I knew being a gallery assistant here would be a great venture, and it hasn’t disappointed me yet. I’ve been through Old Masters, Gordon Matta-Clark and now Ann Hamilton. What fascinates me most about stylus is that all of the people that come get some kind of experience. Now you can say it’s the hands-on aspects that everyone enjoys, or you can say it’s the design of the building and the appearance of the projections on the walls. Or you can say that the jumping beans really get people excited–most visitors haven’t seen these in a long time, if ever. For me, it’s the Cube Gallery that makes me glad that I work here. That’s an important room. The piano starts playing when people sign-in at the front desk on the touch pad. Some people in the Cube while this happens get startled, while others just laugh.

As a gallery assistant in that room, I generally keep the laughter going by either singing or playing the piano–and no, I can’t play a lick–and show them the recorder that’s in the piano. It’s very different than our last exhibition, Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, which often had sad stories associated to the art. It was much more serious. I found myself engaged in the history behind the art in Urban Alchemy and the Old Masters exhibition, as well as how the works fit with the Pulitzer building. stylus is playful and makes you aware of your surroundings – from the sound that comes out of the ground to the light that rotates around the walls, you are sure to find pleasure in this space. That makes my job enjoyable, and I’m able to get into my work and really have a good time with everyone. What a job!

We’re working on the full website catalogue for stylus (more to come on that!), with a big focus on translating the unique in-gallery experience onto the web.  One of the ways we’ll try to achieve this is through time-lapse videos during our open hours, showing how visitors – and the natural light – interact with the work throughout the day.  Our web designer just sent this clip from what we shot in the Cube Gallery – looks like one of our gallery assistants found the exhibition very inspirational!

Artist Ann Hamilton, Composer Shahrokh Yadegari and the opera singer Elizabeth Zharoff create a recording for the installation of stylus.

To add a “sense of  humanity as well as mystery,” Shahrokh Yadegari explained last week, he and Ann Hamilton chose to incorporate a human voice into stylus’s primary sound composition. They talked with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and were introduced to the singer Elizabeth Zharoff. The three met at Jupiter Studios, a recording studio in downtown St. Louis, where Zharoff sang as Yadegari improvised using her voice and a computer music instrument he invented. The instrument is called “Lila,” a word that literally means “play” in Hinduism but implies creative freedom within a set of boundaries. Zharoff and Yadegari’s collaboration as well as Ann Hamilton’s installation seem to exemplify that concept quite nicely.

Shahrokh Yadegari, Composer/Sound Designer, and his assistant Toby Algya program player pianos for Ann Hamilton’s stylus. Yadegari describes how the instruments will be used during the exhibition.

When we think of the word “stylus,” what comes to mind nowadays is a touch pen used on a palm computer. The upcoming exhibition’s namesake has many denotations, though, such as a pillar or a tool used to engrave wax. As Matthias Waschek broached in the last “From the Director,” the meanings of “stylus” overlap and fundamentally relate to communication. My favorite image of a stylus is a record player’s needle, which magically emits music from a slab of vinyl. At Friday’s opening, you’ll be able to experience a similarly wonderful transmission of sound. Read the rest of this entry »

As you’ve seen on the blog over the past few days, we’re in the midst of installing stylus, a project by the artist Ann Hamilton.  But what is this exhibition all about?

If you could sum it up in one word (which you really can’t) “experience” would be high on the list.  “Immersive,”  and “interactive” would work too. Ann’s installation is structured around live acoustic elements, and like many of her installations, weaves together a range of media to produce an environment that engages your senses as you move through it.  Her work responds to the architectural presence and social history of the sites she works within, and she will be interacting with the Ando building in very distinctive ways, transforming each gallery into an engrossing audio and visual environment.  Without giving all of it away, here are a few of the elements you’ll discover in the installation:

A central focus is sound, which Ann has closely worked on with sound designer and composer Shahrokh Yadegari.  Visitors will be able to interact with the sound in a variety of ways – from using a stylus and a touch pad to “sign-in,” to a steel table in the Main Gallery with a rolling tray and a microphone.   Input from these elements will feed into either the speakers on the roof of the Pulitzer building or two player pianos situated in the Cube and Lower Galleries, which will then transmit the sounds.  There will also be record players throughout the exhibition, five rolling platform ladders with rotating projectors, jumping beans, taxidermy birds, a wall of cast paper hands that visitors can wear, concordance texts produced from the daily newspaper…. as you can see, there are many elements that will contribute to your overall experience.  The hope for these materials is to engage a relationship between the individual and the group, a single voice and a chorus, a silent book and a spoken reading, and finally, between a solitary listening and a collective hearing.

Bob McCabe, Morning Host for KWMU, reads during A Marathon Metamorphoses.

“…how does one communicate the experience of an ephemeral two day reading in our exhibition space?” our director, Matthias Waschek asked today in his very first blog post for the Pulitzer. He is, of course, reflecting on last year’s marathon reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which has so far been the only event of its kind in our building.

To capture the experience, a local videographer video taped the almost twenty hours of reading in the Lower Gallery. He then edited the footage down to eight minutes, which includes a shot of each of the seventy-four readers. You can now watch the video and read Matthias’ reflections on it on our A Marathon Metamorphoses blog.

Since the end of May, a group of graduates from Washington University’s Sam Fox School have been crafting oodles of paper hands to be in stylus. Lindsay Deifik, an organizer for this venture, answered some questions about the process and e-mailed me some photos from the studio.

What is your role for the installation of Ann Hamilton’s stylus?

I am the Studio Assistant Coordinator for the paper hand production here at Washington University. My responsibilities include overseeing the working schedules of our assistants, cataloguing the hands, directing various aspects of our production and of course making plenty of hands myself. I’m really grateful to have fallen into a job that requires me to be making and producing right after graduating with a BFA. I am also serving as a nexus of communication between Ann, her studio in Ohio, the Pulitzer and our base here at the university. It’s been really exciting to see all of the components and dispersed activity that goes into the production of a show of this magnitude here in Saint Louis. Read the rest of this entry »

Organizers, visitors and participants talk about Art/Food during the event.

All afternoon this past Saturday, a crowd milled about the Art/Food tent trying local concoctions, such as South County honey,  Vanilla Cream Ale, and s’mores from a sun oven. In the video below, Chef John Judy, from L’Ecole Culinaire, describes the Gordon Matta-Clark gumbo that was served. For a full recap of the event, watch the video above.

With the dismantling of the folding tables, came the conclusion of Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. If you’re ever feeling nostalgic, you can always visit the Transformation site and the web catalogue, which document the exhibition and the ambitious programs associated with it. What was one of your favorite parts of Urban Alchemy?

As we evaluate the achievements of the past few months, we’re also revving up for Ann Hamilton’s stylus. The Pulitzer will be closed for installation until July 9, the exhibition’s opening reception. (To be continued…)

Chef John Judy shows L’Ecole Culinaire’s recreation of Gordon Matta-Clark’s gumbo, which they served at Art/Food.

Kathryn Adamchick, an Art/Food organizer, talks about how Art/Food relates to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark.

This is a the last week for Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. As a special farewell to the exhibition, the Pulitzer has joined forces with Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis for a celebration of food and art on Saturday, June 5, 1-4pm, titled Art/Food.

Art/Food will offer dishes prepared from local food by local chefs from a few of St. Louis’ favorite restaurants. Organizations, such as Earthways Center and Slow Rocket Urban Farm, will talk about local food and offer interactive activities that demonstrate sustainable practices.

Admission is free, but there’s a suggested donation of five dollars, or flour, oil, and vinegar to go to St. Louis Campus Kitchen, a non-profit student organizations that feeds people in need.

For full event details, visit our event page.

Slow Rocket Urban Farm talk about their urban farm in South St. Louis. They will give a presentation on their work during Art/Food.

Here’s a shot of Robert Longyear sitting in his installation for Urban Evolution, discussing his work with visitors last Saturday. His friend Dickson Beall recorded a couple snippets of him describing working with kids at Craft Alliance, which you can view here.

This Saturday, May 29, at 1pm, Robert will continue the conversation and read his thought-provoking written piece “Seven Ten Split.” The talk will be held again at the exhibition, in the Woolworth Building (501 North Grand in Grand Center). As usual, there’s no admission fee. Just bring your curious minds and be prepared to look at bowling balls in a whole different light.

From Robert:

“We’re daring to be operatic, like maybe it’s time for us to address critically the fate of our neighborhoods – and if we’re going to be operatic about it -and if this is all about a principled response to the wider world, we all need a foundation.

Remember, there’s a bureaucracy to opposable thumbs.”