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Animation still
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Fake rocks
Over Head Animation Still, Nicole Stevens, 2009
So I promised more exciting Cherokee news this week. Which I'd hoped to post on Monday. Or Wednesday at the latest. Thanks to a bad hookup between the phone jack and my tape recorder and some deadlines that hung around later than I'd have liked, it's getting posted today.
First: perhaps you remember Beverly, the all-womens' gallery at 3155 Cherokee, which stood next door to Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts. Beverly was named for Fort Gondo proprietor Galen Gondolfi's mom (his dad, Leno, did not get short shrift: there is a dog park/sculpture garden behind building named after him) which hosted more than 20 shows during its short life, the bulk of them curated by Gina Alvarez, who is a brilliant artist herself. It was one of the few venues in town that actively sought work by women, students and young, emerging artists; its closure was definitely felt. After Beverly shuttered in 2007, All Along Press moved into the space (more on that in a minute), and though the gallery is gone, Beverly lives on in a more conceptual format, at least for 2010: Fort Gondo's organizing a whole year's worth of shows dedicated to women artists, and calling it beverlyear.
Beverlyear's inaugural show, Over Head, is a solo show by young St. Louis artist Nicole Stevens. Stevens, who graduated this year with a BFA in sculpture from Webster, exhibited work long before she graduated, including at Laumeier, Anarctica and Metropolitan Gallery, and was part of Gondo's 2008 group show, Nouns, where she showed some rather amazing-looking faux rocks:
"They were the real deal," Gondolfi says. "She put them in vintage Parker Pen display cabinets that she'd found, they were gorgeous, all lit up." Over Head includes zero fake rocks, and in fact zero pieces of sculpture. Rather, it's an audio/video installation that examines the economic crash of 2008 using a financial quarter's worth of sound clips from NPR's Ann Taylor (that matronly sounding lady who reads the results of the Dow and the NASDAQ), as well as cut-out and reanimated footage taken from NYSE's bell-ringing archive. Listen here:
The genesis of the show, Stevens says, was rooted in her experience of compulsively listening to Ann Taylor's market reports during the financial meltdown, even though she couldn't figure out what the market was doing and felt powerless to do anything about it, an experience she probably shared with lots of other Americans. Though the installation arose out of very specific circumstances, Stevens made the work deliberately open-ended. "One of the things I like about the title is you can take it in a lot of different ways," Stevens says. "There's 'overhead,' as in what it takes to run a company, or economics as abstract concept that can seem hard to understand, over people's heads, and maybe overhead like a a dark cloud."
Despite a bad cold, Stevens has spent the last week installing the show, and even constructed a new wall inside the gallery. "I wanted to divide the space up," she says. "Everything's on a loop. When you walk into the gallery, there's going to be an animation projected onto the left wall, and it also has audio. It's about a minute long, and it kind of feeds into itself in a cycle. Across the gallery, on the other wall, the brick wall on the right, there's going to be headphones. One set will have samples of Ann Taylor saying, 'The Dow Jones Industrial Average....' back to back. They each sound a little different, because they were sampled every day. And then you can put those back, and the next set of headphones will have the NASDAQ. Then, in the back right-hand corner -- I'm blocking it off -- it'll be a sound installation with several speakers. It's going to be a room that you can walk into, and it's going to have readings of the DOW and the NASDAQ. It's a layer of sound, with a left and right balance, so it's sort of weaving in and out of the space -- it's going to be like a big choir."
Again, though it is made to be open-ended, the show attempts to bear witness to the economic crash in a way that diverges from the dry analysis we've seen in the media. I have yet to see artists and poets, in St. Louis anyway, really grapple with this subject matter; as far as I know, Stevens is one of the few to even attempt it, and her ideas are lyrical, smart, funny and sophisticated. Over Head opens tomorrow, January 15, with a reception between 7-10pm and runs through Sunday, January 31, with gallery hours on Tuesdays from 12-5 or by appointment. More exciting news: Galen says in honor of the inauguration of beverlyear, there is a remote chance that "Mama Beverly" (who, sadly, never saw the gallery when it was open) may make an appearance, and if she does, she will come wearing her Big Bird costume, "which she has worn every Halloween to the delight of hundreds of children." She fashioned the suit, Gondolfi says, "some 30 years ago, forming the body with chicken wire and affixing crepe paper feathers; her eyes were re-purposed ping pong balls – complete with a cardboard beak! This Halloween marked her 30th Anniversary...I have a genetic predisposition for identity crisis."
And there's more: that is, news about All Along Press, which I mentioned earlier in this post. Late last year, AAP decided to move storefronts to 3157-59 Cherokee, a corner space formerly occupied by Tin Ceiling Theatre Co. and Typo. Meanwhile, STL Style, the Vines Bros.' righteous STL-themed clothing company, is getting its first physical storefront in the spot that AAP has vacated. They are calling it STYLEhouse, because the shop'll feature not just their designs, but work by fellow screenprinting co.Lighthouse. Down the block at 3215 Cherokee, the storefront that housed City Art Supply (and before that, Art Parts), is now home to The Archive, a small, independent bookstore (see more details on the RFT Blog, here). All of these spaces will be open tomorrow, with the Archive showing work by expat St. Louis painter Jenna Bauer and mixed media artist Chris Vodicka and a live pianist in the front window (!) and a streetside video projection Kevin Harris', which will be shown on the 3100 block of Cherokee.
Ah, and here's another large piece of news: I need to stop saying "Cherokee," at least some of the time. This stretch, which also includes Snowflake Citystock, Porter-Teleo, Jackson Pianos, and C.A.M.P., is now WEMO -- that is, west of Minnesota on Cherokee. (Y'know, like SoHo. Or SoHa, for that matter.) In the upcoming weeks I'll be posting further updates on WEMO, specifically relating to upcoming shows for beverlyear (including Beverly Yang's February show), a fairly exciting thing called The Santo Foundation, and a project called Juice Box. For now, all you need to remember is to get yourself down to Cherokee tomorrow night. Ah, and while you have your Filofax out, take note of the following ...
beverlyear 2010
Feb. Beverly Yang, Bridget Kraft, Brittany Lueken Mar. Sarah Paulsen and Lindsey Scott Apr. Jennifer Weigel curates with members of the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) May Santo Foundation Invitational Exhibition: Lily Cox-Richard and Lori Larusso June Amy Van Donsel July Cara Peterson Aug. Maggie Ginestra, Amanda Goldblatt, Amelia Jones Sep. Yoko Kiyoi and Felicia Chen Oct. Hannah Montford Nov. Rebecca Bodicky, Jessica Jarvis, Carrie Keasler, Jackie Wallach Dec. Shana Norton
--Stefene Russell
