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Photograph by Jessica Baran
Benny Baran, "fort gon(dog)"
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fort gondo's final night: January 7, 2017.
On a cold night in November of 2002, Amanda Doyle and Thomas Crone, then co-editors of a fine web publication called The Commonspace, dispatched me to the 3100 block of Cherokee to write about a gallery called fort gondo. The gallery—which was sort of a loose term for what was going on down there, I guess—had been covered once or twice by The Riverfront Times, including a story about gondo's infamous Martyr War. Galen Gondolfi and Mike Schuh, two members of what was then known as "The Cherokee Arts Syndicate," engaged in a showdown that was part South Broadway Athletic Club, part passion play, part je ne sais quoi. As I headed to that interview, I was deeply impressed by two facts: 1. gondo had somehow managed to source 25 different kinds of sugary breakfast cereal to serve during the Martyr War, including the brilliant-sounding "Crispy Hexagons"; 2. While rehearsing on his cross the night before the performance, Gondolfi almost accidentally, and literally, crucified himself when the ropes tightened around his wrists and he couldn't get down. Schuh propped him up till he could work his hands free. Then and there, they decided things needed to be a little more OSHA, and they nailed little foot-rests on their crosses.
I'd been in St. Louis only a year and change, and didn't know many people. The ones I met that night are still some of my favorite human beings on earth, including Bevin and Dave Early. Back then, Bevin was Bevin Fahey-Vornberg; it was her informal exhibit of Galen's astonishing collection of material goods (including his piles of cardigan sweaters) that transformed gondo in mid-air from animal rescue org to art space. (Though there have always been lots of animals, rescued and otherwise, at gondo. Still are.) She also created educational programming from scratch for all the neighborhood kids who wandered through gondo's doors. Dave ran the coolest music venue St. Louis will ever know, Radio Cherokee. I was definitely present at show(s)-plural, though for some reason the only band I can swear for sure that I saw there is So Many Dynamos. What stands out most is the blurry, joyful, faded Polaroid vibe; you always knew the bands would be good, and the same went for the people who gathered there to watch them. For a few years the Earlys also ran a really lovely gallery across the street from gondo, called Snowflake. It had supernaturally beautiful wood floors, white walls and was filled with Modernist furniture and consistently spectacular art. (They also curated a charming as hell window gallery you could see from sidewalk on the side of the building, called Driveby.)
I didn't realize it that night, but I'd already crossed paths with these beautiful weisenheimers. That August, at Artica, I'd played samba in the procession down to the river for the Boat of Dreams Parade. When we reached the shore, a bunch of people, who I later learned included Schuh, Gondolfi, and the Earlys, showed up wearing military jackets with untitled stitched over the heart. They presented the river—or a quart of it, captured in a jar—with the key to the city (and if I remember right, a hamburger). The gleeful chaos Artica channeled every fall, gondo channeled all 12 months a year, in all directions, at full throttle. In fact, for a spell, Gondolfi referred to the 3100-3200 block as "100 yards of chaos"—there was Low Art (it was in a basement); Typo, an anti-cyber cafe filled with manual typewriters, where Tin Ceiling staged plays and sometimes Bridget Weible, who now owns Flowers to the People, gave Flowbie haircuts; and Art Parts, which was housed in a former auto parts store. That's where they staged "F," a show where people dressed in animal costumes would silently fetch you a piece of fruit off the shelves. (They wouldn't talk to you; you had to point to a picture of what you wanted.) I can't remember if it was for "F," but Galen once dressed up in a rabbit suit and sat in the middle of the street, and a guy in a sportscar pulled over just to punch him. Back then, Cherokee could be genuinely dangerous—the buildings were mostly empty, a lot of them were boarded up, and a majority of the commerce on the block was drug sales. You were never all that surprised to see yellow police tape, though old heads informed me it was way worse in the '90s, when the Way Out was down here. Maybe that's why people were always calling the cops, even if the people wearing the bunny suits (or yards of tinfoil) were practicing their weirdness benevolently.
Cherokee was still considered somewhat sketchy when I got a proper journalism job after a few scrabbly, lean years of freelancing (that would be this job, as a matter of fact). Still, spaces like Cherokee were what I knew best; so one of the first story ideas I floated was a photo essay on Galen's superb collection of material objects, including his Art Deco cigarette machine and a set of plaster cakes that sat for decades in the window of some South City bakery, bleaching in the sun. My editor at the time, to my surprise, agreed to it, and hired a freelance photographer to go with me. Galen had decided the coolest thing he owned was his toaster collection (and they were cool; some of them were antiques). He made 100 pieces of toast in preparation for the photo shoot—he had butter and jam on hand, too—but the whole situation threw the photographer off guard, and I sensed they were a bit nervous to be on Cherokee in the first place. My editor got a call, which I only learned upon returning to the office. Eventually, my editor joshed me about "the toast incident," and even gave me a dollhouse toaster for Christmas as a joke. The infamous toast picture ran later, with a different story—written by Thomas Crone, not me—about how Cherokee was fast becoming an arts destination.
That was 2007, when things began to shift. By then, beverly—an all-women art gallery named for Galen's mom—was open next door, at least temporarily. (The first show, curated by Nicole Northway, was called "GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS" and the walls were still painted a bright blue.) There were about 100 keys to gondo's front door floating around in different pockets and purses. Galen once claimed all he really did at gondo was pay the mortgage on the building—the community that coalesced around it, including musicians, art students, and established working artists, did all the rest. I don't know who had copies of the key, but the people I associate most with that era are Gina Alvarez, Dana Smith, Jason Treifenbach, and Peter Pranschke, to name a handful of folks, but there were many.
And then bang, zing, pop: it seemed like all of a sudden, the boards were coming off the windows up and down the street. Apop opened. Firecracker Press opened a shopfront. A long-dormant building at the corner of Cherokee and Jefferson became Foam. The 3100-3200 block underwent some rapid cycling, and during a five-or-so year span, there were several notable tenants down there, including All Along Press, The Archive, and STL-Style (Which, we should mention, is still there. Jeff and Randy Vines are a huge part of this story, too; they deserve their own post, really.) Eventually The Fortune Teller reopened and The Luminary scrapped and fought and demo'd their way to a beautiful new space. There had always been top-notch Mexican restaurants on Cherokee; now there were many, many more. La Vallesana eventually did so well they tore down their tiny, concrete taco stand and constructed a brand-new restaurant. Cinco de Mayo, thanks to Minerva Lopez at Goooll!, went from three booths to a full-blown neighborhood festival with bands and wrestling and The People's Joy Parade, first dreamed up by Sarah Paulsen and Lyndsey Scott (which I would personally put on my "Top 10 Parades in the World" list).
It was also in 2007 that Galen ran for the seat of 20th Ward Alderman (and was accused by his opponents of promoting "a platform of 'pro-graffiti and pro-nudity'.). An artist and poet named Jessica Baran, who'd shown at beverly as part of a group printmaking show curated by Gina Alvarez, designed his campaign literature—which, of course, made liberal use of the color orange. Galen introduced us by email, because I was poetry editor at a little journal called 52nd City, and Jessica was not only a brilliant poet, but a brilliant poet generous enough to send me her work—and gracious enough to wait two years to finally get her contributor's copy when we finally met in person. By 2011, when SLM sent me down to Cherokee and gave me almost 10 pages to write about it, she and Galen were married and living above the gallery. That was the year she started the fort gondo poetry series, co-curating it with Jennifer Kronovet (who was followed by Paul Legault and Ted Mathys). In 2012, when gondo celebrated its 10-year anniversary with an exhibition series titled "Identity Crisis," Galen handed over the reins (though I don't know about the 100 keys) to Jessica. She did something amazing: she kept that open, antinomian spirit, but turned gondo in to an official nonprofit, hired interns (including Cole Lu, who became gondo's assistant director) and won gondo a $70,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Other revolutions occurred: Galen decided he liked dogs and cats, and Jessica revived beverly, which, along with gondo, stayed open until the end.
And that end, the very much official end, began at 6 p.m. last Saturday, January 7, with a closing reception for the galleries' final shows, Addoley Dzegede's "Fare Well" and Philip Matthews' and Dave Johnsons' "A Wig Heavier Than a Boot." Bevin and Dave Early were there with their son; Chris Smentkowski was there, wearing his Radio Cherokee shirt. Cole Lu (who curated the dynamite Chicago-St. Louis group show that was the second-to-last show at beverly), was there. Buzz Spector was there. He told me the significance of gondo wasn't the art. He said it was what was happening right there, right in that moment: people talking, ideas sparking. He showed me a dot on a Google map on his phone: a new artist-run space, founded by a former student. That made me feel better. My friend Amy and I sneaked into the back room and petted gondo's current crew of resident dogs, who wagged at us earnestly and looked adorable in their dog sweaters, and that made me feel better, too. Addoley gave a talk to packed house; Philip read Petal poems from Provincetown, Skyped in and projected onto beverly's walls. Despite its all, it felt strange, and sad. A lot of people uttered the phrase "the end of an era." And it is. But as pretty much everyone associated with gondo has always said, it's not about the place, but the people. (By the by, there were hundreds, probably thousands of people who came and went and contributed to the project over the years, including some I've forgotten to mention, but it's only due to being overwhelmed by how much went on down there. Please forgive me for any dumb or glaring omissions.)
In his goodbye love letter to St. Louis, Galen thanked Cole and Jessica, and the "community, be they art, literary, musical or otherwise, that has so generously supported and sustained fort g over the last 15 years. Proof, indeed, that we are all in this together." Jessica and Ted Mathys have moved the gondo poetry series to the Pulitzer, renaming it 100 Boots; as Jessica told us, they chose that name because the important part has always been assembly of people, the beings who wear the boots, versus the physical space. Granite City Art and Design District continues its glorious march forward, this year under the direction of resident curator Marianne Laury.
It's very strange to realize it was only year ago that I wrote about the Galendar. That was a 2016 calendar featuring photos by former gondo-ite Mike Stasny—all 12 photos were of Galen's butt, or well, more precisely, his underwear—documenting them was point of the whole exercise. An out-of-the-ordinary calendar for a totally whacked-out year that none of us could have seen coming. And not just because of politics; I'm thinking about White Flag closing. And Pink House. And Museum Blue. And how a lot of people moved away, including JE Baker, who was G-CADD's first resident curator. And Philip Matthews. Dzegede told St. Louis Public Radio that gondo's closure has left other artists weighing the possibility of leaving town, because the options are narrowing. Again, we're in the middle of a shift. "I can't yet imagine what it will be like for it not to be," Jessica Baran wrote of gondo on her Instagram. "And I know it has similarly touched many lives in the same way. It's a special place, and when in January it closes finally, STL will be different for its absence."
I agree that the world just feels different. That familiar orange door has closed; meanwhile, another bigger, more metaphorical door feels like it's swung shut, too. And that old bromide about one door opening when another closes doesn't feel comforting right now; it feels more like: is there really going to be another door? Losing gondo has felt especially hard, I think, because we are in the process of so much change and so much loss. Losses like the ones I listed above. Losses like the artists who perished at the Ghost Ship, followed by the forced closure of other alternative arts spaces. But, as Galen points out, though Cherokee gondo is gone, it's the organization that umbrellas G-CADD. It's still here, in ephemeral form. Cole Lu is organizing and taking inventory of gondo's zine library, which will become part of Wash. U.'s Special Collections, and will also go into the archives of the St. Louis Public Library and the Denver Zine Library (!). Dzegede is part of a group show opening next Friday, "Encoded," with Lydon Barrois Jr, Jennifer Everett, Kahlil Irving, WORK/PLAY, and Kat Reynolds (many of those artists, including Reynolds, are gondo alums.) The Luminary—which also has new shows opening this Friday, including one at STNDRD, Sage Dawson's project—is carrying the flag forward with great heart and brilliance. (STNDRD carries it literally—every installation is an artist's take on the concept of the flag.) The McAnallys also publish the thoughtful, absolutely crucial Temporary Art Review, which just turned 10, and is national and international in its scope.
Communities like gondo have a much heavier responsibility to bear now, and will until this weird historical weather blows by. But, inevitably, it will. In fact, I think the gondos, present and future, will be instrumental in making that happen—as well as helping to create what lies on the other side of that metaphorical door. Who knows; maybe they will build the door. And maybe even paint it orange.
