To most of you Google Earth is probably old news. It is to me. But when I first found out about it I spent lots of time “driving” along local streets, stopping at places I normally go and searching for my bright yellow car (I found it, it was great!). After receiving an email with a photo of the Contemporary from the sky from our Exhibitions Manager, Shane (the one with the 2 year old who rocks out in his car seat…check out the music section on our MySpace page for more on that), I realized that it’s been too long since I have searched for the bird’s eye view of landmarks throughout the world.

If you haven’t yet “played with” Google Earth, check it out! And if you have, but forgot all about, I suggest another visit. Thanks, Shane, for reminding me of this addicting “fly anywhere” fun.

This Friday is the Grand Center Gallery Walk - I believe it’s our 3rd or 4th one now. I’m proud to say that Rachel at the Pulitzer and I planted the seed that has now grown to be quite the event. More than 12 galleries in Grand Center will be open on Friday afternoon and evening, along with a few restaurants offering discounts and some activity on the streets. What I’m excited about (and still in the middle of planning) is a little behind-the-scenes gallery hop with our Director Paul Ha. He’s agreed to lead a small group of ArtLinkers (our Young Friends group) through the contemporary art galleries to meet their directors. We’re starting with ours - and highlighting our Flat Files programs (the educational piece is to show that you can start collecting now) and then we’ll make our way to the art galleries to speak to gallerists about the work they sell, how to talk to a gallerist and what options are available for those who wish to purchase art. Then we’ll end at the new Pace Framing shop, which just moved to Grand Center and talk about how art work is framed. It’s kind of the second-half of the ‘creation story’ - what to do with art after it’s made and offered for sale. Then, in July, we’ll get a glimpse at the first-half of this story - when we host Open Studios and we can visit with artists and hear them talk about how they work, while we see where they do what they do. It’ll be a great way to demystify the contemporary art world.

Ah, and did anyone happen to go to Hartford Coffee Company to see Free Candy last night? The talk show is witty, comical, and informative. Paul was on to speak about contemporary art, our mission, and our current exhibtion. He was also joined by the owner of the soon-to-be open grocery store featuring local products opening near Tower Grove Park, and a fabulous mind that has organized free movies to be shown outdoors in various venues - meant to construct community, conversation and a good reason to enjoy popcorn outside.

With our new blog site, we’re incorporating our Flickr accounts into serving as an photo album. The Pulitzer set up one quite awhile ago, and I’ve had the duty of setting one up on my to-do list for longer than I care to admit. So, some say the first step is the hardest; however, Flickr really demolishes this notion by providing a fairly easy way of uploading photos to their site. Some of our architectural photos have been added, which you can view here, and I hope to sneak a few minutes away from my other tasks and upload some more. I’m doing all this work to a background hum of sanding machines which are working on the wall which housed Hodges’ mural piece. It’s been a pretty noisy place during install and it’s almost all I can do to keep from sneaking over to the Pulitzer to enjoy some peaceful meditation time in their gallery space.

During lunch we hosted our weekly yoga class in the performance space. It’s such a wonderful experience to be surrounded by such beauty while balancing, stretching, and preparing for the week ahead. It sort of allows you to get in the right frame of mind to tackle the week’s tasks and appreciate all that is happening. Today, I found myself in such a position that I had a perfect view of a patched up portion of our ceiling. Of course, this particular view led me to reflect on when we cut a hole in the ceiling to install a piece for the performance that opened Larry Krone: Artist/Entertainer last fall. It’s strange to have a permanent reminder staring so pointedly at you — especially in a non-collecting institution such as ours. I allowed my mind to wander and consider what we would need to do to erase the markings that were left behind after the exhibition came down. I imagine we’d need to replace a good portion of the ceiling completely. Or maybe it just needs a new paint job. The options available to cover up such wrinkles are sort of in line with choosing anti-age defying make-up or plastic surgery. I then considered all the permanent alterations we’ve made to the building for art. We’ve cut ceilings. We’ve built walls. We’ve torn down walls. We’ve drilled a lot of holes. Our building, only a few years old, already bears the wrinkles of having lived life and having lived art. It’s sort of a graceful aging. And I think, these laugh lines are good and will be a welcome memory to those who notice them.

While pondering for a blog topic, Betsy (Development Associate) handed me a new copy of Mimi Zeiger’s book New Museums: Contemporary Museum Architecture Around the World. And I thought I would share a description of the museum for those who have not had the opportunity to visit - it’s lyrical. . .”The long, slow arc of the exterior wall of St. Louis’s Contemporary Art Museum pushes all the way out to the boundary of its street-side site. A band of sidewalk holds the concrete panels in tension, with a cantilevered wall, wrapped in stainless steel mesh, pushing past the edge of the building and turning the corner to demarcate the entry to the museum. It is both an exuberant gesture and a metaphor. The architecture, in reaching out and embracing the street, enacts one of the major ideas behind the founding of the museum in 1980: to foster a dialogue between the city of St. Louis and contemporary art. . . .The Contemporary neighbors the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and sits on land donated by Emily Pulitzer. Although the two museums share the sculpture court that houses Richard Serra’s torqued steel sculpture Joe, the Contemporary is a more modest building (both in cost and in tone) than Tadao Ando’s refined edifice for the Pulitzer Foundation. In fact, the loosely defined galleries are more akin to industrial found art spaces than conventional white cubes. In kunsthall fashion, the Contemporary does not have a permanent collection–visiting curators and artists (like Kara Walker and graffit artist Barry McGee) use the space both as display and as something to react against.”

Yes, we cut a hole in our ceiling. It’s nice that our building lets us do things like that.  We did this so we could install steel beams in the ceiling that would be strong enough to support a swing that is part of Larry Krone exhibition. The four steel beams installed are seven feet long, and together they weigh almost 500 pounds.  One of our staff members yesterday commented on how amusing it is that we have to install 500 pounds into the ceiling, so 500 pounds can hang from the ceiling.

Anyway, Steve Morby (who works at the Pulitzer) came over and helped us out - I think he was the mastermind behind making this all work.  Over the past few days, part of the installation crew cut out the ceiling, installed four 7ft beams, and then dropped anchors down from each one. Currently, they are re-drywalling the ceiling, and then they will install the swing.

Larry Krone’s sister, Janet Kennedy will be the performing this Friday night. She swings (slowly) while singing and playing the ukulele. I believe the piece is called, “More Love Hours (No Charge).”  She will be doing two special performances during our opening this Friday.  Be sure to come!

I know I’ve been babbling about mannequins, costumes, and the like, and I also know that you haven’t gotten enough.  So, I snapped some pictures of Larry Krone’s handmade costumes on the mannequins!

 Also noteworthy: while we’re preparing for the upcoming exhibitions, we were on a mission to secure theater-style seating for viewers to sit in while watching Michael Paul Britto’s Dirrrty Harriet Tubman.  These seats (pictured below) were actually used in a special viewing room in the basement at the Fox Theatre - our Grand Center neighbor (at least, that’s the story that I heard). 

They’ll be upstairs at the Contemporary. No movie tickets required.

Is there anybody who doesn’t love postcards?

From mail art to souvenirs of the fifty states, I find postcards pretty hard to resist! And now we have images from all three of our fall exhibitions, Larry Krone: Artist/Performer, Janaina Tschape: Melantropics and from Michael Paul Britto who was selected for this Fall’s Project Series, as well as a photograph of the CAMSTL building designed by Brad Cloepfil.

Teachers in our ArtReach program have lamented the lack of images that can be taken into the classroom (and since most of the work is new, they’re not likely to find it in an art book). Now with our new postcards, we can provide each student with their own set of images!

The building photograph by Helene Binet is a very dramatic evening shot. The long exposure captures the city lights and the blur of city traffic.

Janaina Tschape’s photograph, Veratrum Bulbosus, 2006, was taken in the Climatron at the Missouri Botanical Garden during her CAMSTL residency. It is not your usual botanical garden souvenir postcard. There’s something strange lurking in the lush landscape. And yes, there are real people inside those costumes that look like internal organs.

Larry Krone has work in the exhibition Larry Krone: Artist /Performer that is based on postcards. Krone embellishes his postcards with needlework and handwritten phrases. We’ve reproduced an image of his Wisdom Tooth Fool Dolls, 1993 with plenty of white space surrounding the dolls just in case you too are feeling inspired.

The Dirrrty Harriet Tubman, 2005 postcard looks like a film poster. It accompanies Michael Paul Britto’s funny and irreverent action-movie trailer of the same title. Britto looks at the past with a humorous corrective lens and re-images the freedom fighter as a blaxploitation super heroine.

You’ll find the postcards in the museum shop, starting September 15th.

The first time I saw the photos taken during the construction of the Pulitzer’s building, I’ve been anxious to see the construction photos from the Contemporary.  I received a disk-full this morning! Today’s entry is going to be along the lines of a photo blog so I can share some of the first few photos that caught my eye (including one photo of the MESH that is wrapped around our building that I’m including in honor of us wrapping up our next issue of our MESH magazine- we’re on final edits today!)  

I’m currently in the throes of editing Mesh, our biannual magazine named after the stainless steel Mesh that covers our building. I thought I might give you, reader, a little sneak preview. 

We’re very excited to announce we’re producing three artist editions over the next season to complement the exhibitions (I’ll tell you about two right now)- with all proceeds supporting our exhibitions and programs.  As I mentioned a few months ago (here), we’re compiling a Larry Krone box-set in the guise of a suitcase full of memorabilia, including hand-drawn, signed, and personally stitched postcards for the deluxe edition. Ten deluxe editions are being produced - our Chief Curator Shannon Fitzgerald shared the postcards with me over the weekend and they are absolutely beautiful! 

What I haven’t told you yet, is that we’re opening an exhibition entitled I Remember Heaven featuring the juxtaposition of the work of Jim Hodges and Andy Warhol. For this exhibition, an artist edition by Jim Hodges is being produced. This wallpaper work fills the walls with a repeating pattern of hand-drawn plants and flowers–rendered in charcoal greys and metallic gold. This design is based on Hodges’ drawing From This Way Through (1999). 

 Apparently, artists have been long involved in the design of wallpaper (this, I did not know). “In 1966, Andy Warhol papered the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York with giant pink cows heads repeated over a bright yellow background.” (read about the evolution of wallpaper and artists’ influences here).  We’ll be covering one of our own walls with the wallpaper, which will serve as the frame - or backdrop - for several Warhol pieces that will hung - and the viewer will be able to see the relationship that forms between these two artists.  Art on art, so to speak.