Congratulations to Alex Elmestad, CAM’s Manager of Public Programs and Interpretive Technology, on the opening of his artist-in-residence exhibition, Institutional Memory, at the Luminary Center for the Arts this past Friday.  Here’s what Alex had to say about his exhibition.

“The main objective of this exhibition will be to produce a memory of past experiences within a publication that will hold not only personal histories within the pages, but the intimate and personal narratives of the community will also become part of the institutional history.

A limited edition book will be produced from the manuscript taken at the opening. As a literary form of expression as well as written documentation of an event, exhibition, or project, this catalog will take the form of a performance first. A stenographer will be hired during an opening. Equipped with a stenotype, the modern shorthand machine, the stenographer will be assigned to a specific gallery and will be instructed to eavesdrop on as many conversations as possible over the course of opening night and the week following. In many ways a museum is a listening tool often asking for feedback from the visitor in order to improve its mission and enhance experiences. Without the social dialogues welcomed and formed within the forum atmosphere of a museum, the public would not feel ownership with the institution. It is exactly the dialogues produced that make the space personally important for members of the community. Through this performance the metaphorical museum ears are literally personified with a living person transcribing and recording the social activity inside the space.

This performance will exceed the boundaries of traditional recording and will somewhat venture into espionage because the stenographer will be obtaining information without permission of those in the space. Thus the issue of private and public space is raised. The fragmented conversational material will then be reviewed by the artist, notes will be made and items will be arranged to create a more cohesive, yet engaging narrative; however, conversations will not bealtered to any degree. The artist will work with an editor to realize the literary vision of the work, and a final manuscript will be approved and the artist will collaborate with a local designer and print shop to produce a visually interesting editioned publication to be sold by the organization. Titled Institutional Memory and produced as a print multiple, the work is intended to be shared with others. As a limited edition, the work will maintain a certain value and have ephemeral qualities, but the main objective will be to produce a memory of past experiences within a publication that will hold not only personal histories within the pages, but the intimate and personal narratives of the community will also become part of the institutional history. As a result the institution truly becomes a place of dialogue consisting of many voices that are listened to and the exchange is materialized in a written form. The publication will include an introduction text written by the director, a short discussion between the artist and stenographer, select typed short hand notes, and the edited conversational narrative.”

If you missed Open Studios this year, don’t worry, there is always next year. A previous blog post already mentioned the Preview Party which had a record breaking 720 people in attendance. Special thanks goes to the River City Professionals for co-hosting the program, helping to promote the event, and bringing all of their members to party. In addition to the 150+ Open Studios artworks on display in the galleries, Pi on the Spot, also known as PiTruckSTL on Twitter was parked outside the building serving up fresh pizzas straight from truck’s oven. As a local phenomenon, Pi has been embraced by the St. Louis community and even Chicago based Senator, turned president Barack Obama has endorsed the iconic deep dish pizza with his seal of approval. Just recently, chefs of Pi were flown to the White House to caterer an event especially for the president. Alongside the Pi Truck, a Frosty Treats ice cream truck was also parked outside for those looking to fill their sweet tooth on a hot summer’s evening.

As an added bonus to the Preview Party, guests were encouraged to enter a bike raffle to win a Electra Pink Hawaii Cruiser donated by Big Shark Bicycle Company. Ramona Scott was the winner and stopped by the museum the next day to pick up her prize and even rode it home.

With temperatures reaching over 99 degrees, that still did not stop the devoted cyclists from riding over 14 miles and stopping at a variety of studios along the way. Led by Greg and Alex from Bike Shark Bicycle Company, the bike tour departed the Contemporary on both Saturday and Sunday at 10am. Special thanks also goes to Bike St. Louis, a division of Great Rivers Greenway for endorsing the program and helping to make bike riding in St. Louis safe and accessible.

Later that day, Director Paul Ha and Associate Curator Laura Fried introduced themselves at the museum to over 30 people that registered for a 4 hour bus tour to select studios. As visitors boarded the luxurious air-conditioned bus provided by BEST Transportation St. Louis, “Pops” the driver greeted them and drove them all over the city to studios chosen directly by both the director and the curator.

On Sunday, winners from our Facebook competition joined Joe and Jeff from Glide St. Louis Tours for a segway excursion to select artist studios. Director of Individual Giving & Stewardship Emily Klimek acted as the Contemporary representative on the tour. If you applied to win a spot on the segway tour, do not give up, become a Fan of the Contemporary on Facebook now and look out for the next opportunity on this platform. Those that won the Facebook competition also received a free meal ticket to the Open Studios BBQ.

What better way to end a whole weekend of programs and tours plus a Homegrown Summer for that matter then to enjoy barbeque from Pappy’s Smokehouse and ice cold beer from Schafly. The watermelon was sweet and chilled to perfection, but the pulled pork sandwich was definitely the crowd favorite. Normally, you would have to wait hours to get a taste of Pappy’s perfectly cooked BBQ, but at the Contemporary it was all there for the taking for only $10 a meal. In addition to the BBQ, sides, and beer, Ted Drewes frozen custard was offered as an additional summertime treat.

What could be more “Homegrown” than Ted Drewes, Pappy’s, Schlafly, 150+ local artists, and the Great Rivers Biennial exhibition? Well, you asked for it… the Rum Drum Ramblers, with upright bass, harmonica, and banjo guitars rocked the courtyard with down and dirty St. Louis blues. The summer might not be over, but this year’s Open Studios was the climax of the Contemporary’s Homegrown Summer, a series of programs featuring local art, food, and music.

Sean and I, fountainside, in Washington Square Park

Last week I spent three days working with Sean Landers in his Chelsea studio, preparing the design for his upcoming catalog. The major monograph, produced in conjunction with his recent exhibition at the Contemporary, will focus on Sean’s work produced in the early nineties. In my three-day visit, we roughed in some 300+ pages of exhibition shots, individual works, and running quotations from Sean’s paintings, diaries, and prose.  The above picture was my view of the city looking up the Hudson River for those three days. Below is a picture from the back of the studio looking out the windows. You can see Sean and his two studio assistants, Allison and Cindy working away.

The studio is filled with bright natural light, which can make viewing work on the monitors difficult.  On the desk you can see a Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis baseball hat that was there before I arrived, and which serves as the official studio sun visor. On the monitor is the catalog in progress.

Tuesday evening when we were done working, we headed home along the High Line.  What a beautiful transformation, from a neglected elevated rail to city park.

Stay tuned for the catalog.  It will be our largest to date, weighing in at approximately 400 pages!

The fourth iteration of the Great Rivers Biennial opened Friday night, April 30. The Biennial is a collaboration between the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Gateway Foundation designed to strengthen the local art scene in St. Louis. This innovative program identifies talented emerging local artists and mid-career artists whose work explores new directions, and provides them with financial support as well as local and national visibility.

This year’s Great Rivers Biennial 2010 artists, Martin Brief, Sarah Frost, and Cameron Fuller, each received $20,000 to help support their practice, in addition to the opportunity to mount an exhibition in the Contemporary’s Main Galleries. The Great Rivers Biennial is one of the most widely anticipated exhibitions presented by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. The energy it has generated has galvanized the arts community in St. Louis, contributing to an enhanced quality of life for St. Louis area residents.

This year’s exhibition includes the following:

Martin Brief’s suite of twenty-eight new drawings, collectively titled Amazon God, appear at first glance to be seismographic in nature, the recording of tectonic shifts. In fact, they meticulously inventory the results of a search for “God” on Amazon.com. Brief records the thousands of book titles his search unearthed on scroll-like sheets of paper with a Rapidograph pen.

Sarah Frost’s installation, Arsenal, had its beginnings on the internet, too, though YouTube provided the impetus. Frost found there a community of young boys who self-publish instructional videos for making elaborate paper guns. Guided by the boys’ videos, Frost fashioned a paper cloud of weaponry suspended from the gallery ceiling, which shares the space with YouTube stills.

Cameron Fuller’s The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes reveals his interests in folk art, Native American artifacts, and the natural history museum. Upon entering his “museum within a museum,” you’ll encounter As It Is, a life-size diorama, and then, in adjoining rooms, Remembering Washington, The Guidance of Disaster, and Where My Heart Will Lead Me, an allusion to the itinerant tinker.

The Great Rivers Biennial 2010 runs through August 8. For more information, visit www.camst.org.

I’m Michael Goodwin, and I have been working as an intern at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Recently, I began the detailed project of revamping the Contemporary’s library. My goals were to catalog the museum’s book collection, marking each publication with CAMSTL’s stamp, and then categorize the diverse subject areas for ease of use. And when I started, I was concerned about whether or not everything could be accomplished before summer began and my internship ended. 

Enter: LibraryThing.com. LibraryThing is an online book community, a cataloging tool, a social network of book lovers, and a nexus for book reviews, local book events, and book discussions. LibraryThing welcomes both personal and organizational catalogs, and a number of likeminded museums are already part of its network.

Twenty-first century technology and new fields of social networking have made the process of cataloging and searching for books a breeze. What once may have been a long, monotonous process is now as simple as using Facebook, which is second nature for any college student.

Adding a book into our personal catalog is easy: enter its ISBN number. Searching for a book is just as easy. LibraryThing is able to search hundreds of global catalogs in order to correctly determine the book, an ideal feature for the Contemporary’s international collection of reference books, gallery guides, and monographs. 

Unable to find a certain book in one place? Users are also able to quickly click onto another catalog to search. Resources like the catalog of the Helsinki Metropolitan Libraries, the National Library of Taiwan, or the University of Botswana catalog, to cite a few fascinating examples, are immediately available. 

One of the huge benefits of LibraryThing is that the catalog is viewable from any computer, with or without a LibraryThing account. Visitors to the Contemporary’s presence on the site, http://www.librarything.com/catalog/CAMSTL, can browse and search the Contemporary’s catalog. And you can visit the books in person, too; they’re housed in the museum’s second-floor Exhibition Lab.

A site visitor can enjoy all of the benefits of this unique social network by joining LibraryThing for free. If you choose not to join, the browsing and searching aspects of the site are still available. The incredible accessibility and digitalization of the collection will certainly improve the Contemporary’s library experience for all. If only there was a way to digitally stamp the books as well … but who knows what the Internet will yield next?

Artist Sean Landers, whose work is in the Contemporary’s current exhibition, Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History, recently led a New Art in the Neighborhood session. His workshop focused on self exploration and expression through artistic writing, as he led the twenty students in a stimulating narrative exercise.  Landers first asked the students to write three personal truths about themselves or the world around them.  The artist then collected the statements and read them aloud to the class without revealing their authors.  The truths were poetic reflections, frank observations, and deeply personal secrets.  The thought-provoking workshop provided an opportunity for the students to express their most direct thoughts and create a picture of their identity.

 The exploratory workshop was a great segue into a NAN session led by local artist Kit Keith.  Keith, an accomplished mixed-media artist, began the workshop with a discussion of her earliest artistic influences and the lessons she learned from her father, who worked as a sign painter.  She shared with the students a history of her artistic voice, emphasizing her fascination with 1940s imagery and use of found objects, two constants in her work.  Keith brought several unfinished works with her, and worked on her art alongside students as she challenged them to make collages with found objects, found imagery, paint, and illustration.  The resulting collages were extremely diverse and channeled Keith’s techniques through pastiche and careful composition.  Students crafted their collages using newsprint, personal photographs, magazines, and textiles, and other fascinating materials. 

 Not only did these two artists share stories of their efforts to create self-reflexive artwork, but they also gave the students precious insight into their personal methods and aesthetics.  After two fun and challenging NAN workshops, the students will surely be inspired to continue creating art that gives thought to personal narrative and honesty.  It was great to see their processes develop through these two workshops.  Thanks again to Sean Landers and Kit Keith!  And thanks to the NAN students for their consistent dedication, talent, and enthusiasm!

The Museum is closed for installation until January 22 which is Opening Night of Sean Landers: 1991-1994, Improbable History and Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Popin the Main Galleries and Xavier Cha in The Front Room. You can stay connected to the Contemporary by visiting this blog, social networking sites, and the Museum’s website. Click here for all the ways to stay connected while we are closed.

Read the blog posted on saintlouisartmap.org. Find out about the Piñata Closing Party, the event to mark the end of the exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there.

Mariana Castillo Deball / Tessa Rehkop

Mariana Castillo Deball was born in 1975 in Mexico City, and she currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. Her Klein Bottle Piñata (2009) is being presented as part of the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. The gigantic, blue, Klein bottle-shaped piñata hangs over the Contemporary’s performance space allowing viewers to examine the curious object. It is made out of paper máché and is larger than life. A Klein bottle is a non-orientable surface, meaning the inside and outside cannot be distinguished. This is similar to a Mobious strip, except that a Klein bottle has no boundary. What’s inside the Piñata is a mystery and will be revealed the last day of the show at the Piñata Closing Party held at the Contemporary on Sunday, January 3 from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Guests will be allowed to take swings at the piñata to break it open!

Falke Pisano / Tessa Rehkop

Falke Pisano was born in 1978 in Amsterdam, where she currently lives and works. Her work, Chillida (Forms and Feelings) (2006), is being shown as part of the current exhibition For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there. It consists of a video projection of the artist looking through a book photographs. These photographs are of sculptures by Eduardo Chillida captured by amateur photographer David Finn, who travels all over the world to find them. He eventually publishes the sculptures in a book in the late 1990’s. Using two separate projections, Pisano flips through Finn’s book of photographs while providing her commentary. The artist believed it was important to describe what she felt the moment she first looked at the photographs and their descriptions. Some of the sculptures Pisano views with appreciation because they are what she describes as “strong and natural” just as she herself would like to be. Pisano begins to draw lines and create her own shapes using images of the sculptures, so the viewer doesn’t just hear her interpretation but can now see it also. Click here for the gallery guide.