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Ward Stare, Resident Conductor for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, talks about Ingram Marshall’s Fog Tropes, in front of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Bingo. Stare will conduct Fog Tropes for the concert tomorrow, March 10, 2010. (Tickets for tomorrow’s concert are SOLD OUT.)

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Gallery Assistant Ronald Gore gives some background on Matta-Clark’s Bingo.

With an influx of admitted students interested in the relationship between arts and social work coupled with the partnership between GWB and the Pulitzer Foundation maturing, CAI’s inception seems to be written in the stars. CAI’s mission explores building awareness of the role of art in social work and public health practice by creating community connections and providing educational opportunities.

Included in the mission, though not explicitly stated, will be a specially appointed member to serve as liaison between CAI and the Pulitzer. This student member will serve as special appointee to CAI and co-currently serve as the practicum student at the Pulitzer. This specialized appointment will keep GWB’s student body abreast of Pulitzer events and pursue active engagement between both parties. With a strong mission, an impressive future event line-up, and planned sustainability, CAI is opening doors for a renewed discussion of the intersection of art and social work. And although CAI is up and running, there are still challenges to tackle, including many that cannot be undertaken in a single semester.

For many there is a struggle to identify what the intersection of art and social work actually is. And is this intersection restricted to clinical or traditional social work practice? Is there future growth potential for social work in art institutions like the Pulitzer? And in anticipation of the Pulitzer’s panel discussion: is there is a place for art in community development?

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!

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During a visit to Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, Meredith Monk talks with Francesca Herndon-Consagra, Senior Curator at the Pulitzer, about her own approach to urban archeology and how she enjoyed working in New York at the time of Gordon Matta-Clark.

We’re excited to announce that Meredith Monk will be performing at the Pulitzer on March 10. To find out more about this concert, visit our concert page. RSVP to the event on Facebook.

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!

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During rehearsal at the Pulitzer, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director, David Robertson, discusses the Urban Alchemy Concert Series and the work of Kagel and Louis Andriessen to be performed Wednesday, January 27, 2010. He stands in front of prints by Gordon Matta-Clark, Untitled, (Anarchitecture).

I’m a junior at Lindenwood University participating in the French program at the Pulitzer for the second year in a row. This year, during the the program for Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, we were fortunate enough to have three native French speakers in our class. Each non-native speaker was paired up with a native French speaker to prepare and give tours.

Working with a native French speaker has been very beneficial in preparing our presentation of the works of Gordon Matta-Clark. There are a lot of words associated with urban decay and the transformation of rundown buildings that I was not exactly familiar with. Having a French speaker to help with unfamiliar words was very helpful. Before every tour so far I have been nervous, but my partner, Yasmina, has been very good at reassuring me that I will do fine.

When starting this project we always get a tour of the exhibition in French with Matthias Waschek, the director of the Pulitzer. He has so much knowledge of each artwork at the Pulitzer and teaches us a lot. On the other hand, the tour is somewhat intimidating to me, as an English speaker. Hearing so much French being spoken so fast, I was nervous that I was not getting all the important information. However, I was able to understand most of what we were being told by Matthias and eventually understood everything.

I think that our training with Matthias and having our French partners working with us on our tours has been essential for perfecting our tours. I was able to hear the different French words that I was not familiar with, learn what they were and hear the correct pronunciation of the words. Yasmina has helped me a lot with having the correct pronunciation of words and making my French easy enough and comprehendible for the high school students who come for the tours.

Compared to last year, I’m getting more out of my experience this time around because I’m getting help from the French students in our class and learning new things about the French language each day.--Emma Odenwald

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Director Matthias Waschek explains why the Pulitzer doesn’t label the artwork in its galleries.

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