Kalaija Mallery. Photo by Marcus Stabenow.
In spring 2020, just eight days before the city shut down due to COVID-19, Kalaija Mallery moved from the West Coast to St. Louis. She knew little about the city but felt confident that she would quickly find community and friendship through “third places.” Mallery has dedicated both her academic and professional life to the idea of these places, which in sociology are defined as communal spaces separate from work and home. The isolation of the pandemic threw a wrench into those plans, but Mallery has spent the past two-and-a-half years at The Luminary fostering connection despite the challenges of the pandemic. In her new role as artistic director, Mallery will work alongside interim executive director Stephanie Koch as co-director, marking a new era in the leadership of the Cherokee Street art space. As she settles into the new role, we caught up with Mallery to discuss the third place, her goals, and the many ways that artists and patrons can connect with The Luminary.
Tell me about what you were doing before you came to St. Louis.
I moved here in 2020, right before, you know, the end of the world. It was actually eight days before the city went into lockdown. I moved from the West Coast, so I had never really been to the Midwest, hadn't really even heard much about St. Louis at the time. I was just finishing up grad school. I'm an artist myself, so I was in an MFA program where I was focusing on institution-building as a creative art practice. I was really advocating for more artists to be in leadership roles of institutions and more artist advocacy overall within institutions. I was running a project space called Third Room, which was sort of the crux of my entire ethical framework for making and showing artwork. It was built around that idea of the “third place.”
Can you explain the idea of a “third place?”
It’s a sociological term about the space between work and home where regulars gather. Typically this is at coffee shops, barber shops, bars… it's been quoted as a space where the oppressed can plot their liberation. It's a space where new economies are formed; people can barter and make networks and connections. It's also just a space that's really good for mental and emotional health and wellbeing. So my question in grad school was essentially, Why can't art spaces be that? In what environments are they doing that successfully more than others? At the time working in kitchens and working three jobs just to support myself and doing this work.
What brought you to The Luminary?
A friend of mine had actually been a resident out here [at The Luminary], and I was just blown away when I saw the mission statement. It seemed like a large-scale institution that was actually doing the work that my tiny product space was trying to do. Of course, you can imagine when I moved here and the world ended, gatherings were shuttered, and it was really challenging. I got to know the majority of the St. Louis art scene through the emergency relief funding that we did. We pivoted our annual regranting initiatives in 2020, which is through the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. We were able to distribute $60,000 directly to artists without a project, without the need to apply with more than just some baseline information. It was really a weird way to get to know the city at first, like, but also a really unique way to see artists through that lens. In the beginning I was managing the gallery and really being a jack-of-all-trades. I was painting the side of the building and doing administrative tasks and managing that re-granting initiative and running social media—a little bit of everything. Then in 2021, when things started to open back up, it also coincided with our gallery director’s hire. Stephanie Koch came from Chicago, and I was becoming more and more active in not only the St Louis art scene, but also the scene that's local to Cherokee Street. My role shifted naturally when Stephanie arrived into managing public engagement specifically. So Stephanie was managing exhibitions, programs, the residency program…and I was managing the events, pop ups, workshops, and direct artist support. I became more of a supporting role to Stephanie.
Tell me about some of the projects you’ve worked on.
Through the last year, we've really been just building and building. A big project that I did last year was to try to experiment to figure out, can the third place theory that I researched so much in grad school actually function in a larger institution like The Luminary? What are the key ingredients to make that happen? Obviously there's an architectural element. There's comfortable seating, you have to have heat and air conditioning, you have to have an ambiance. Sometimes music helps. Then there's a term called a “socializing agent,” which is usually beer or coffee. I was building a bookshop–that was what my project had been allotted. But books are very inward. Unless you're activating them through a workshop or an educational element, they're kind of a solitary activity. So I knew that we needed something more communal, and I happened to partner with Aloha Mischeaux of Black Coffee for a pop up for the opening of the [KNOW/HOW] bookshop in June of 2021. We just connected so well, and our missions matched so well that we offered her a full-time slot at our bar area in the gallery. She's been operating Black Coffee out of there ever since. That's when it really clicked. We now have a sense of regularity within the gallery. There's always laughter. There's music, there's gatherings, there's work meetings, there's still people working there quietly by themselves. It's definitely become a third place, a place where people can go and count on seeing someone that they know. So that's my success story with my first big project. That's kind of my whole ethos. I'm excited now in this new role to basically emphasize that through exhibitions and programs.
It sounds like The Luminary has been a really wonderful lab for you to put some of these things you were studying into practice.
I'm so grateful for the trust of James [McAnally, co-founder of The Luminary] and Stephanie. It definitely has been. This has been a hunch that I've been following, and it's really cool to see it actually work.
To have been working on public engagement in a moment when people were just able to engage with one another in person again had to have been a big lift in terms of adapting and problem solving.
Definitely. One of the first things that I did was—because I have an independent art practice as well, and that was still exploring these things—I wrote this article called “A Year Without the Third Place” that kind of encapsulates it. I'm somebody who seeks out third places. So when I was moving here to a new city where I knew nobody, I was like, I'll be fine. I know where to go. I'll go to the third places. I'll find the bars and the galleries that have active engagement, and the coffee shops, and I'll make friends. So to not have those for a year was truly devastating for me. It's been an interesting time to bring that about, but people do need it more than ever, I think.
Tell me about how your role has shifted. What does this new leadership model look like?
In all honesty, I'm still curious to see how it will all work. We're definitely peers. The executive director will be working more directly with development, operations, and leadership as a whole. Then I'm able to translate what I do into a greater artistic vision that will lead the institution. I'll still be building exhibitions. I have a focus, I have some plans that I would like to enact. I'm trying to think how much I want to share, but I think it's safe to say that I will be trying to run some fundraising efforts to improve the space itself, because so much of what makes exhibitions conducive to engagement is how they're physically oriented within the space. I would love to create a space that's specifically for St. Louis artists to find their way back into the gallery. It's been a couple years since a St. Louis artist has been shown in The Luminary, so I would like to bring that back. For 2023, the programs are already slotted out, and we have a good schedule going, so these changes will probably happen in 2024. I’d also like to continue one of the biggest strengths of what I've been able to do, which is cultivating artist resources. Artists need a lot. Yes, artists need money, but artists need a lot more than just money. We need space to make our work. We need space to share our work with others. Right now we have six studios for artists, but I would like to increase that. We have the footprint to support at least 15. I would like to fundraise so that we can do those build-outs and continue things like our Emerge series, which is a professional development seminar series that happens every third Thursday of the month. Experience is the way that I've learned a lot of things, and that is a privilege in this world. Fiiguring out a way to give people access to the behind-the-scenes a little bit is so important. [In the Emerge seminar] we’ve talked about the dos and don'ts of approaching a commercial gallery, getting your work into a commercial gallery, how the gallery works with artists and why they work with artists, how to hang work and present your work once you are accepted into the gallery, sales…there was a lot just in that first one. And it was mostly dialogue, which was great. Two hours of active Q and A.
This has been, in my opinion, one of the most successful programs that I've run since I started. And the engagement increases each time. We send out a survey asking if people, you know, did you meet someone new? Have you already been able to implement what you've learned? And, the feedback has been really successful. I'm really excited to continue that series in 2024. On January 19, we're working with Brass Taxes, and they're going to come in and talk about how artists can do their taxes. It’ll be great.
What a cool way to tackle some of the practical skills that get missed, even if you do have traditional arts education. I’ve seen a very similar thing in the journalism field. We go through school and learn all these skills, but nobody teaches you how to do your freelance taxes or chase down an invoice. And those things are more important than you think.
I think that in all these industries and fields where the individual is more of an independent agent, it's kind of assumed that you're going to be an extroverted person or that you're going to know how to make these connections in these networks. That's my gift that I can offer to other people, because I've only gotten where I've gotten because of other people believing in me and because of the connections that I made through other people. I didn't come from a world where art was really a big part of my life. I had never been to a real art gallery before I went to art school. So when I did go to art school, I felt really out of place. I come from a working-class family that didn't really pay much attention to that stuff. These resources are so easy to share actually. It's just mentorship.
It’s so important to facilitate accessibility and reduce the barrier to entry for participation in the arts.
Exactly. On that note, I find I'm trying to find ways to make exhibitions feel more accessible while still being really interesting and cutting edge and of the moment. Artistic research is so important, but it also can be a little bit petty or ambiguous sometimes. So I'm trying to find ways to find the third space in those realms as well—the space between the academic art world and the maker world and the studio world where a lot of St. Louis artists actually find themselves. I think the beauty of building spaces is that if you build it, they will come, you know? Sometimes it's not as simple as that, but the tagline of Third Room, the gallery I was running in Portland, was, “What do we need more than space and each other?” We had nothing else. We had no other resources. And it still worked. So I think people will bring their passion if you give them space to share it.
Beyond the more specific projects you’re looking toward, what’s the overall mission that you're trying to accomplish in this new role?
I think I'm still settling into that in all honesty, because I have been functioning so responsively. I feel like that's how I will lead this institution, through a responsive nature to what St. Louis actually needs and wants. Something that I've tried to be really aware of and really respectful to is that I am a transplant. I'm just now skimming the surface about what is best for this community. Art has a really beautiful history and sort of legacy on a national and international level for being a platform for thought and action. I think that's something I'll carry with me. I think all art is centered around that in some form of another. But I'm really interested in bringing it a little bit more localized and seeing how the local networks can arc outwards in those spaces. St. Louis artists really deserve to be looked at on a national level and an international level. Oftentimes it's sad because they end up having to move to get that exposure. I'm hoping to find creative ways to do that and sort of cross-pollinate between different cities and St. Louis through group exhibitions and other thoughtful programs. Then I also want to continue resource distribution. Being a resource hub is huge. I would like to think that what differentiates us a little bit from the larger institutions is that we can take more risks, so we can actually support works that are maybe not necessarily fully realized or understood by artists. I'm really excited about that. Part of my new role is working with more emerging independent artists to help them amplify their visions and their voices.
Is there anything else that you want folks to know about The Luminary and the work that you're doing?
I think in general, I just hope that people know that all forms of creativity are welcome within The Luminary. There's a huge active space in St. Louis of performing artists and other forms of makers, so I'm hoping that people come and check out exhibitions and stay for a while. Have a cup of coffee or a conversation with someone about a book on the shelves. In terms of upcoming opportunities, we're actually one of only two regranting organizations in St. Louis that offers direct financial support to artists for their projects. RAC is one, and that’s pretty well-known, but I think people don't know that The Luminary does that every year. It’s called The Future Fund, and we redistribute that $60,000 that I initially talked about. Itt's to support a new project, so there's lots of really cool things that people can do with that money, and I think people just don't know about it. So I would like to call all of them to us. The application opens in February, and the best way to stay in touch or informed about that is through our mailing list or our Instagram.
