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.”

On May 15, the Pulitzer celebrated the culmination of Transformation with an art walk that showcased the work of each program. In the video above, visitors, participants and organizers talk about the different programs and locations for the Transformation Project Walk.

The Transformation Project Walk sites will be on view until June 5, as the Pulitzer staff prepares for a final Urban Alchemy event. Perhaps after that, we’ll have time to process the assorted layers of the T-series and all that happened during the Walk. As a Pulitzer camerawoman (we use a Flip), I try to focus on perspectives and moments that expose some of the big picture of events, some of which don’t always make it into footage. As I followed the site map on May 15, I saw a range of reactions. Here are a couple of times that stood out to me: Read the rest of this entry »

Juan William Chávez comments on Gordon Matta-Clark’s father, Roberto Matta, and one of Matta-Clark’s works in the exhibition Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark.

For May’s Frame of Reference, Juan Chávez, an artist and the director of Boots Contemporary Art Space, examined Gordon Matta-Clark’s A W-Hole House: Roof Top Atrium. As a panelist for “The City as Studio” and curator of Theaster Gates’ exhibition Dry Bones and Other Parables from the North, Juan has greatly contributed to Pulitzer activities in the last few months. You can read his post on the Urban Expression blog, which explains what he thinks of “the power of art.”

Frame of Reference is a series of in-gallery discussions on the first Saturday of every month. The Pulitzer tailors each set of speakers to engage visitors in conversation and to provide a range of perspectives on the art being displayed. The last Frame of Reference for Urban Alchemy will be June 5.

Panelist Paul Ha, Director of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, explains his relationship with Food and that food and art have always gone together.

If you’ve been paying attention to our Transformation site, you know that tomorrow the Pulitzer is hosting “Food, Art, and Community,” its final panel discussion in the series fired by Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark. This week’s topic relates to Gordon Matta-Clark’s fondness for using cooking in his artwork and the legendary Food of 1970s SoHo . Panelists will discuss how combining art and food movements can lead to social progress. You can RSVP to this event on Facebook.

A still from Gordon Matta-Clark’s film Food, which documents Food, the restaurant in SoHo Matta-Clark operated with fellow artists.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whew.  Our posting on 2buildings1blog this month has slowed, but our overall blogging activities are currently at full steam.  We’ve launched a website for Transformation – the community programming organized in conjunction with the Matta-Clark exhibition (which you can also explore online here).   A few highlights:

The Panel Series:  We’ve organized a panel discussion each month to explore topics related to Matta-Clark’s work within the context of St. Louis.  The key question we’ll address in each panel: “How do communities evolve and in what ways can their members guide the process?”  Within this online section we’ll feature interviews with the panelists, research info related to the topic, and full audio from the discussion shortly afterward.  I also attempt (key word) to live tweet each panel (http://twitter.com/thepulitzer).  The next panel just happens to be tomorrow (Oh! You’re in luck! And it’s free!).

Local Artists:  This is where the bulk of the blogging happens.  We’re documenting the three artist-run projects throughout the course of Transformation – hear updates from the artists, watch videos of the classes, even watch DIY videos to learn some of the skills yourself, and generally stay up-to-date as each project evolves.

Your St. Louis:  Definitely the most interactive of all the sections.  We’re posting candid interviews with St. Louis residents, to help paint a fuller portrait of the community.  Show us your St. Louis by adding photos to our Flickr group.  Show off your favorite route, by creating a custom Google Map for others to use.  We want to showcase what St. Louis means to those of us who live here.

Forum:  We’re hoping this section will grow into a place for discussion.  Want to expand on ideas you heard in the panel?  Want to ask an artist a question about their project?  This is the place to do it!

This website will continue to grow and shift as the programming grows and shifts, and as always, we’d love to get your feedback.  Leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Our online catalogue for the exhibition, Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, is now up!  Check it out here.  If you don’t have an opportunity to visit St. Louis in the next few months, the website gives you a glimpse into what it’s like to see these works within this space.  We’re also excited to feature a video interview with Jane Crawford, the director of Matta-Clark’s estate and his widow.  She speaks about his buildings, his community, his sense of humor, among other topics, along with commentary on a few of the works on view within the exhibition.

In addition to this exciting launch, we’re also kicking off the first in our Transformation programming tonight.  At 7:30pm we’re hosting a panel discussion called “The City as Studio,” where we’ll explore how creative acts and alternative arts spaces can impact a community.  We have a fantastic group of panelists who will lend their perspective and expertise to the topic:  Theaster Gates, an artist from Chicago (who is also participating in the 2010 Whitney Biennial); Mary Jane Jacob, Director of Exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Juan William Chavez, an artist and the Director of Boots Contemporary Art Space; Luis Croquer, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; and moderated by Christy Gray, Director of the Whitaker Foundation.  If you’re unable to attend, we’ll be posting the full audio from tonight’s panel for you to download as a podcast.  I’ll also try to tweet updates throughout the night – follow us @thePulitzer!

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. Read the rest of this entry »