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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

As we’ve said before, part of the Pulitzer’s identity is that it doesn’t have labels for the artwork, however for the next three weeks, the Ando building will boldly declare its address in neon, as part of 2010 Whitney Biennial winner Theaster Gates’ exhibition Dry Bones and Other Parables from the North.

Dry Bones will open this Saturday along with three projects during the Transformation Project Walk. In case you haven’t been reading the news or listening to St. Louis Public Radio, the Walk will be a big bash that concludes all of the community programming we’ve worked on throughout the Matta-Clark exhibition. Similar in scope to The Light Project, the Walk will be one of those special events that encourages all of St. Louis to explore the Grand Center neighborhood and experience each unique project site.

This Saturday, May 15, from 3-7pm, the Pulitzer will provide a shuttle and trolley service to those who want to see what Transformation has accomplished this spring. Each stop will exhibit inspired works by program participants, which are sure to demonstrate how art can affect social change and further conversation on the St. Louis urban landscape. For a full description of the event and programs, visit this page.

Robert Longyear talks about the chairs in his installation and how they relate to the theme of “congregation.” Like Gordon Matta-Clark, who used titles like “A W-Hole House” and “Reality Properties / Fake Estates,” Robert also incorporates word play into his artwork. For more information on his project visit the Urban Evolution blog.

Everybody eats (See Sesame Street clip, ca. 1970s), and, as we should know by now, the way we get and eat food fundamentally defines our way of life. Drive-thru windows. Pre-packaged food. Devotion to convenience in the United States leaves cooking as a hobby rather than a part of being human.

Next Thursday evening, the Pulitzer will present “Food, Art, and Community,” its final panel discussion in the series fired by Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. Panelists will talk about offsetting disengagement with what we gobble and how blending art with urban farming, farmers’ markets and food has the potential to strengthen whole communities. This topic was inspired by Gordon Matta-Clark’s use of cooking in his artwork and the artist-owned/run restaurant Food, which offered a “perpetual dinner party” to SoHo in the early 1970s.

This week, Rachel and I decided to highlight an example of art and food fostering fellowship in St. Louis by interviewing a founder of Sloup, a monthly soup dinner that donates its proceeds to artistic ventures. Below is my interview with Amelia Jones.
What is Sloup exactly? What is the rationale behind it?

Sloup is a monthly soup dinner that funds artists’ grants in greater St Louis. The idea is that it doesn’t take a super large amount of funding to bring art projects to fruition.

Can you relay the conversation that led to Sloup?

Sloup was sprung from visiting a soup dinner hosted by InCUBATE in Chicago. Very simply, we decided that this idea of a micro grant process could be applied to St. Louis.

What are the details that go into a dinner, like where does the soup come from?

We made the first soup ourselves. The second soup was donated by The Mud House, a local coffee shop. We are soliciting other restaurants and individuals to come make a soup and share something they are excited about, be it an ingredient in the soup or an element of their restaurant/organization/etc that is unique.

Who are the people who participate in Sloup?

Maggie Ginestra and I facilitate the dinner, but that is becoming an easier and simpler component since more people want to contribute to the actual dinner, by donating soup and bread and beverages. We’ve had local art organizations like The Urban Studio Café (who won out first grant) and individual artists like Jordan Hicks and Dave Johnson apply for the Sloup grant.

Can you describe what took place at the last Sloup meeting? What is the atmosphere like at a typical dinner?

We have had two dinners so far: one in February and one in March. We have had a little over twenty people attend each dinner. Sloup is a casual occasion. People start wandering in at 6pm or so and we try to hand out the proposals as the soup is being served. Since we have only had two Sloups, it is hard to say what is a typical dinner. At our last dinner we had Kimmy Sue talk about a project she is working on called Fresh Bread. Kimmy is donating bread, which she will screen print on with edible ink, to April’s Sloup as part of her Fresh Bread project. As more people begin to finish the projects the Sloup grant funded, more of the dinner will have a presentation element, where the artists and organizations will come back to Sloup and talk about the projects that they have completed.

Besides awarding money to artistic endeavors, what has Sloup accomplished so far, and what do you hope for the future?

We have started to connect different populations in St Louis and we want to continue to do that in, hopefully, bigger and bigger ways. When you hear the word “Sloup,” we want people to think about a great place to put ideas about food and culture in motion.

Update: Sloup, along with our friends at Urban Studio Cafe, were just featured on Marketplace! Check it out here.

Tuesday morning, students from a Construction Careers Center shop class toured Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark for the first time. They have been hearing about the exhibition for months. Last fall, while requesting garbage donations, Jenny Murphy and Lisa Harper Chang visited CCC, a construction-focused charter school, to talk about Gordon Matta-Clark’s work and sustainable design. Jane Crawford made a special appearance at the school during the week the Wall was constructed.

In early February of this year, the Pulitzer, along with the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Earthways Center and the Lawrence Group, began the current program. Representatives from each organization and a teaching artist have been meeting with the class for lessons on community building, sustainability and design. The students are planning with their teacher to eventually build their own version of the Garbage Wall.

Faydreauna, a student at Construction Careers Center, shares her observations on Garbage Wall.

Two Saturdays ago, medical students from St. Louis University and adults from Oasis met for the first in a series of discussions on contemporary art, urban blight, the creative process and the revitalization of St Louis, in connection with Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. The group started at the Pulitzer, where they became familiar with the work of Gordon Matta-Clark. As a way to get to know one another, they followed that with a group exercise in the conference room next door at CAMSTL.

Oasis is an organization that originated in St. Louis and now has a national presence. The organization provides unique learning opportunities for older adults. Oasis and the Pulitzer designed Saturday’s program, Arts and Aging, to provide a forum where medical students and older adults can come together to share a museum experience and discuss substantive issues relating to the art and the St. Louis community. The program’s goal is to encourage inter-generational communication and break down stereotypes regarding age.

Words like “re-purpose,” “transform” and “redefine” were introduced as participants encountered Matta-Clark’s work  for the first time. After placing Gordon Matta-Clark and his work in a historical context (1968 in Paris, 1970s New York City), participants wandered through the exhibition on their own looking for examples of how Matta-Clark redefined (architecture, space), re-purposed (Garbage Wall) and transformed derelict buildings into works of art.

Afterward, the group headed to CAMSTL for a workshop. The med students and Oasis members worked together using paint chips to explore ideas about color. Each participant chose a paint chip either because of the color or its evocative name appealed to them. They then they talked about the various associations they had with that color and created something like a self-portrait using words. While sharing their responses we learned about individuals; Serena likes astronomy, and Robert described his colors with words starting with the letter “f.” Furthermore, there was the realization that we share common responses to certain colors across generations.

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

As my position is jointly appointed with the Brown School of Social Work, who recently founded the Institute for Public Health, this is adding further fuel to this intellectual fire. For this particular partnership, my current mode of exploration, while broad in focus, continues to return to the theme of health disparities—how can art museums use an engagement around art to address health disparities? I would love your thoughts and comments about this particular train of thought.

Crew members from Earthworks Urban Farm in Detroit pose with their produce.

So my personal Detroit visit included conversations with Matt Sikora, head of evaluation at the DIA, and Jennifer Czajkowski, Direct of Interpretive Programs at the DIA. For those of you into evaluation, the DIA conducts what I consider to be an unprecedented amount of formative evaluation, or evaluation that is done during the formation of an exhibition (like market testing), which dovetails nicely with their strong commitment to innovative interpretive strategies, an effort in which Jennifer is highly instrumental. These interpretive strategies, the incorporation of which is based on the theoretical work of Abigail Housen and stages of aesthetic readiness, include thematic curation of exhibitions, specific language in wall text that isn’t necessarily rooted in art history, and other assistive devices, such as “I Spy” plaques and, my personal favorite, the table in their Fashionable Living exhibition that shows pieces on display being used in an 18th century dinner. The truly innovative model of how learning and interpretation (formerly, education) and curatorial interact to create one type of “optimal visitor experience” is somewhat antithetical to our approach, yet both of our institutions are striving toward the common goal of supporting the relevance of art in everyone’s lives.

The afternoon at the DIA was followed by a tour of Detroit, courtesy of our friends at the MOCAD. Specifically, Luis Croquer, Director, and his staff and colleagues in the community shared what, in combination with the innovation occurring at the DIA, make for great beacons of hope for art in the aforementioned “challenging urban environment.” Among the truly inspiring sites we toured stands the Earthworks Urban Farm and Capuchin Soup Kitchen (which is one of the famed urban agriculture projects that have, pardon the pun, taken root in Detroit, given the amount of unused urban land—fascinatingly enough, policy appears to lag behind the projects that have put Detroit on the map in a new and admirable way and composting and gardening as a primary function for a plot of land in the city remain illegal on the books). Art flourishes in a variety of environments and we witnessed homegrown, community, and what could be considered outsider art blooming in various parts of the city.

Of particular interest is the work of Mitch Cope and Gina Reichert, and in a convergence of the sort that makes my work particularly exhilarating, Mitch and Gina are currently installing “The Neighborhood Project” at the DIA in preparation for an exhibition they will be installing at MOCAD. As part of this installation, they will be highlighting the stories of the neighborhood in which they live, including one gentleman who can tell you the automotive history of ownership up and down the block. Mitch and Gina are at the heart of a project that is growing within their neighborhood—buying inexpensive property (as low as $100 for an abandoned home) and renovating those spaces in the name of purpose of the arts (writing, visual, and otherwise). Mitch and Gina are currently working on “the Power House,” which is a home that for financial reasons was kicked off the grid and through Mitch and Gina’s efforts to use sustainable technology will remain off the grid, integrating solar and wind power, among other techniques to create this artists’ space. Ironically, they paid less for the land and home than they did for the adjacent lot, which now houses the solar panels and converter for the Power House.

Artists like Mitch and Gina are living legacies of the work and vision of Gordon Matta-Clark, and in some ways, we all felt that visiting Detroit was long overdue, but perhaps it was simply the perfect time to, as being immersed in the building cuts, collages, and spirit of Gordon Matta-Clark opened us up in just the right ways to appreciate all that Detroit is just starting to teach us. After experiencing just a taste of what Detroit has to offer, we’re excited to share the community and art treasures of St. Louis with our colleagues in Detroit.