• Art Organization: Laumeier Sculpture Park

Anschultz Discovers the Joy of Wood Chipping

While Brandon Anschultz was preparing for his upcoming show at Laumeier Sculpture Park, I was lucky enough to observe the construction (or deconstruction) of what I consider to be one of his most intriguing pieces—Approximately 1350 hours of painting and 2 hours of wood chipping. While I waited with Anschultz for the wood chipper to arrive at Laumeier, we discussed his show, and specifically the piece he was working on that day.

I couldn’t hide my horrified expression when I saw the back of his truck piled high with paintings, all sawed into five inch strips, in preparation for their demise. He showed me a painting that had been exhibited in New York, laid the pieces on the ground, shrugged his shoulders and suggested that he actually preferred it sawed apart. I asked why he was destroying work that he liked. “It’s just part of the process,” he replied. That’s when I began to understand that with Anschultz’s work, the process is as important as the finished product.

When he started up the wood chipper and began feeding his paintings into it one strip at a time, I snapped a few pictures. I couldn’t watch for long—it almost seemed intrusive for me to witness simultaneously the destruction of past work and the creation of new work.

If you would like to view the finished work, Approximately 1350 hours of painting and 2 hours of wood chipping, and meet the artist, attend the opening reception of Stick Around for Joy on Friday, June 11 from 6-8 p.m. at Laumeier’s Indoor Galleries.

— Rebecca Lee, Laumeier Intern

Brandon Anschultz: Stick Around for Joy, runs from June 11-September 26, 2010 at Laumeier Sculpture Park.

• 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.

• Art Organization: Sheldon Art Galleries

House Tour Explores Architecture of Harris Armstrong

Innovative St. Louis modernist architect Harris Armstrong (1899-1973) was one of the first architects in St. Louis to employ the tenets of the International style, and took inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. A House Tour, sponsored by the Sheldon Art Galleries will showcase four of these homes, three of which he designed for himself.  Each are examples of some of the best modernist/mid-century designs in St. Louis. Tickets for the Harris Armstrong House Tour are $25 in advance, $35 at the door.  Visit www.TheSheldon.org for all the details.

• Art Organization: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

Show Ending, New Year Beginning!

For those of you in St. Louis still looking for something exciting to do to bring in 2010, start with Grand Center’s First Night  on New Year’s Eve. First Night is always full of exciting entertainment and activities and is an incredibly unique experience. The buttons you receive during First Night can be recycled for discounts at different Grand Center locations. Bring it in to the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and you’ll receive free admission OR $5.00 off of a Contemporary membership.

The rest of the first weekend in 2010 can be spent at the Contemporary since it will be the last couple of days of the current exhibition. For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there will close on Sunday, January 3. On Saturday, January 2, visitors can go on the Last Chance Tour in order to check out the show and the twenty artists one more time. Then on closing day, the 3rd, the Contemporary is hosting a Piñata Closing Party. Since the beginning of the show Mariana Castillo Deball’s Klein bottle-shaped piñata has hung above the Performance Space. On this day, guests will get to take turns swinging at the piñata. Yes, there are assorted objects and candies inside, and yes, guests will get to swarm to these prized possessions as they fall to the ground. There will also be festive music and free margaritas and the artist will be present! Learn more about Mariana Castillo Deball by reading the Artist Blog Series post on 2buildings1blog.org.

• 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 Map now on Facebook

Anyone on Facebook can now get new Saint Louis Art Map posts delivered right to your news feed – just CLICK HERE and become a fan of the Saint Louis Art Map blog’s page.

• Art Organization: White Flag Projects

“Destroy All Monsters is a hard way of life.”

Destroy All Monsters Opens Saturday 9/19, 7-10 PM

Formed at a house party in 1973, Destroy All Monsters was originally equal parts The Stooges, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Velvet Underground, and Sci-Fi B-movie shtick. The band’s music was accompanied by artwork, performances and films, as well as a self-titled zine of drawings, prints, and collages inspired by sci-fi movies, underground music, and iconic elements of 1960s counterculture as filtered through to the collective’s industrial Midwestern hometown of Detroit, Michigan. In 1995, the original collective of Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, and Jim Shaw reunited, and have been in a lot of shows since then, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 at the MCA Chicago.

Destroy All Monsters: Hungry for Death opens Saturday, September 19 from 7 to 10 PM, at White Flag Projects. We’re going to have a public conversation with curators James Hoff and Cary Loren that Sunday afternoon, September 20 at 2 PM.

In 1976 Mike Kelley wrote about DAM for Destroy All Monsters Magazine:

WHAT DESTROY ALL MONSTERS MEANS TO ME

The first point to make is: Destroy All Monsters is not a band. Our main intention is to be engaged in an activity that provides an instantaneous and powerful cleansing noise. We are not interested in making music. A one-to-one relationship is set up, whereby each action is answered by a growling response, like that produced by poking an animal with a stick, or crossing a threshold and setting off an alarm. Once in motion, this response can go on regardless of the actions of the initiator. To produce something, like a sound, and then have it mature enough to keep going without your assistance causes a pleasant sensation – one of creation. Destroy All Monsters is therapeutic. Destroy All Monsters can be a sedative, a pleasantly gurgling muzak to file the rough edges off, an emotion-deadening machine repetition setting up a rhythm for you to live more easily by. Destroy All Monsters can be electro-shock therapy to wake you up when you slip into a coma. It can blow away the cloud with speed and volume and then move away into a rarified atmosphere where each hum in an inaudible mess becomes more clear and an inaudible mess in itself. Yes, Destroy All Monsters does all this, and more. It’s good American physical work to do something over and over again, factory-style. It makes you sweat the poisons out of your system. It’s hard to push a button and have to sit there and listen to it. You can have a nervous breakdown being an air-traffic controller, having the responsibility of choosing which button to push on the drum box. Destroy All Monsters is a hard way of life. It’s a backwards battle toward a cliff that goes down into chaos and silence. But, it’s a rare treat to be involved in the Destroy All Monsters scene. It’s so esoteric, or so you think. Really, it’s easy, just like staying alive. Lastly, Destroy All Monsters is a call for a new therapeutic popular music. I’m sure, by now, everyone realizes the importance of popularization, of mass-production, of the easing of the lives of as many people as possible. Why not mass produce the Destroy All Monsters achievement? Everyone should pump out Monstrous, destructive Destroy All Monsters black noise. If everyone let their aggressions voice themselves in such sound there 1) wouldn’t be any need for popular entertainment of any kind, and 2) wouldn’t be anything – just an existence of total comfort. I told you so. Let us show you too.

• Art Organization: Laumeier Sculpture Park

New Sculpture at Laumeier

I woke up the other day and realized that an entire summer had whisked by in what seemed like a good night’s sleep. Perhaps it was the uncharacteristically great weather or maybe the litany of projects and events that made June, July and August blow right on by. Nevertheless, fall is fast approaching and I’d like to share a bit about two recent acquisitions to the Laumeier landscape and remind you about our upcoming fall exhibition.

The newest sculpture in Laumeier’s collection is Donut No. 3 (2002) by Fletcher Benton. Sited in the Children’s Sculpture Garden, Donut is a tasty visual treat for visitors of all ages. Benton was recently recognized by the International Sculpture Center with a lifetime achievement award and this piece showcases has mastery of materials and aesthetics.

Over the summer, Laumeier secured the loan of a fabulous sculpture by Cosimo Cavallaro. Knots (1996) tangles up perceptions with contorted steel that mimics string or noodles in a mystifying dance of form and mass.

You can visit Laumeier everyday between 8AM and sunset to see the new works by Benton and Cavallaro and more than 70 other sculptures. A visit in October will provide another opportunity for contrasts.

Roberley Bell: Inside Out which opens at 6PM on October 9, 2009 and continues through January 10, 2010 presents the vibrant colors of a fluorescent springtime and the juxtaposition of real and man-made natural objects and specimens during those neutral hued days of autumn and winter.

Visit Laumeier and be inspired.

• Student Review: Sam Clapp, Washington University

A Reaction to “private (dis)play”

Walking with a group of friends to see the opening of the new exhibition at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA), private (dis)play, I had no idea what to expect.  The concept sounded novel: exhibit pages from artists’ notebooks to gain an understanding of their inner lives, but I wondered how such an idea might be implemented effectively. After all, I thought as I jumped over the puddles of slush covering the unlit streets of University City, notebook pages alone are not very interesting.

As we entered the building and made our way to the exhibition room, I thought my worst fears were confirmed. The show was housed in a white exhibition space, and the nature of the art being shown made for a fairly drab appearance. Reluctantly I began to circle my way around the space, glancing at the notebooks and sheets of paper pinned and encased in plastic along the walls. Though the exhibit emphasized the sketchbook component of private work, the pieces took many forms. In addition to white sketchbook pages, the show housed larger sheets of paper with drawings done in pen, video monitors displaying digital animatics, lined sheets with watercolor, and even a few collages.

After I had perused through the gallery for a few minutes one of the curators, Jamie Adams, began to speak.

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