshop, we will consider these boundaries as they apply to language at large. What “counts” as art and what cannot? Led by Eileen G’Sell, instructor of English at Washington University and publications assistant at the Museum, this free workshop will last two hours and include lunch.

Space is limited and registration is required by Monday, February 28; please CLICK HERE to sign-up.

This Saturday at 8 PM, the six Chicago-based comedians that compose Comedians You Should Know will perform a full blend of their latest stand-up routine at White Flag Projects.

Danny Kallas won first place at Snubfest in 2009 and is seated on Comedy.com’s list of 20 Funniest Chicago Comedians. Marty DeRosa, originally from Indiana, loves professional wrestling and has now begun his fifth year doing stand-up comedy. Joe Kilgallon has a background in improv and writing from The Second City and is a Chicago native. Mike Lebovitz struck an early stride at the age of six with clowning classes at the JCC. Now alongside stand-up comedy, Lebovitz takes on a wide scope of projects as writer, director, and actor. A graduate of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, Michel Sanchez performs nation wide including Seattle’s Bumbershoot and The Seaport Music Festival in New York. Drew Michael’s comedy splashes in with the dark waters of sex, death, and dating, but nevertheless this newcomer grins in the face of life’s misery.

The first fifty guests will receive a free, limited edition Time Wounds All Heels whoopee cushion!

Doors open at 7 PM; the event is free and open to the public. For more information on this, our current exhibition Time Wounds All Heels, and upcoming programs at White Flag, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.