Raheem Thorpe, a Staging actor, talks about Sugimoto’s Sea of Buddha and how he feels about being back at the Pulitzer since being part of Staging Old Masters.

by Amy Broadway, Interim PR Coordinator

One of the main goals of Staging workshops is that the actors personally connect with the artworks in Reflections of the Buddha. The company will craft and perform scenes in the spring based on musings about the stars of the exhibition, such as Prince Shotoku, the giant sculpture of a left hand, or perhaps Oscar Munoz’s La Línea del Destino (Line of Destiny). The works haven’t been officially chosen yet, and it will be interesting to see what gets picked.

Several Fridays ago, Agnes Wilcox, the artistic director of Prison Performing Arts and the workshop leader, asked the actors to pair off, peruse the exhibition, and speculate about the images they saw. Afterwards, the exhibition’s curator, Francesca Herndon-Consagra, led Staging through the galleries, sharing her knowledge of the artistry, cultural history, and meaning behind the works.

In the video above, Raheem Thorpe, a graduate of the Staging Old Masters program, talks about how he and his peers first interpreted Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Sea of Buddha and what they learned from Francesca. The last time I saw Raheem, he was working with teaching artist Jenny Murphy in Urban Renewal, part of the Urban Alchemy series of programs Transformation. You can see him interviewed in 2010 here. He’s great on camera, and I look forward to seeing him on stage (Staging will perform in the galleries alongside the art).

As a side note, many of you may recall that this is not the first time the Pulitzer has been graced with Sugimoto creations. As we celebrate our tenth year–which officially began in October– we’re looking back at past exhibitions and web catalogues. Click here for another blast from the past, a look at our 2006 exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto: Photographs of Joe.

The actors have been busily learning, creating, and sharing through a variety of ways. Recently, the company created haiku inspired by the workshops, the building, and the exhibition. It’s important to note that the word company actually includes staff, too, and another valued returning staff member from Staging Old Masters is Rosemary Watts, our stage manager. For those of you who have worked in theatre productions, you know just how valuable a good stage manager is. S/he is the “mom” of the group, loosely translated into the heart, the note-taker, the conscience, the observer, and the consummate model and teacher for company behavior. Rosemary asked to share haiku she wrote to describe the group process. Click here to read Rosemary’s haiku. 

by Emily Augsburger, Community Projects Coordinator

As we approach the end of October, the community projects department will begin our project for this exhibition:  Staging Reflections of the Buddha (Staging).  Before I began at the Pulitzer, I had heard about the project through the Brown School of Social Work, and I was completely inspired by the connection between social work and the arts. I am ecstatic to now be a part of the inner workings of this profound project.

For the past few months, we have been busily working with our amazing Staging team as we recruit actors and strategize the epic adventure ahead. Next Friday, we will hold our first workshop with the Staging actors. Agnes Wilcox will lead the process, and our team will work for the next seventeen weeks on the creation of the final performances. I am ecstatic that I am able to bear witness to and participate in the powerful transformation of the human spirit that comes from a project like Staging.  I look forward to keeping you posted on the Staging process as we progress. Cheers!

Staging Old Masters, 2009, Ideal (Dis-) Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer.

by Lisa Harper Chang, Community Projects Director

Once in a great while, we are fortunate enough to have professional experiences that are revelatory and make profound impact on our hearts, as well. I was fortunate enough to have one of these experiences with our 2009 project Staging Old Masters. The actors with whom we had the privilege and joy of working simultaneously put into question and answered what shape this collaboration between social work and arts could take.

It is with great hope, a healthy dose of intimidation, and endless excitement that I share with you the news that we will be offering Staging Reflections of the Buddha, a project inspired and informed by our previous Staging program and by the amazingly thoughtful exhibition curated so brilliantly by our senior curator, Francesca Herndon-Consagra. With this iteration of Staging, we will continue our work with Prison Performing Arts (PPA) and Employment Connection while expanding our partnerships to include St. Patrick Center. While all of our actors last time were new clients to our social service partners, we thought it would be both impactful for all involved and meaningful to integrate alumni from Staging Old Masters and PPA with new clients. All of our actors are in some state of transition–homelessness, formerly incarcerated, ex-military (combat and non-combat)–just at different stages of their journey. Their journeys unite with ours through theatre experiences amidst the art and through shared ritual in an exhibition-inspired lantern ceremony marking the end of the exhibition and commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Pulitzer.

Over the coming months we are thrilled to share with you the intimate details of the program. Please join us on this journey, as we explore how to unlock the creative potential in all of us.

FULL STAGING WEBSITE LAUNCHING SOON

Pencil drawing by James Kennedy, Farmington State Correctional Center. More artwork by prison inmates may be found at insiderart.org.

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Carol Corey has been a student of Zen Buddhism since 1999. She works with Inside Dharma, a Buddhist prison outreach organization that teaches meditation in Missouri prisons. Practitioners from Inside Dharma led a meditation workshop at the Pulitzer on October 8.  

by Carol Corey, Community Services Organizer, Inside Dharma

In 2003, I responded to a request from an inmate at Menard State Prison in Illinois who was looking for support in his efforts to practice Zen meditation. Scott was about 40 years old. He had been incarcerated in this maximum security prison since he was fourteen. I answered his letter, and we’ve been corresponding ever since. In 2005, one of Scott’s articles was published in Tricycle Magazine (a Buddhist publication), and later that year it appeared in Best Buddhist Writings of 2005. This essay provided a compelling account of the life-changing transformation Scott went through, which eventually led him to become a serious student of Soto Zen Buddhism.

Before long I began a correspondence with James, another inmate in the category known as juvenile life without parole or “JLWOP”. He practices Tibetan Buddhism and, in his letters and during three visits, has made it clear that these teachings were, and still are, a lifeline for him. At one point he began studying the Tibetan language in order to understand the original teachings. Read the rest of this entry »

by Carianne Noga, Programs and Gallery Assistant

Numerous distinct conversations bubble up all around. They rise and fall, in and out of audibility, and they fade through one another interconnected. A woman talks excitedly about the kind of power she wields on a new contract her firm acquired, while a man nearby describes ways to create inexpensive, handmade Christmas gifts. The front door slams behind a girl storming off, spitting into her phone, “You can’t text me things like that!” At a table by the door, an older couple turns back to discussing their evening plans, while their immediate neighbor continues describing to a colleague her convoluted career path from social work to epidemiology.

I’m sitting in a cafe listening back to an interview recorded with the Venerable Sungak Sunim last week, but I’m also listening to the eclectic noise of my neighbors. I am mostly able to focus on the recording, but occasionally I get carried away by the curious chatter all around me. I don’t know these people, and I don’t really know anything about them except the tiny, little bits that float in through my ears. However, as I hear Sungak’s digitized voice, louder than the rest, it’s almost like her voice is giving subtitles to the mostly indiscernible din behind it. “100 Bhikkunis in the same room. We eat the food. You cannot hear any sound..,” then she fades to a whisper, “only quiet.” I can’t help but notice the great contrast between her description and the scene before me presently.

A Bhikkuni is a fully ordained female Buddhist monastic. Sungak is specifically of the  Chogye Order of Korean Buddhism. This past Saturday, October 1st we held the first of a series of seven workshops in our Meditation Series, and we were led by Sungak through a sitting meditation and then a walking meditation that wove around the Pulitzer’s courtyard. She also gave a very thoughtful and informative talk to introduce the group to several key concepts of Buddhist practices. Back in that interview she elaborated as to why the dining hall would be so silent, an idea inconceivable to me. “Eating is also another practice, walking is another practice, speaking is another practice.” Well, if all of these things are practice, when’s the big event?

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http://www.vimeo.com/27209882

Theaster Gates and his students talk about Gate’s summer course through Washington University in St. Louis. During the class, students worked with Gates to rehab a house in Hyde Park and devise ways in which the house can be used as an arts hub for the neighborhood.

Community projects at the Pulitzer have always raised questions of sustainability. In understanding our institution’s ever-evolving role within the community arts of St. Louis, we are a catalyst, incubator, and (at our best moments) innovator. We work to enhance the already-impressive, effective, and inspiring work of our colleagues by bringing both the strengths of a cutting-edge arts institution dedicated to promoting the personal experience with all arts and social work practice. This means, however, that we are at risk of violating one of the founding principles of community practice by parachuting into a community then exiting quickly, without sustaining commitment to the communities with whom we worked. In principle, we are keenly aware of this and have attempted to balance our institutional identity with ethical community practice by forging partnerships with institutions that have the potential to carry the innovation forward. As this department is coming upon its fourth year, we are still in the process of learning what it means to “carry the innovation forward” and just how much continued support and involvement it might take from the “catalyst”.

Take Theaster Gates in Hyde Park for example. Theaster entered this community through our project, which was a collaboration between Holy Trinity Academy and Succeeding with Reading, a program that had existed at Holy Trinity Academy for a few years preceding Urban Expression, the Pulitzer-catalyzed program inspired by our exhibition, Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. He was captured by the community—particularly, the kids—and became committed to arts-infused community development in the neighborhood. While our exhibitions changed (and the programs with it), we were able to stay involved by co-sponsoring the CityStudioSTL (Somethingness: Ways of Seeing and Building) with the Sam Fox School of Visual Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis. In so doing, we are figuring out our institution’s role in ensuring that Theaster’s commitment to Hyde Park (through Rebuild Foundation) has a better chance at success. It’s a work in progress, but the brilliant work of Theaster, his employees, and the students of this summer class have provided another huge step toward fulfilling the potential of a beautiful, if neglected neighborhood and doing so by forging partnerships between existing community members and those from the outside. We’ll keep you posted as his work evolves.

Ronald Gore Jr (middle) reads from The Merchant of Venice with another alumni from Prison Performing Arts last Wednesday.

I was anxiously awaiting the start of our first SHAKE-38 reading: scenes from The Merchant of Venice. As it turned out, we started what seemed to be a great atmosphere in front of the Watercourt, where the audience was all sitting around in front of us on the stairs and in chairs. Once we started reading, a tornado warning went off, and I had to take my Shakespeare hat off and get in gallery assistant mode to lead everyone to our emergency spot in the building, the hallway in the lower level. Once everyone was safe, we decided to finish the reading. It was going great at first, until you could hear the hail hit the building, and I didn’t know whether to read or run! But I let my knowledge of this building not only calm me but the guests as well (there are few safer places to be during a storm than the Pulitzer building with its sturdy, concrete construction). We finished the reading and everyone forgot about the storm and loved the reading.--Ronald Gore Jr, Gallery Assistant and actor in Prisoner Performing Arts Alumni Theatre Company

The actors and audience continue in the hallway of the lower level post-tornado sirens.

The Pulitzer’s web catalogue for Dreamscapes launched last week, and we’re really excited about it. The catalogue serves not only to give a glimpse at the works in their temporary habitat, but it offers a  background to the exhibition, artists quotes, and documentation of our events and programs. Here’s an overview of dreamscapes.pulitzerarts.org:

Introduction: Read introductions from Emily Rauh Pulitzer and senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra about the exhibition. Download a checklist of all the works featured in Dreamscapes.

Exhibition: Explore the works in Dreamscapes, beginning with a beautiful mosaic of installation shots. Click on works to see additional images and artist quotes. Click on “The Space” for a map of the galleries, and see how the works are placed within the Ando building.

Events & Programs: Stay up to date on what’s happening at the Pulitzer and see what has already happened in conjunction with this exhibition.

Community Projects: Learn about the social work programs related to Dreamscapes. The Pulitzer is partnering with Beyond Housing, an organization that offers an array of services to the St. Louis community.

Exhibition Blog: Click on categories to see blog posts related to what you want to know about, whether that’s programming, particular artists, or social work projects.

Regina Martinez and Emily Augsburger, from the Pulitzer’s Community Projects department, stand in front of The Heidelberg Project in Detroit, MI.

Two weeks ago we traveled to Detroit to attend the Rust Belt to Artist Belt III conference. The mission of the conference was “to create the foundation for a sustained dialogue that connects an entire creative supply chain; from creative practitioners such as individual artists and designers, to creative sector business owners, to advanced manufacturers and prototypers”. The mission alone piqued our interests, and once we glanced through the panel topics, we knew we had to go. The conference started two years ago in Cleveland, Ohio, a city also grappling with its post-industrial identity. The conference moved to Detroit as the city has some words to offer on the matter. As native St. Louisans, we have witnessed a similar identity struggle here. But as we learn to address the challenge and what it means to be a post-industrial city, we are provided an amazing opportunity for transformation.

Rust Belt to Artist Belt provided a framework in which we could view the myriad of issues facing rust belt cities and how these issues can be addressed by using the resources within the creative community.  As conference participants we were asked to re-think artists and the creative community by acknowledging their very active role in our future-making. We agree that artists play an essential role in the revitalization of landscapes and the vibrancy and cultural connectedness of a place. The conference, however, focused so heavily on building the creative community by calling for new individuals to cities, that we feel it did not fully recognize the creative assets already present. We must recognize, support and connect the creative assets already alive in our cities.

Individuals participating in a panel discussion entitled “The Power of Race in Placemaking and Community Development” shared our sentiments. Not only was this particular panel discussion vital to understanding a community, the conversation is key to many Rust Belt cities. We all have prejudices.  Art is a means of facilitating conversations and social issues that have destroyed and isolated us in the past.  Artists express, artists can be anyone, and art has the capacity to build bridges across all divides.  Art and life are not so separate, and it can be through our collaborative storytelling that we grow to greater connectedness and understanding of one another. 

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