This past December, local architect John Pankey and I led a writing workshop for literary center StudioSTL, using the setting of Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark as our muse. It was the second time the Pulitzer and this Grand Center neighbor have come together.

Over the summer, StudioSTL’s director, Beth Ketcher, read for A Marathon Metamorphoses and wrote on the event’s corresponding blog what she felt the marathon was about. Her attitude reflected a principle StudioSTL and the Pulitzer share: the arts are for everyone.

The goal of December’s workshop was not for the participants to produce refined art reviews but to get them to think comfortably, descriptively, analytically, and creatively by jotting down verbal sketches of what they saw in the galleries. Given optional cues in a worksheet, the young authors were asked to investigate the space, write down what they thought, and read their writing to everyone as a conclusion to the session.

Below, one of StudioSTL’s mentors reflects on the workshop.

Paula Davis is an Engineering student at Washington University and a mentor for StudioSTL.

On the twelfth day of the twelfth month, a few young writers–high school students–and a number of volunteers from StudioSTL, sat holding gray pamphlets, on the gray concrete floor of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, in its gray concrete building, under St. Louis’ cold gray sky. It was quiet.

We were gathered to explore the world of art, the world of architecture: their intersections, their motivations, their repercussions, etc. More specifically, we gathered to explore the Pulitzer’s current exhibition, Urban Alchemy, and the Pulitzer itself–the building, the space, the light. After brief introductions and explanations, we did what we came to do: we explored.

With notebooks in hand, teens and adults alike slowly wandered through Tadao Ando’s carefully calculated space. We observed records of Matta-Clark’s work and his work itself. Photographs of walls with chunks removed–looking in, looking out. Pieces of walls, pieces of roofs, their layers and layers of shingles made visible by cross-sectional slicing. We looked at garbage made into a wall and pictures of subway cars covered in graffiti and line drawings of a house and its roof and its pieces. We pondered. We scribbled notes in our notebooks. We noticed there were no placards on the walls explaining the art. We asked questions. We looked closer (but never got closer than two feet). We stepped back and took in the larger picture. We sat and stood and leaned and squinted and smiled.

When we came together near the end of our time in the Pulitzer, we shared our thoughts and writings. The art made us think about more than just cutting up buildings with a chainsaw, more than squishing garbage together to make a wall. The space, the art, the light, the sounds, and our overall experience triggered much more. We wondered and wrote about what makes art art, what constitutes “modern” art, and the importance of the art’s arrangement. We were inspired to recall old memories, to wonder about the back stories of objects, to write poetry. One young writer was even inspired to design clothing based on what she had seen.

During our brief stay, we didn’t draw any conclusions. We didn’t score each piece of artwork. We didn’t give the exhibition a grade. But we were inspired by the art, by the space, by our peers. And we wrote. We created our own art. And we were satisfied–pleased.–Paula Davis