From StudioSTL’s Saturdays @ the Studio workshop coordinator, Nicky Rainey:

For little kids sitting around lunch tables eating fish sticks, “telling dreams” is an excuse to make up weird stories and entertain friends.  Truly, the dream world is a place where logic becomes unusual or irrelevant and where anything might happen–what a relief! What a forum for children’s humor!  (And SO potentially scary!) 

This Saturday, April 4, StudioSTL is teaming up with the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts to take fifteen children on a writer’s tour of the exhibition Dreamscapes.  Amy Broadway (writer, dreamer and Pulitzer staff-member) , a handful of mentors and I will explore with young writers, as they take notes about what we see and invent versions of the artists’ dreams.  

StudioSTL is a creative writing center for kids located in the Centene Center for the Arts–just a few blocks away from the Pulitzer in Grand Center.  Our slogan is “Write and Shine,” we celebrate young people’s personal voices by creating forums for them to write, polish and publish.  StudioSTL’s weekend program, Saturdays @ the Studio, relies on expert community members to help us put together whimsical, theme-based writing workshops for elementary aged kids. I can’t wait to hear our kids’ perspective’ on Dreamscapes. Read the rest of this entry »

Megan Johnson is the Pulitzer’s newest practicum student from the Brown School of Social Work, and she is currently coordinating the Dream Journal Project in connection with our current exhibition. In the letter below, Megan explains the project to those who signed up at the Dreamscapes opening reception. We want to hear your dreams too! Please sign up for the Dream Journal Project with Megan Johnson, Dream Journal Coordinator, at mjohnson@pulitzerarts.org.

Greetings, Fellow Dreamers!

Thank you for joining us for the opening of our new exhibition, Dreamscapes, and for participating in the Dream Journal Project. I hope this email helps answer any questions you might have about it.

We invite you to join us as we explore our dreams, nightmares, inspirations and thoughts. The dream journal you received the night of the opening (or any journal you wish to use) can serve as a place to explore your dreams using any medium you desire, be it painting, drawing, writing, collage, photography or any other. There are no rules stating how the themes of your journaling should be expressed.

Throughout the course of Dreamscapes, you will receive emails from me encouraging you to continue examining your dreams, as well as providing prompts if you are experiencing dreamer’s block.  These prompts are in no way mandatory and are solely provided to help you continue your explorations. If you happen to have a prompt idea, please send it in!

Toward the end of Dreamscapes you will receive an invitation to the Dreamscapes finale. The finale will include an opportunity for you to share your journal in a number of ways. You can submit your journal prior to the finale to be on display for all visitors to peruse, or you are welcome to bring your journal with you and share it personally. The day will also feature time when Dream Journal participants can read from their journals.

In all aspects of the Dream Journal Project, please share your dreams in the manner that is most comfortable for you—authored or anonymously.  And, if you choose to donate your journal for the finale, you are welcome to include your name or not, as you prefer.

Happy dreaming,

Megan Johnson

(MSW expected 2012)

Dream Journal Project Coordinator

The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts

This Saturday at 1pm, the Pulitzer will introduce a new series, Dreamtime Storytime, in connection with its current exhibition Dreamscapes. Every fourth Saturday of the month, writers, educators, artists and performers will tell stories related to dreaming.

This Saturday will feature Jane Ellen Ibur, a writer and co-host of Literature for the Halibut, and Emily Kohring, Education Director and Artistic Associate for Metro Theatre Company, telling stories together and asking members of the audience to share what stories pass through their heads as they sleep in their beds.

Jane Ellen Ibur will also be reading some of her original poems. Please enjoy this preview of “Cat Nap”, which will make you think about what expressions you use with children.

http://www.vimeo.com/19980837

Visitors at the Dreamscapes opening reception share their thoughts on the exhibition. Artworks they refer to include Do Ho Suh’s Staircase–Pulitzer Version, Kiki Smith’s Pee Body, Wolfgang Tillmans’s Forest (Briol II), Philip Guston’s Dark Room and Edge and Max Klinger’s A Glove.

Last Friday’s opening reception for Dreamscapes was an all-out success. I know we always say that, but it’s always true in my opinion. Hundreds of art enthusiasts roamed the galleries from five to nine, and the gallery assistants actually had to invite many to leave so they could close for the evening.

While there, I took a few videos of visitors sharing their thoughts so far on the exhibition. We’ve done these “In Your Own Words” clips for the last two openings, and it’s been eye-opening to hear what people see on their first visit.

A particular comment from last week, which highlights the Pulitzer experience, involves one visitor’s walk down the hallway on the lower level to discover at the end of it Wolfgang Tillmans’s Forest (Briol II). This print depicts a man with his back to you, walking down a path in the forest. Like him, you discover a path, the hallway, which seems to lead you into unknown territory. When I dream, there’s always the feeling of “what happens next?” and I love how the placement of this piece leaves you with that feeling. The Pulitzer’s architecture is also known to do that.

So what happens next with this exhibition? As always, the Pulitzer will be offering public programming in conjunction with the exhibition and the themes it encapsulates. We will have a Dreamscapes Concert Series and every Saturday at 1pm offer regular programs, including Frame of Reference, Exploring Art and Dreamtime Storytime, a kid-friendly series in which special guests tell stories related to–you guessed it–dreaming.

We’ll also be asking you to share your dreams. As our senior curator Francesca Consagra said in her video introduction, “This exhibition privileges the idea that art and dreaming does serve a purpose. By engaging with a painting, by trying to recall a dream, you may learn a little bit more about yourself.” We hope that you will join us in exploring concepts around dreaming and the artworks on view and, at the same time, learn about what dreams your mind has to offer.

Last week, our senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra gave a presentation to the gallery assistants about Dreamscapes. Here is Gallery Assistant Kay’s response to what she learned:

Sometimes it’s hard to see exhibitions leave our beautiful building, but it is always refreshing to see Ando’s architectural space transformed and reinvented over and over again.

After having a sneak preview of Dreamscapes, I’m anxiously awaiting the spectacular show. This will be my first experience with a Pulitzer exhibition that has multiple artists with multiple objects and concepts (with the exception of Old Masters, which had several artists but focused on similar content).  Do Ho Suh, a contemporary artist I have appreciated and admired, will have a piece in the exhibition that will have your eyes seeing nothing but red colors and transparent architecture.

You may not recognize Kiki Smith’s work  as a sculpture right away but more so as a person. She may make you feel nervous and empathetic, closer and more distant, human and humiliated—all in one piece at one time. To experience this work is so familiar to how we experience dreams. It’s not only what you are seeing but how you’re feeling–internal turbulence we can try to explain but cannot always articulate in a logical sense.

Dreamscapes has a compelling blend of installation, sculpture, and painting and joins Modern and Contemporary artists who explore many themes into a unique viewing experience that we funnel under the word “dreams”. For a one-of-a-kind place, this will certainly be a one-of-a-kind show.

Kiki Smith, American (born Germany, 1954) Pee Body, 1992, Wax and glass beads, Figure: 27 x 28 x 28 in., Beads: 23 strands of varying lengths, 1 ft. to over 15 ft. long, Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Promised gift in part of Barbara Lee and Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Purchase in part from the Joseph A. Baird, Jr., Francis H. Burr Memorial, and Director’s Acquisition Funds, 1997.82

Ruckus Roboticus, “Here We Go” (Live), Grease Records

This Saturday is the closing of Ann Hamilton’s stylus, and there’s a lot on the schedule for the day. For one thing, Ruckus Roboticus, a deejay and performer, will be playing grown-up-friendly children’s music from 1pm to 3:30pm. Below are some words  from Chris DeVille, a writer and fan, about the bot and what to expect on Saturday.

Ruckus Roboticus is an entertainer of many stripes, and he’ll show most of them Saturday when he plays the closing reception for Ann Hamilton’s stylus.

“Play” is the operative word whenever Ruckus steps behind his extensive technological rig. The Dayton native, born Dan Haug, brings a youthful zest to his work, from his award-winning DJ mixes to his production work for TV networks such as Nickelodeon and MTV.

Then there’s “Playing With Scratches”, his 2008 debut album for Grease Records. The album found Haug building funky sound collages to tell a story about the wonder and confusion of childhood—think Girl Talk with more obscure samples but just as much playful ingenuity.

His cartoonish flair captivated kids but also struck a chord with grown-ups—everyone from Spin to NPR piled on the accolades, and stars like Bloc Party and Vampire Weekend lined up for remixes.

Recreating his madcap sample collages on stage forced Haug to step his game up from mere DJ sets. He developed an elaborate one-man show that keeps him busy hopping from one device to the next to rebuild each song sample by sample, scratch by scratch.

“I feel like I’m one of those plate spinners, like kind of a vaudeville performance, from playing samples and then running over to the laptop,” Haug says. “I’m kind of juggling these things to keep the song going.” Read the rest of this entry »

DJ Needles describes what he’ll be playing at next week’s sound waves: Hip Hop.

It’s almost that time again. Our second to last sound waves is next Thursday from 6-9 p.m, and judging by the guest list on Facebook, it’s going to be pretty crowded. Part of that is due to DJ Needles (a.k.a. James Gates), who hosts Rawthentic on KDHX and has quite a few fans around town. Several weeks ago, I was dropping a sound waves flyer off at a salon in Grand Center. As I handed it to the owner, he pointed to DJ Needles’s name and said, “That’s our deejay!”

DJ Needles has been deejaying in St. Louis since 1994. He was voted best Club DJ in the RFT for 2010 and has opened for national acts, such as the Roots and De La Soul. According to his website, “his style is heavily influenced by raw, traditional, sample-based Hip Hop…this style is the most true to the culture, he believes, because it not only sounds dope, it also teaches listeners about thousands of hidden gems and forgotten songs and artists while opening minds up to many different genres of music.” Next Thursday is going to be dope for sure.

Last Saturday’s “knit-in” with stylus was a success at bringing together multiple groups of knitters solely for the purpose of enjoying their craft amidst the soundings of stylus. Each conversation spun its way from one group to another while snippets of the concordance specifically devoted to the event were read over the loud speaker. “Word,” “of,” “mouth” spoken from the speaker drifted through conversations about the shooting in Tuscon, AZ that day. The trickling of speech from each guest mingled with the ever polite clinking of needles while stylus sang from its human voice, or one of many other worldly sounds.

Some knitters finished their projects in the three hours while others only merely tapped the surface of their lengthy projects. All in all there was camaraderie present that one only sees every great once in a while. Thank you to all who attended.  We hope you will knit with us again on January 22 for the stylus Finale–A Sounding.  Ann Hamilton will be in the galleries all day and would love to thank those who have participated in activating stylus.

For more photos from this event, visit our Flickr slideshow.

St. Louis Shape Note Singers sing in the Pulitzer galleries last November.

This Thursday, January 13, 7-9pm, the St. Louis Shape Note Singers will return to the Pulitzer galleries to sing Sacred Harp music. Sacred Harp is an a cappella tradition from mid-18th century America. Shape-note singing is designed for participation, not performance. (Download a lesson on it here.) In the following letter, one of the Singers reflects on singing here last November.

Thank you for the opportunity to sing in stylus last November. Our group has sung in many different spaces (cinder block churches, people’s kitchens and living rooms, old meeting halls, hospitals, nursing homes, funeral parlors, etc), and in every setting we look for “that sound,” an acoustic critical mass built from our four-part polyphonic voices singing fortissimo. Read the rest of this entry »

Ann Hamilton, a round, 1993

Within the exhibition of stylus, there are multi-sensory experiences that the audience is encouraged to interact and engage with. Ann’s artwork has often dealt with text and our human experience with its exchange, verbal, gestural and poetic. During the exhibition at the Pulitzer, various groups have been invited to come into the space and activate stylus with their voice, poetic movement or instrumental accompaniment. With “stylus” as its title, it seems appropriate to ask a community of knitters to come to the exhibition space and activate their art and sound. At early stages of installation, Ann was interested in experimenting with what kind of sound this might generate within the space as well as encourage this visual connection between the physical act of knitting and the title of the exhibition.

Read the rest of this entry »