Your name or the title of your organization:
Eric Ryszkiewicz | proprietor of “Commerce Information Entertainment”
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
I will use a sloup grant to fund 100 copies of an EP titled “daydream lullaby: daydream vacation”. This will consist of an albums’ worth of instrumental music that is a follow-up to “daydream lullaby: sleep | wake | delete”. Funding will primarily go towards the production of handmade packaging and CDR duplication. This will include a custom digipak with letterpress and/or screen printing for the text and graphics. The music on this release can be performed by a single player, and there will be some live performances to promote it. The music consists of many layers of intricate, sparse guitar work, and may appeal to fans of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and other modern composers. It will come out in late 2009 or early 2010. This is Sloup’s second and LAST CHANCE to fund this project!
What is important about receiving a Sloup Grant?:
I am not known in St. Louis as an artist or musician. More important than the monetary award, I believe that being able to promote this project as somehow receiving the sloup stamp of approval will provide more visibility. Peer recognition, folks! I will return the favor by noting sloup as a sponsor.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I don’t have time for a band, and am far more interested in creating music as art than live entertainment. I’m doing a series of related music and media projects with a focus on making good use of the resources that I have available, and in a way that appeals to the artistic, music, literary, and crafting communities.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed:
Several years ago, I built a human-powered vending machine as a Halloween costume. This was essentially a large, frame-mounted cardboard box with casters, a plexi-glass front window, coin slot, snack retrieval door, and a panel on which a variety of food items were displayed. I’d intended on attending the Central West End costume contest, but wound up going to a house party instead. Once the initial novelty wore off, most people were pretty content to ignore me, especially if I wasn’t moving around. I thought it would be a lot of fun (it was), but spent most of the time drinking beers alone in a cardboard box.
Who is your favorite artist this month?:
Reading this weeks’ New Yorker got me thinking a lot about how much I enjoy Chuck Close.
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PROPOSAL FOR SLOUP
EXCELLENCE.
1. Pig Slop Studios - (pigslopstudios@gmail.com) aka Chloe Bethany (chloe.bethany@gmail.com) , Rebecca Estee (rjestee@gmail.com), Zak Marmalefsky (zmarmalefsky@gmail.com)
2. We want to turn our loft space into an open studio environment. We would use the grant money to buy materials and hardware to construct movable walls: sturdy surfaces for hanging on and leaning against that can be moved during events and games.
3. If we won the lottery we would have all sorts of income tax to deal with. But, truly, what we love about SLOUP is that it is not only a way to potentially gain funding for great creative projects, but also a way to reach out and make connections. By applying for a SLOUP grant, we raise awareness about our project, and get to take advantage of a super grass-roots process where individuals can act on their opinions and make decisions as members of a community, a community we are want to become an active,organizing part of.
4. We are a we. Our creative goals are nebulous and striped. As three post-college St. Louis transplants from other cities, we are attracted to this venture collaboratively as a way to construct a home for ourselves where we will feel free to make and be made in an environment of shared support. We each, in our own way, have fallen in love with this dear city and we want to create a home that both engages and gives back to the growing creative community. Our ambition for Pig Slop Studios is to create affordable studio space for St. Louis artists as well as a common community meeting space for neighborhood groups and events. Given the construction of walls, we will have room for 5-10 artists in addition to ourselves, at affordable and flexible prices and availability. We also plan to operate installation spaces for shared use.
5. Chloe collaborated on a large sculpture with her friend this spring. First, they built the frame for a room. Then they covered it with peach colored pleather. They hung the insides with mulitcolored yarn, peppered the floor with a deep layer of wood shavings, and installed drawings and objects beneath the vaulted, tetrahedrical ceiling. It was a successful project in that both parties felt as though some part of them was expressed, to the end of something greater than its parts. Strange maintenance men had seances there, and the weather pulled the the pleather from the roof. The piece was well received and filled the makers with pride. However, there were some failings in its construction. Their union was tenuous and argument filled. They yelled at one another, and were uncomfortable on ladders.
6. John Porcellino, Chris Martin,
************** Also if you are interested in a studio or doing an installation please email us! Or come visit at 2700 Cherokee!
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Your name or the title of your organization:
The Urban Studio Café
The project: L-Ink.
Learn (v.): To acquire knowledge of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience.
Ink (n.): A pigmented liquid or paste used especially for writing or printing
Incorporated (adj.): Formed or united into a whole
L-Ink.
What is L-Ink.?
The Urban Studio Café is collaborating with local artist Stan Chisolm to teach youth in the Old North St. Louis neighborhood how to screen print through a program called L-Ink. In addition to making their own work, students will also be creating t-shirts and tote bags for the café and participating in Chisolm’s Moneybags project, which uses art to examine the concepts of wealth, worth and currency. L-Ink. will also feature field trips to local artists’ studios. The program will culminate in an art opening featuring the work of the youth. Youth will receive the proceeds from the sale of their artwork. Students will also receive a stipend for successful completion of the program.
This will allow the opportunity for students to see how their skills can apply to both the professional art and business worlds. At the end of the eight weeks, the cafe will host an art opening featuring the work of the youth, which will be displayed at the cafe. Youth will receive the proceeds from the sale of their artwork.
The sale of the merchandise created in L-Ink. will help The Urban Studio continue to provide more art programs and services for the Old North St. Louis community.
The seedlings for the concept of this project were planted last March when we won a Sloup grant to purchase the actual YUDU screen printer, and have spent the past few months researching other teen arts programs around the country to find out how we can create an impactful program. We’ve been writing proposals and seeking out artists and organizations to work with us.
We are now all set to go, but we need your help to raise a few more dollars for supplies. We’d like to buy tote bags, t-shirts, ink, and screens so that we can dust off the YUDU and move forward with L-ink.
What is important about receiving a SLOUP grant?
I think we can all agree that Sloup is magical. Even losers are winners, because the proposal writers can come to the dinner and engage the other soup-eaters in discussion about their project. The folks who attend are all kick-ass individuals who make up a supportive community and can become a resource for artists and arts organizations. Sloup exemplifies the power that grassroots community efforts can have to affect change through the redefinition of the relationship between funders and recipients. Urban Studio Café and Sloup have an especially loving relationship because we won the first Sloup grant ever. Woot! (And we think Maggie and Amelia are effing amazing.)
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
In the summer of 2007, I started working at The Urban Studio teaching photography and media literacy to teens. This summer job turned into a passion for the Urban Studio’s neighborhood. I love Old North St. Louis, home to Crown Candy Kitchen, because of its strong sense of community, character, and diversity. However, due to years of disinvestment, the neighborhood lacks local businesses, job opportunities, community gathering spaces, and positive outlets for youth.
After spending time working with the community, we decided to work on creating a solution that addressed the aforementioned issues while showcasing the strengths of the neighborhood. This experience birthed The Urban Studio Café, a non-profit, social venture café that opened in September, 2009. Profits from coffee and food sales will ultimately generate sustainable funding for The Urban Studio’s youth art programs. The Urban Studio Café creates jobs for low-income individuals, fosters a sense of creativity and possibility, and strengthens social bonds while serving a quality cup of joe. Now that the café is up and running, our goal is to become a community arts hub. We would like to have neighbors view the café not only as a place for lunch, but also a place to get the creative juices flowing.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed:
A previous project was Picture the Future, a darkroom photography summer camp for youth ages 11-16. The youth produced powerful photographs and were able to explore their city through the lens. Success! Unfortunately, we couldn’t continue providing the program the following summer because of lack of funding..
Favorite artist of the month:
Definitely Stan Chisolm. Mastermind extraordinaire and future Urban Studio Café screen-printing program instructor.
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Name:
Jenny Murphy
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish:
Imagine an amazing toolbox that can be hitched to a bike, pedaled to your door, and then opened to reveal the simple tools you will need for any basic furniture-fix-up project (this scenario also includes a cyclist ready to offer design and build advice!)
If awarded a Sloup Grant, I would use the funds to purchase the supplies to build a small portable workshop bike trailer for Perennial, a new non-profit in St. Louis that serves as an educational and supply resource for creative reuse. While I will salvage most of the materials to build the trailer, I would use the Sloup Grant to purchase a new set of tools and supplies to travel in the workshop.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting an NEA grant?
With Sloup you get a real sense that the community supports your project. For Perennial, this is especially important since the organization hopes to be a resource for the St. Louis community. Knowing that even a small percentage of our community members are interested in spreading ideas of creativity and sustainability, would be a great boost as we develop the organization.
For a new non-profit in St. Louis that is slowly developing, the Sloup Grant is a great way to receive funding for smaller more immediate projects that will allow us to reach out in the St. Louis community while we work on getting larger funding for permanent space and such.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
Moving to St. Louis from Dallas, TX in 2005 to pursue a Bachelors of Fine Art from Washington University, I fell in love with the city and decided to make it my permanent residence after graduating in 2009. During my final year of undergrad I began working on a project called, Perennial: Restoration + Rehabilitation and have been working to bring the project into reality ever since. Developing out of my concern for our culture's irresponsible consumption and waste, I created Perennial to serve as a resource for the St. Louis community to learn eco-friendly ways to creatively reuse objects and reduce waste.
I hope to open a workshop/retail space in St. Louis where people can take classes in creative reuse and restoration, purchase eco-friendly supplies, have a space to freely create with our tools and the support of our reuse staff, and experience an alternative to a typical consumer environment in our donation-based store. There are even a few more layers to the project, so check it out here: www.perennialstl.org or talk to me!
I feel that my creativity is directly linked to my resourcefulness and sensitivity to our culture’s irresponsible consumption. For me, the ability to create makes a sustainable lifestyle accessible, and I can’t wait for Perennial to serve as a catalyst to foster a creative eco-conscious culture in St. Louis.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
When I was around the age of 9, my friend and I decided to build a raft to float down a creek near our houses. We built a platform out of wood collected from our garages and alleys and tied pool noodles to the bottom of the raft so it would float. We even constructed a sail from an old broomstick and sheet that rose from the center of the raft.
The final structure was magnificent in our nine-year-old eyes, and we were utterly disappointed when we made it down to the creek and discovered it was not a seaworthy vessel. We salvaged the raft from the creek and decided that we didn’t need water to have our adventure. Balancing the raft on our skateboards we sailed the alleys and streets of our neighborhood.
Although our plan to build a functioning raft failed, our uninhibited creativity and playfulness allowed us to find solutions to the problems at hand and realize our vision. This kind of resourcefulness and creativity has always been a part of my life, and I hope to share it with as many people as possible.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month?
I am currently in love with the work of Nightwood, a Brooklyn based home décor business that specializes in reconstructed furniture and textiles. Myriah Scruggs and Nadia Yaron use salvaged wood, found furniture, and vintage and sustainable textiles to create beautiful furniture that has been deconstructed and reconstructed into pieces that have a rustic, raw, and beautifully warm and unassuming presence.
I have been seriously jealous of them for a few months now. Genius.
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Dani Kantrowitz
danikantrowitz@gmail.com
I am making a video adaptation of Paul Monette’s novella, Sanctuary. The author is quoted in the editor’s notes: “It’s been on my mind for a long time, that there aren’t enough tales and fables that take into account the gay and lesbian…Ours is a mythology invisible to history.”
Published after Monette’s death, the book tells the story of a forest protected by a selfless witch’s spell that can change the mind of anyone who comes across its borders with harmful intentions. It is the brave love story of a Fox and a Rabbit, and the coming of age tale of a would-be Wizard. Sanctuary was intended to be part of a larger collection (along with Monette’s poetry, fiction and autobiographical writings) playing with the tensions between memoir and fiction. Using a variety of mediums (video, photography, puppets, interviews and found footage, all with varying degrees of theatricality) I hope to place Sanctuary in this context again.
A Sloup grant is important because it comes from (and was created by) people who realize they can support creative projects in their city collectively, not with a ton of money, but by building relationships and talking with one another.
Over the past few years I have become increasingly interested in American art and writing dealing with AIDS. For my Masters Thesis project I produced an hour-long video piece, Our Vanishing Wilderness: a photo slide show of myself and my close friends set to a voice over narration I wrote using various works (memoirs, novels, poems, etc.) that seemed to tell the story of an artist looking back on a lost relationship. Because the sources for the script remain entirely ambiguous unless you are extremely well versed in the genre of American AIDS literature I’m not sure that Our Vanishing Wilderness can do what I hope this new project will. That is to say, in this ongoing work I want to give an audience more direct access to my inspirations and sources and the ways in which I’m finding them, fantasizing about them, and ultimately, using them.
My favorite artist this month is Andre Romao, a young artist I met in Germany over the summer, who is working on a project called The Vertical Stage.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Sloup #6: July 2010
Adrian Aquilino
adrian@stlouisartistsguild.org
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish
The St. Louis Artists’ Guild, in collaboration with ArtDimensions, the Indonesian Consulate General in Chicago and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. are organizing a study abroad program sending St. Louis artists and community activists to Indonesia for a two-week period. While in Indonesia, the artists will be immersing themselves in the country’s rich culture to create work inspired by Indonesian art and design, culminating in an art exhibition in one of Jakarta’s top galleries.
A group of artists planning on participating in the study abroad program are trying to raise money independently to finance the program’s artists’ journey. The fundraising committee would like to raise enough money to subsidize artists who would usually not be able to afford to travel abroad. Our goal is to have enough funds to pay for all the artists’ airfare, accommodations, local travel, and one meal a day. A Sloup grant alone would not cover all this, but every little bit helps!
If the Indonesian Study Abroad Program Fundraising Committee were to win a Sloup grant, all of the money would go towards funding the artists who would like to participate in the program in Indonesia.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting a NEA grant?
The Indonesia Study-Abroad Program is all about promoting St. Louis abroad and nurturing its artistic community. By sending local artists to Indonesia, we will be displaying the artistic richness and diversity of the St. Louis region to an international artist. Also, the participating artists will return home with knowledge of Indonesian art and culture to share with the community, enriching the local art scene.
Because the intent of the program is to help St. Louis and its artists, grassroots support from local artists and art supporters is deeply meaningful to us. Just having the opportunity to share the news about this new program is very exciting!
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I am one of the fundraiser coordinators for the Study Abroad Program. I began working for the St. Louis Artists’ Guild as a graphic design intern, and now I am a Junior Graphic Designer and Administrative Assistant at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild. My current goals are to help reinvigorate the St. Louis Artists’ Guild as a prominent arts organization and to continue its mission to support local artists.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
Last year, the St. Louis Artists’ Guild hosted an exhibition of Indonesian batiks, featuring the private batik collection of Dr. Ann Dunham (President Obama’s mother) and the batik collection of the First Lady of Indonesia. The exhibition was a big success, and we received many accolades for our efforts in bringing the exhibition to St. Louis. The most amazing part was that we had only a few months to organize the exhibit! However, since the batik exhibit was so last minute, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked to advertise and promote the exhibit.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month?
All of the artists helping us raise funds for the Study Abroad Program!
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Your name or the title of your organization:
Jordan Hicks (My project is a collaboration with photographers David Johnson and Brett Beckemeyer. It also includes photos by Lyndsey Scott and Michael Allen).
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
This summer, I worked with two photographers to create a set of 19 postcards about St. Louis' urban landscape - specifically, how it is impacted by the city's precipitous 59% drop in population from 1950 – 2000. There are cards about the urban wilderness on the former Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing complex site; the reuse of materials from demolished buildings; abandoned schools; urban agriculture, and more. I selected 19 sites, the photographers shot at the sites, and I wrote text for the back of each card. We printed a small run of cards. Instead of selling the cards in shops, we gave a few sets to friends, and left a few sets out in public places, to be picked up, discussed, and shared. I left sets of cards at the arch grounds, the downtown public library, and City Garden. I have two sets of these cards at home, if you'd like to see them.
With the Sloup Grant, I would print more sets of these cards (and $10 could print about 1 and 1/4 sets at Kinko's, the least expensive option) and leave them, free for the taking, in more public places. I would like to leave them at markets, parks, and institutional buildings (places with a lot of foot traffic), but I am open to / looking for more suggestions. Also (though I would still need to coordinate with the photographers) I would like to add a few cards to the set – maybe one about squatting, one about urban wildlife, one about brownfield reclamation, and one about that old core of a building on the north side that fireman use for training.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
In the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot about urban planning and design issues. I became pretty interested in work being done in shrinking cities – cities that are losing population, and as a result have lots of leftover, abandoned building and landscapes. I noticed, around St. Louis, a lot of interesting and unique approaches to the problem, many of them in direct ideological conflict with one another. I felt like that was the real story about urban planning in St. Louis, and it is ultimately more pertinent and more interesting than the "urban development" issues that garner attention in the press – sports stadiums, downtown lofts, highway improvements, and new shopping districts. I wrestled with various ideas to address this, but ultimately decided on the postcards for their symbolic value (being postacrds and all) and their accessibility (Few people will pick up a two-page text article, found sitting on park bench. Many will pick up beautiful pictures by talented photographers).
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
I feel like Open Lot has been successful in some ways: it has been a good studio environment for a number of artists, a good venue for visiting musicians, and a good gallery space. However, when we (Me, and my friends Aaron and Jonathan, who have since moved to Toronto and Nashville, respectively) founded the project, I think we intended to have more community involvement. We weren't really sure what that meant, but we discussed hosting free classes for kids, creating some kind of communal arts library, or maybe public service projects – something that extended beyond our own social group (you know, young, college educated people with an interest in the arts). We never really got around to that, and if I start another similar project elsewhere, I will want that to be part of it.
Your power animal and/or icon:
Komodo dragon, or maybe a Gila Monster. Some kind of big lizard. They're like contemporary dinosaurs.
adrian@stlouisartistsguild.org
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish
The St. Louis Artists’ Guild, in collaboration with ArtDimensions, the Indonesian Consulate General in Chicago and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. are organizing a study abroad program sending St. Louis artists and community activists to Indonesia for a two-week period. While in Indonesia, the artists will be immersing themselves in the country’s rich culture to create work inspired by Indonesian art and design, culminating in an art exhibition in one of Jakarta’s top galleries.
A group of artists planning on participating in the study abroad program are trying to raise money independently to finance the program’s artists’ journey. The fundraising committee would like to raise enough money to subsidize artists who would usually not be able to afford to travel abroad. Our goal is to have enough funds to pay for all the artists’ airfare, accommodations, local travel, and one meal a day. A Sloup grant alone would not cover all this, but every little bit helps!
If the Indonesian Study Abroad Program Fundraising Committee were to win a Sloup grant, all of the money would go towards funding the artists who would like to participate in the program in Indonesia.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting a NEA grant?
The Indonesia Study-Abroad Program is all about promoting St. Louis abroad and nurturing its artistic community. By sending local artists to Indonesia, we will be displaying the artistic richness and diversity of the St. Louis region to an international artist. Also, the participating artists will return home with knowledge of Indonesian art and culture to share with the community, enriching the local art scene.
Because the intent of the program is to help St. Louis and its artists, grassroots support from local artists and art supporters is deeply meaningful to us. Just having the opportunity to share the news about this new program is very exciting!
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I am one of the fundraiser coordinators for the Study Abroad Program. I began working for the St. Louis Artists’ Guild as a graphic design intern, and now I am a Junior Graphic Designer and Administrative Assistant at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild. My current goals are to help reinvigorate the St. Louis Artists’ Guild as a prominent arts organization and to continue its mission to support local artists.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
Last year, the St. Louis Artists’ Guild hosted an exhibition of Indonesian batiks, featuring the private batik collection of Dr. Ann Dunham (President Obama’s mother) and the batik collection of the First Lady of Indonesia. The exhibition was a big success, and we received many accolades for our efforts in bringing the exhibition to St. Louis. The most amazing part was that we had only a few months to organize the exhibit! However, since the batik exhibit was so last minute, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked to advertise and promote the exhibit.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month?
All of the artists helping us raise funds for the Study Abroad Program!
*
Your name or the title of your organization:
Jordan Hicks (My project is a collaboration with photographers David Johnson and Brett Beckemeyer. It also includes photos by Lyndsey Scott and Michael Allen).
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
This summer, I worked with two photographers to create a set of 19 postcards about St. Louis' urban landscape - specifically, how it is impacted by the city's precipitous 59% drop in population from 1950 – 2000. There are cards about the urban wilderness on the former Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing complex site; the reuse of materials from demolished buildings; abandoned schools; urban agriculture, and more. I selected 19 sites, the photographers shot at the sites, and I wrote text for the back of each card. We printed a small run of cards. Instead of selling the cards in shops, we gave a few sets to friends, and left a few sets out in public places, to be picked up, discussed, and shared. I left sets of cards at the arch grounds, the downtown public library, and City Garden. I have two sets of these cards at home, if you'd like to see them.
With the Sloup Grant, I would print more sets of these cards (and $10 could print about 1 and 1/4 sets at Kinko's, the least expensive option) and leave them, free for the taking, in more public places. I would like to leave them at markets, parks, and institutional buildings (places with a lot of foot traffic), but I am open to / looking for more suggestions. Also (though I would still need to coordinate with the photographers) I would like to add a few cards to the set – maybe one about squatting, one about urban wildlife, one about brownfield reclamation, and one about that old core of a building on the north side that fireman use for training.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
In the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot about urban planning and design issues. I became pretty interested in work being done in shrinking cities – cities that are losing population, and as a result have lots of leftover, abandoned building and landscapes. I noticed, around St. Louis, a lot of interesting and unique approaches to the problem, many of them in direct ideological conflict with one another. I felt like that was the real story about urban planning in St. Louis, and it is ultimately more pertinent and more interesting than the "urban development" issues that garner attention in the press – sports stadiums, downtown lofts, highway improvements, and new shopping districts. I wrestled with various ideas to address this, but ultimately decided on the postcards for their symbolic value (being postacrds and all) and their accessibility (Few people will pick up a two-page text article, found sitting on park bench. Many will pick up beautiful pictures by talented photographers).
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
I feel like Open Lot has been successful in some ways: it has been a good studio environment for a number of artists, a good venue for visiting musicians, and a good gallery space. However, when we (Me, and my friends Aaron and Jonathan, who have since moved to Toronto and Nashville, respectively) founded the project, I think we intended to have more community involvement. We weren't really sure what that meant, but we discussed hosting free classes for kids, creating some kind of communal arts library, or maybe public service projects – something that extended beyond our own social group (you know, young, college educated people with an interest in the arts). We never really got around to that, and if I start another similar project elsewhere, I will want that to be part of it.
Your power animal and/or icon:
Komodo dragon, or maybe a Gila Monster. Some kind of big lizard. They're like contemporary dinosaurs.
Sloup #5: June 2010
Chinyere E. Oteh
For more information on The Cowry Collective:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecowrycollective/
http://www.facebook.com/CowryCollective
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish:
I am the founder of a brand new timebank called The Cowry Collective. Our mission is to strengthen community among people of African descent through a bartering network. While we seek to make positive impact primarily in the Black community, we realize that all of us, no matter our ethnic origin are interconnected, and we welcome anyone who is aligned with our mission and has a passion for social justice and community building. Time banking is simply about spending an hour doing something for somebody in your community. That hour goes into the time bank as a time dollar (a cowry as we refer to it). Then you have a cowry to spend on having someone do something for you. It's a simple idea, but it will have powerful ripple effects in building community connections in and around St. Louis. A Sloup Grant would help us to creatively spread the word about our timebank by enabling us to get some professional design help to streamline how we spread the word about our timebank namely by creating a logo and a website. We could also use the funds to assist us with purchasing the official Timebanks USA software ($400) to track all community time dollars or cowries given/received to the Collective. To this point I have been working alone and on a budget of what I can afford from my own finances to create business cards, build our social networking power via Facebook and Yahoo Groups web pages, designing flyers and holding bi-monthly new member orientations. While my endeavor might not be considered primarily artistic, as a community artist, I do see the place a timebank can hold in the art world either by assisting working artists through volunteer hours from the timebank, promoting local community artist shops and gathering places on our website, and by inspiring local artists to get involved in giving to their community through our timebank by volunteering hours in art instruction or creating art installations in blighted neighborhoods, etc.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting an NEA grant?
The Cowry Collective is all about local community building and the Sloup Grant is focused on promoting local artistic projects that need a little help. I see a perfect fit in that The Cowry Collective is a new time bank in need of some backing – both from new members who will donate time and services and from local businesses, donors, in the form of financial or in-kind donations. I am very community-oriented and would appreciate a Sloup Grant even more than a larger foundation grant in our start-up stage because we will be using local money to do good for the local community. How perfect.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I am a resident of Gravois Park, working on rehabbing a multi-family building with my partner. I am a mother to an almost-two-year-old. I am a Washington University graduate (2002) and community artist who has completed the Community Artist Training (CAT) program at Regional Arts Commission (2007). I teach photography and creative writing through the Photography Project (UMSL). I am very passionate about making my life more simple, enjoyable, healthy, and artistic and fun. I enjoy teaching and I like creative solutions to seemingly big problems. While in the CAT program a friend of mine shared with me an article on a timebanking community in Maine and I was struck by the idea. Fast forward three years and I am fully committed to orchestrating big community change by convincing people that giving an hour of their time to a stranger or a neighbor could have profound effects on their own life.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
I recently taught a Photography Project for Lydia’s House. I worked with children who live there to create self-portraits that did not reveal their identities. We had a lot of fun photographing their shadows, writing poetry from the vantage-point of Lydia’s House, and making collages of their favorite things within a silhouette tracing of their heads. The final products were stunning – work that I am most proud of being a part of in my three years as a Photography Project teacher. However, at the exhibit opening at Urban Eats and at UMSL none of the children or their families attended. It was really disappointing because they had put in the hard work and expressed themselves in ways they hadn’t before and it was on display for the public to see and I really wanted them to get a chance to get the recognition they deserved. I think their self-esteem would have been infinitely boosted by a public recognition of their exhibit by their mothers and family members, but their absence is simply a reminder to be mindful of the barriers each of my students may have because of their life circumstances to attending exhibits or even our regular classes.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month?
My favorite artist this month is Rick Lowe – founder of Project Row Houses. I would love to see something like this around Cherokee/Gravois Park/Dutchtown!
Submit the above information to sloup2122@gmail.com by the Saturday before this month's Sloup. Your answers will be distributed in a packet of this month's proposals to all Sloup attendees and they'll vote on their favorites. That's all there is to it!
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Pancake Productions (Robert Severson, Pancake Master/Proprietor)
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish: Continue recording, producing, releasing, and distributing fine artistic material in a wide range of media and disciplines, including (but certainly never limited to) music, film, video, photography, art, and beyond.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting an NEA grant? It’s reassuring to know that the grant comes from interested parties—people like us who are community- and arts-minded and –oriented, and who love soup. It’s also comforting to know that even if we don’t end up as this month’s choice, that at least the grant went to someplace that deserved it as much as we did, and we can tell exactly who that was, and have a little joy for the fact that this process is in place regardless of who receives the Magical SLOUP Stack O’ Cash™.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals: Existing in the filmmaking/music/performance/art sphere within Saint Louis for over 10 years, I’ve seen labels and collectives and organizations come and go. Some of them don’t even bother to keep so much as a website alive for posterity/archival purposes, which is sad and frustrating, since it’s stuff I care about, and want to see last in some form or another, or at least have a way to remember/remind. I’ve been sort of the opposite way—I’ve had this website, and this “production company” for the longest time, but the slow trickle of projects has not been enough to sustain Pancake Productions as a viable name or a reputable entity in the way I’d prefer. So, I’m taking matters into my own hands with little more than whatever money (however meager, or otherwise) and experience (however plentiful, or otherwise) I’ve been able to accrue in my time creating and collaborating, and making the promise that whatever else may happen, Pancake Productions is here (and has been for nigh upon a decade) to stay. Primarily a film production company in its formative stages, recently the focus has been on (recording and) releasing recorded music for the masses through whatever variety of avenues we deem possible and appropriate (CD, vinyl, internet, other, or some combination thereof). However, as stated, no project is too small, or too big, or too this, or too that. We’re willing to consider just about anything. We want to make great things happen. For you, for us, for St. Louis, for everyone.
Already well within the pipeline for 2010 (and beyond?) are musical album releases from defunct sweet acousticsters The Shitty Friends, seven-years-extinct-monster-girl-popmeisters The Fantasy Four, prolific satirical hip-hop-a-thon-ers King Kong Magnetics, rock-and-lollers Popular Mechanics, and “the world’s cutest band” (Jason Ankeny, allmusic.com), Bunnygrunt. A handful of others are only in the very infantile stages of discussion, to the point that I’m reluctant to mention them here, no matter how excited I might be about them. I’m perfectly happy to continue patronizing and publicizing local arts using frequent dips into the shallow pool of my laughable savings account, but every little bit helps, of course, SLOUPsters.
Most importantly, if you are an enthusiastic artist of any kind and are interested in releasing something, anything, via the Pancake Productions imprint, to the general public, and consider yourself a match for any or all of what you’ve read here today, we want to talk to you post-haste, whether you vote for us tonight or not—heck, even (maybe especially) if you’re the competition. I’d be lying to say I don’t intend to slap the Pancake Productions credentials onto whatever personal projects I do eventually set out to accomplish, but a vanity project this is decidedly not—it’s about making excellent stuff occur by and for the people all around us. You’ve already taken a step in that direction by attending SLOUP, and for that, I thank you.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I’ve registered a Pancake Productions team for the local 48 Hour Film Project every year for the last several years. The first time I did so, our film was selected to appear in the “best of” screening here in town. Of course this was something of a great honor, and we even took home an award. In subsequent years, our films have never even made it to the best-of screenings, but that isn’t really why we do them. If it was, we probably woulda quit by now! For me at least, it has become more about making a product in which I can have some pride, and having fun in the process of making it. This year (2010), for the first time, we did not even turn our movie in on time (but still got it in early enough to screen with the other films), which means it wasn’t eligible for any judges’ awards (only an “audience favorite” award). I wish I could say the film was late because we were studiously making it pristine and putting the final touches of perfection upon it, but the truth is we were subject to computer abilities and speeds less proficient and slower (respectively) than anticipated, and didn’t even get to see the final movie we turned in before turning it in. Since then I’ve been touching it up some, as we do on occasion with these 48 Hour Films, to make it into something comprehensive and high-quality for later perusal as part of the Pancake Productions catalogue. Regardless of the receipt (or lack thereof) of any awards, though, you can bet we’ll be back at it next year, trying again.
Really that is the whole idea of this proposal—being able to make something sweet happen; something to make us proud. This is no vanity project, I just want people to do their best, have a good time, and make their mark however they can.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month? Gösta Thames, Ralph Lysell, Hugo Blomberg, and the rest of the team that designed the Ericofon in the late 1940s. Also, Meat Loaf.
*
Name and contact information:
Eric Ryszkiewicz | eric.rysk@gmail.com | 314-520-1147
Artistic project a Sloup Grant would help accomplish:
I will use a sloup grant to fund promotional materials for a project titled “daydream lullaby: sleep | wake | delete”. This will consist of ~200-300 oversized postcards that promote an event in fall 2010, this event will serve as a joint CD EP release party and photo show.
Funding will cover most or all of the costs for the design and printing of two-tone postcards, to be distributed near the end of the summer. This work will be contracted through a local artisan print shop. Thus, the entire monetary value of the grant will go towards supporting St. Louis artists working in their trade.
The music on the “sleep | wake | delete” EP consists of many layers (typically 5-13) of soft, intertwining guitar lines, and could not be performed live without a large ensemble. The corresponding black and white photography appears in the packaging for the EP, and larger format prints will be available at the show. Postcards will be thematically and aesthetically related to the items and event they promote.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant:
I am not known in St. Louis as an artist, musician, or photographer. More important than the monetary award, I believe that being able to promote this project as somehow receiving the sloup stamp of approval will provide more visibility. I will return the favor by noting sloup as a sponsor.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I’m doing a series of related music and media projects as “commerce information entertainment” with a focus on the creation of quality goods, services, and experiences. A previous sloup application did not yield a grant, but the experience got me interested in trying to craft a more convincing proposal. Here, the grant money will definitely go towards the production of a tangible “art product” within a specified time interval, and this item will be given away as a promotional item. Is it art? Is it part of a larger project? Is it promotional crap? You be the judge.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed:
Several years ago, I built a human-powered vending machine as a Halloween costume. This was essentially a large, frame-mounted cardboard box with casters, a plexi-glass front window, coin slot, snack retrieval door, and a panel on which a variety of food items were displayed. I’d intended on attending the Central West End costume contest, but wound up going to a house party instead. Once the initial novelty wore off, most people were pretty content to ignore me, especially if I wasn’t moving around. I thought it would be a lot of fun (it was), but spent most of the time drinking beers alone in a cardboard box.
Who is your favorite artist this month?
I went to see the Gordon Matta-Clark show at the Pulitzer two weekends in a row before it closed. The conical intersect video made a larger impression than I’d initially thought, and I find myself examining it separately through the lenses of video and performance art in addition to the final building cuts. Hope you didn’t miss it!
Your power animal and/or icon:
T. Rex. Have you scoped my tyrannosaur arms?
*
name or organization and contact:
The May Day Orchestra
Tim Rakel
a project a Sloup Grant would help us with:
The May Day Orchestra has recorded a new musical project which we will release as a vinyl LP as well as a CD. "Songs For Ota Benga" is the working title. It was recorded at a studio on Cherokee and the material has been played live at such venues as the Black Bear Bakery, Foam and the Schlafly Tap Room.
why a Sloup grant is more important than winning the lottery, etc:
A grant coming from a community who get together to support art means more than a gift from a faceless entity, even if the latter has more money. This is also why this group makes its music, not to make money, but to interact with people.
about us:
The May Day Orchestra consists of members of various local bands including The Union Electric, Tenement Ruth, The Rats & People, Theodore and Grace Basement. Tim Rakel, the songwriter in the group, has composed "folk operas" to do more than just play songs but tell some stories and history as well. The "Ota Benga" project has local connections to Saint Louis and has relevant ties to the current war in Congo.
a previous project:
The group's first project "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" was in some part successful in that we released a vinyl record and got it out to a small audience. Its failing was a lack of distribution and sustained performance which we are improving upon this time around.
favorite artist this month:
Tom Waits. The five regular and current members of the band all concur, as well as the six-year old child that attends some of our practices.
For more information on The Cowry Collective:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thecowrycollective/
http://www.facebook.com/CowryCollective
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish:
I am the founder of a brand new timebank called The Cowry Collective. Our mission is to strengthen community among people of African descent through a bartering network. While we seek to make positive impact primarily in the Black community, we realize that all of us, no matter our ethnic origin are interconnected, and we welcome anyone who is aligned with our mission and has a passion for social justice and community building. Time banking is simply about spending an hour doing something for somebody in your community. That hour goes into the time bank as a time dollar (a cowry as we refer to it). Then you have a cowry to spend on having someone do something for you. It's a simple idea, but it will have powerful ripple effects in building community connections in and around St. Louis. A Sloup Grant would help us to creatively spread the word about our timebank by enabling us to get some professional design help to streamline how we spread the word about our timebank namely by creating a logo and a website. We could also use the funds to assist us with purchasing the official Timebanks USA software ($400) to track all community time dollars or cowries given/received to the Collective. To this point I have been working alone and on a budget of what I can afford from my own finances to create business cards, build our social networking power via Facebook and Yahoo Groups web pages, designing flyers and holding bi-monthly new member orientations. While my endeavor might not be considered primarily artistic, as a community artist, I do see the place a timebank can hold in the art world either by assisting working artists through volunteer hours from the timebank, promoting local community artist shops and gathering places on our website, and by inspiring local artists to get involved in giving to their community through our timebank by volunteering hours in art instruction or creating art installations in blighted neighborhoods, etc.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting an NEA grant?
The Cowry Collective is all about local community building and the Sloup Grant is focused on promoting local artistic projects that need a little help. I see a perfect fit in that The Cowry Collective is a new time bank in need of some backing – both from new members who will donate time and services and from local businesses, donors, in the form of financial or in-kind donations. I am very community-oriented and would appreciate a Sloup Grant even more than a larger foundation grant in our start-up stage because we will be using local money to do good for the local community. How perfect.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I am a resident of Gravois Park, working on rehabbing a multi-family building with my partner. I am a mother to an almost-two-year-old. I am a Washington University graduate (2002) and community artist who has completed the Community Artist Training (CAT) program at Regional Arts Commission (2007). I teach photography and creative writing through the Photography Project (UMSL). I am very passionate about making my life more simple, enjoyable, healthy, and artistic and fun. I enjoy teaching and I like creative solutions to seemingly big problems. While in the CAT program a friend of mine shared with me an article on a timebanking community in Maine and I was struck by the idea. Fast forward three years and I am fully committed to orchestrating big community change by convincing people that giving an hour of their time to a stranger or a neighbor could have profound effects on their own life.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
I recently taught a Photography Project for Lydia’s House. I worked with children who live there to create self-portraits that did not reveal their identities. We had a lot of fun photographing their shadows, writing poetry from the vantage-point of Lydia’s House, and making collages of their favorite things within a silhouette tracing of their heads. The final products were stunning – work that I am most proud of being a part of in my three years as a Photography Project teacher. However, at the exhibit opening at Urban Eats and at UMSL none of the children or their families attended. It was really disappointing because they had put in the hard work and expressed themselves in ways they hadn’t before and it was on display for the public to see and I really wanted them to get a chance to get the recognition they deserved. I think their self-esteem would have been infinitely boosted by a public recognition of their exhibit by their mothers and family members, but their absence is simply a reminder to be mindful of the barriers each of my students may have because of their life circumstances to attending exhibits or even our regular classes.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month?
My favorite artist this month is Rick Lowe – founder of Project Row Houses. I would love to see something like this around Cherokee/Gravois Park/Dutchtown!
Submit the above information to sloup2122@gmail.com by the Saturday before this month's Sloup. Your answers will be distributed in a packet of this month's proposals to all Sloup attendees and they'll vote on their favorites. That's all there is to it!
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Pancake Productions (Robert Severson, Pancake Master/Proprietor)
Please describe the artistic project a Sloup Grant would help you accomplish: Continue recording, producing, releasing, and distributing fine artistic material in a wide range of media and disciplines, including (but certainly never limited to) music, film, video, photography, art, and beyond.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant, instead of, say, winning the lottery or getting an NEA grant? It’s reassuring to know that the grant comes from interested parties—people like us who are community- and arts-minded and –oriented, and who love soup. It’s also comforting to know that even if we don’t end up as this month’s choice, that at least the grant went to someplace that deserved it as much as we did, and we can tell exactly who that was, and have a little joy for the fact that this process is in place regardless of who receives the Magical SLOUP Stack O’ Cash™.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals: Existing in the filmmaking/music/performance/art sphere within Saint Louis for over 10 years, I’ve seen labels and collectives and organizations come and go. Some of them don’t even bother to keep so much as a website alive for posterity/archival purposes, which is sad and frustrating, since it’s stuff I care about, and want to see last in some form or another, or at least have a way to remember/remind. I’ve been sort of the opposite way—I’ve had this website, and this “production company” for the longest time, but the slow trickle of projects has not been enough to sustain Pancake Productions as a viable name or a reputable entity in the way I’d prefer. So, I’m taking matters into my own hands with little more than whatever money (however meager, or otherwise) and experience (however plentiful, or otherwise) I’ve been able to accrue in my time creating and collaborating, and making the promise that whatever else may happen, Pancake Productions is here (and has been for nigh upon a decade) to stay. Primarily a film production company in its formative stages, recently the focus has been on (recording and) releasing recorded music for the masses through whatever variety of avenues we deem possible and appropriate (CD, vinyl, internet, other, or some combination thereof). However, as stated, no project is too small, or too big, or too this, or too that. We’re willing to consider just about anything. We want to make great things happen. For you, for us, for St. Louis, for everyone.
Already well within the pipeline for 2010 (and beyond?) are musical album releases from defunct sweet acousticsters The Shitty Friends, seven-years-extinct-monster-girl-popmeisters The Fantasy Four, prolific satirical hip-hop-a-thon-ers King Kong Magnetics, rock-and-lollers Popular Mechanics, and “the world’s cutest band” (Jason Ankeny, allmusic.com), Bunnygrunt. A handful of others are only in the very infantile stages of discussion, to the point that I’m reluctant to mention them here, no matter how excited I might be about them. I’m perfectly happy to continue patronizing and publicizing local arts using frequent dips into the shallow pool of my laughable savings account, but every little bit helps, of course, SLOUPsters.
Most importantly, if you are an enthusiastic artist of any kind and are interested in releasing something, anything, via the Pancake Productions imprint, to the general public, and consider yourself a match for any or all of what you’ve read here today, we want to talk to you post-haste, whether you vote for us tonight or not—heck, even (maybe especially) if you’re the competition. I’d be lying to say I don’t intend to slap the Pancake Productions credentials onto whatever personal projects I do eventually set out to accomplish, but a vanity project this is decidedly not—it’s about making excellent stuff occur by and for the people all around us. You’ve already taken a step in that direction by attending SLOUP, and for that, I thank you.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I’ve registered a Pancake Productions team for the local 48 Hour Film Project every year for the last several years. The first time I did so, our film was selected to appear in the “best of” screening here in town. Of course this was something of a great honor, and we even took home an award. In subsequent years, our films have never even made it to the best-of screenings, but that isn’t really why we do them. If it was, we probably woulda quit by now! For me at least, it has become more about making a product in which I can have some pride, and having fun in the process of making it. This year (2010), for the first time, we did not even turn our movie in on time (but still got it in early enough to screen with the other films), which means it wasn’t eligible for any judges’ awards (only an “audience favorite” award). I wish I could say the film was late because we were studiously making it pristine and putting the final touches of perfection upon it, but the truth is we were subject to computer abilities and speeds less proficient and slower (respectively) than anticipated, and didn’t even get to see the final movie we turned in before turning it in. Since then I’ve been touching it up some, as we do on occasion with these 48 Hour Films, to make it into something comprehensive and high-quality for later perusal as part of the Pancake Productions catalogue. Regardless of the receipt (or lack thereof) of any awards, though, you can bet we’ll be back at it next year, trying again.
Really that is the whole idea of this proposal—being able to make something sweet happen; something to make us proud. This is no vanity project, I just want people to do their best, have a good time, and make their mark however they can.
Who is your favorite (any kind of) artist this month? Gösta Thames, Ralph Lysell, Hugo Blomberg, and the rest of the team that designed the Ericofon in the late 1940s. Also, Meat Loaf.
*
Name and contact information:
Eric Ryszkiewicz | eric.rysk@gmail.com | 314-520-1147
Artistic project a Sloup Grant would help accomplish:
I will use a sloup grant to fund promotional materials for a project titled “daydream lullaby: sleep | wake | delete”. This will consist of ~200-300 oversized postcards that promote an event in fall 2010, this event will serve as a joint CD EP release party and photo show.
Funding will cover most or all of the costs for the design and printing of two-tone postcards, to be distributed near the end of the summer. This work will be contracted through a local artisan print shop. Thus, the entire monetary value of the grant will go towards supporting St. Louis artists working in their trade.
The music on the “sleep | wake | delete” EP consists of many layers (typically 5-13) of soft, intertwining guitar lines, and could not be performed live without a large ensemble. The corresponding black and white photography appears in the packaging for the EP, and larger format prints will be available at the show. Postcards will be thematically and aesthetically related to the items and event they promote.
What is important to you about receiving a Sloup Grant:
I am not known in St. Louis as an artist, musician, or photographer. More important than the monetary award, I believe that being able to promote this project as somehow receiving the sloup stamp of approval will provide more visibility. I will return the favor by noting sloup as a sponsor.
A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals:
I’m doing a series of related music and media projects as “commerce information entertainment” with a focus on the creation of quality goods, services, and experiences. A previous sloup application did not yield a grant, but the experience got me interested in trying to craft a more convincing proposal. Here, the grant money will definitely go towards the production of a tangible “art product” within a specified time interval, and this item will be given away as a promotional item. Is it art? Is it part of a larger project? Is it promotional crap? You be the judge.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed:
Several years ago, I built a human-powered vending machine as a Halloween costume. This was essentially a large, frame-mounted cardboard box with casters, a plexi-glass front window, coin slot, snack retrieval door, and a panel on which a variety of food items were displayed. I’d intended on attending the Central West End costume contest, but wound up going to a house party instead. Once the initial novelty wore off, most people were pretty content to ignore me, especially if I wasn’t moving around. I thought it would be a lot of fun (it was), but spent most of the time drinking beers alone in a cardboard box.
Who is your favorite artist this month?
I went to see the Gordon Matta-Clark show at the Pulitzer two weekends in a row before it closed. The conical intersect video made a larger impression than I’d initially thought, and I find myself examining it separately through the lenses of video and performance art in addition to the final building cuts. Hope you didn’t miss it!
Your power animal and/or icon:
T. Rex. Have you scoped my tyrannosaur arms?
*
name or organization and contact:
The May Day Orchestra
Tim Rakel
a project a Sloup Grant would help us with:
The May Day Orchestra has recorded a new musical project which we will release as a vinyl LP as well as a CD. "Songs For Ota Benga" is the working title. It was recorded at a studio on Cherokee and the material has been played live at such venues as the Black Bear Bakery, Foam and the Schlafly Tap Room.
why a Sloup grant is more important than winning the lottery, etc:
A grant coming from a community who get together to support art means more than a gift from a faceless entity, even if the latter has more money. This is also why this group makes its music, not to make money, but to interact with people.
about us:
The May Day Orchestra consists of members of various local bands including The Union Electric, Tenement Ruth, The Rats & People, Theodore and Grace Basement. Tim Rakel, the songwriter in the group, has composed "folk operas" to do more than just play songs but tell some stories and history as well. The "Ota Benga" project has local connections to Saint Louis and has relevant ties to the current war in Congo.
a previous project:
The group's first project "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" was in some part successful in that we released a vinyl record and got it out to a small audience. Its failing was a lack of distribution and sustained performance which we are improving upon this time around.
favorite artist this month:
Tom Waits. The five regular and current members of the band all concur, as well as the six-year old child that attends some of our practices.
Sloup #4: May 2010
Your name or the title of your organization: Pancake Productions (Robert Severson, Pancake Master/Proprietor)
What you will do with your Sloup Grant: Continue recording, producing, releasing, and distributing fine artistic material in a wide range of media and disciplines.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: Existing in the filmmaking/music/performance/art sphere within Saint Louis for over 10 years, I’ve seen labels and collectives and organizations come and go. Some of them don’t even bother to keep so much as a website alive for posterity/archival purposes, which is sad and frustrating, since it’s stuff I care about, and want to see last in some form or another, or at least have a way to remember/remind. I’ve been sort of the opposite way—I’ve had this website, and this “production company” for the longest time, but the slow trickle of projects has not been enough to sustain Pancake Productions as a viable name or a reputable entity. So, I’m taking matters into my own hands with little more than whatever money (however meager, or otherwise) and experience (however plentiful, or otherwise) I’ve been able to accrue in my time creating and collaborating, and making the promise that whatever else may happen, Pancake Productions is here (and has been for nigh upon a decade) to stay. Primarily a film production company in its formative stages, recently the focus has been on (recording and) releasing recorded music for the masses through whatever variety of avenues we deem possible and appropriate (CD, vinyl, internet, other, or some combination thereof). However, as stated, no project is too small, or too big, or too this, or too that. We’re willing to consider just about anything. We want to make great things happen. For you, for us, for St. Louis, for everyone.
Already well within the pipeline for 2010 (and beyond?) are musical album releases from defunct sweet acousticsters The Shitty Friends, seven-years-extinct-monster-girl-popmeisters The Fantasy Four, prolific satirical hip-hop-a-thon-ers King Kong Magnetics, and rock-and-lollers Popular Mechanics. Plus several more that are only in the very infantile stages of discussion, to the point that I’m reluctant to mention them here, no matter how excited I might be about them. I’m perfectly happy to continue patronizing and publicizing local arts using frequent dips into the shallow pool of my laughable savings account, but every little bit helps, of course, SLOUPsters.
Most importantly, if you are an enthusiastic artist of any kind and are interested in releasing something, anything, via the Pancake Productions imprint, to the general public, and consider yourself a match for any or all of what you’ve read here today, we want to talk to you post-haste, whether you vote for us tonight or not.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): If it can, then it will! I was on the popular TV quiz show Jeopardy! one time (mid-November 2009). It was a failure because I lost—ended the show with zero bucks on the board, and another contestant and I went into Final Jeopardy! each with less than half of what the reigning champion had (meaning it was a shutout against us, for him). DANG! Well, I’ve offered my apologies to pretty much everyone I talk to about it: “Sorry I couldn’t bring home the win.” HOWEVER in another way, that is not really why I went (nice though it would have been), or why I tried out, or even why I crammed (yes, I actually tried to do some last-minute studying for Jeopardy!, and yes, that is pretty much impossible/worthless). Really I was just interested in having a great time, doing the best I could, and having an appearance on national TV that could last a lifetime, both in the oral tradition of the whole thing, and of course on YouTube (where you can see it for yourself, split into two separate parts, if you plug “Severson” and “Jeopardy” into a YouTube search). Of course, many/most people that have a clue know that winning wasn’t the most important thing, especially for me. It was all about the (long) process, the experience, the general accomplishment of the thing. Priority number one was to have fun with it, and in that regard, success on a monumental scale, success of an unfathomable degree, success times a billion, was achieved. Even if I didn’t win any real money or get to appear on the show a second time, I know I did great, and had real people, friends and strangers alike, pulling for me. Not necessarily to win, just to do it right, just to make people proud. Really, my Jeopardy! experience was a sort of microcosm for my outlook on most everything from Pancake Productions to softball games to live performances to living life and more: have fun, try your hardest, and do something of which you can be, and stay, proud.
Your power animal and/or icon: A roll of 5 in the game of Yahtzee; Lots of maple syrup.
*
Your name or the title of your organization:
Eric Ryszkiewicz | proprietor of “Commerce Information Entertainment”
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
I will use a sloup grant to fund 50 copies of an EP titled “daydream lullaby: daydream vacation”. This will consist of an albums’ worth of instrumental music that is an extension of another work in progress, which also falls under the “daydream lullaby” moniker. Funding will primarily go towards CDR duplication and the production of handmade packaging. This will include a custom digipak with color photography, and letterpress and/or screen printing for the text. Unlike other recent recordings, the music on this release can be performed by a single player, and there will be some live performances to promote it. The music consists of many layers of intricate, sparse guitar work, and may appeal to fans of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and other modern composers. If awarded this months’ grant, sloup will be recognized as a contributor in the liner notes.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
I don’t have time for a band, and am far more interested in creating music as art than live entertainment. I’m doing a series of related music and media projects as “commerce information entertainment” with a focus on the creation of quality goods, services, and experiences. After spending several years recording exclusively heavy music, I was interested in writing and recording some lighter material that you might put on if you just felt like chilling out for a while.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed:
"Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band" (SRJB) was initially conceived as a hardcore punk band that existed solely for the purpose of playing a single concert – the intent being that it was an experience that could only be had once. Those in attendance would simultaneously catch a band's first and last show. An EP of the material would be given away in boutique packaging featuring photography by local artists and friends.
This project succeeded in that after producing and distributing 125 copies of the SRJB EP “we could be sirens”, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on it.
Unfortunately, this project failed to meet the original intent of a live show. After writing and recording the material, I realized how hard it would be to recruit other musicians to rehearse for several months with the intent of playing a single performance. To fully realize the material as written, a live band would require at least two percussionists, four guitarists, bass guitar, and a dedicated vocalist.
Your power animal and/or icon:
My power animal is a muppet. I have sweet facial hair, a tiny neck, and a wobbly head.
*
Your name or the title of your organization: CAMP Bike Shop
What you will do with your Sloup Grant: The CAMP (Community, Arts, and Movement Project) Bike Shop is a place where neighborhood kids (and grown-ups!) can come get their bikes fixed, earn a bike, and learn how to work on bikes. Sloup funds will be used to restock the bike shop for the coming summer with basic tools and supplies such as: bike tubes, patch kits, brake pads, spokes, wrenches, grease and chain lube, and if funds allow, a wheel-truing stand.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: I moved to St. Louis in February and immediately found, fell in love with, and moved in at CAMP. I love the outreach the collective offers to the neighborhood, and it feels like I found CAMP at a time when it is "growing up." The Bike Shop is in 3 garages in the backyard of CAMP. I have moved and traveled a lot and have loved many bike projects in other cities: Yellow Bike Project in Austin, The Bike Church in Philly, Plan B in New Orleans, and the Santa Fe Bike Project. All have supported me in various ways, and I love not only the technical support, but also the community engagement and camaraderie they offer. I really want to see such a project be successful in my new neighborhood in St. Louis, and we've already got the space, the old bikes to work with, and the reputation in the neighborhood as a place for kids to come for bike help.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I spent 2 years in Thailand helping start and run a permaculture and natural building education center north of Chiang Mai. One thing I really learned there was that in the day-to-day hard work of running the place, it could seem like we were making no headway--maybe we would spend a whole day working on (and not solving!) a water crisis in the dry season, but when we stood back and looked at all we'd accomplished since we started, it was astounding--I designed and built my own house, we hosted tons of workshops and courses, put in huge gardens, food forest, ponds, firebreaks, and 8 buildings. The big picture is attained by the the little step-by-step tasks.
Your power animal and/or icon: What has more power than an elephant? Also, self-control, longevity, group-bonding, and memory. In Hinduism, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is the remover of obstacles.
*
name of organization:
The May Day Orchestra
what we will do:
The May Day Orchestra is recording a new musical project which we would like to release as a vinyl LP as well as a CD. "Songs For Ota Benga" is the working title.
about us:
The May Day Orchestra consists of members of various local bands including The Union Electric, Tenement Ruth, The Rats & People, Theodore and Grace Basement. Tim Rakel, the songwriter in the group, has composed "folk operas" to do more than just play songs but tell some stories and history as well. The Ota Benga project has local connections to Saint Louis and has relevent ties to the current war in Congo.
a previous project:
The group's first project "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" was in some part successful in that we released a vinyl-only record and got it out to a small audience. Its failing was a lack of distribution which could be improved upon this time with CD and vinyl options and a recent offer of help with distribution.
icon:
Ota Benga, pygmy man kept at the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904.
What you will do with your Sloup Grant: Continue recording, producing, releasing, and distributing fine artistic material in a wide range of media and disciplines.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: Existing in the filmmaking/music/performance/art sphere within Saint Louis for over 10 years, I’ve seen labels and collectives and organizations come and go. Some of them don’t even bother to keep so much as a website alive for posterity/archival purposes, which is sad and frustrating, since it’s stuff I care about, and want to see last in some form or another, or at least have a way to remember/remind. I’ve been sort of the opposite way—I’ve had this website, and this “production company” for the longest time, but the slow trickle of projects has not been enough to sustain Pancake Productions as a viable name or a reputable entity. So, I’m taking matters into my own hands with little more than whatever money (however meager, or otherwise) and experience (however plentiful, or otherwise) I’ve been able to accrue in my time creating and collaborating, and making the promise that whatever else may happen, Pancake Productions is here (and has been for nigh upon a decade) to stay. Primarily a film production company in its formative stages, recently the focus has been on (recording and) releasing recorded music for the masses through whatever variety of avenues we deem possible and appropriate (CD, vinyl, internet, other, or some combination thereof). However, as stated, no project is too small, or too big, or too this, or too that. We’re willing to consider just about anything. We want to make great things happen. For you, for us, for St. Louis, for everyone.
Already well within the pipeline for 2010 (and beyond?) are musical album releases from defunct sweet acousticsters The Shitty Friends, seven-years-extinct-monster-girl-popmeisters The Fantasy Four, prolific satirical hip-hop-a-thon-ers King Kong Magnetics, and rock-and-lollers Popular Mechanics. Plus several more that are only in the very infantile stages of discussion, to the point that I’m reluctant to mention them here, no matter how excited I might be about them. I’m perfectly happy to continue patronizing and publicizing local arts using frequent dips into the shallow pool of my laughable savings account, but every little bit helps, of course, SLOUPsters.
Most importantly, if you are an enthusiastic artist of any kind and are interested in releasing something, anything, via the Pancake Productions imprint, to the general public, and consider yourself a match for any or all of what you’ve read here today, we want to talk to you post-haste, whether you vote for us tonight or not.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): If it can, then it will! I was on the popular TV quiz show Jeopardy! one time (mid-November 2009). It was a failure because I lost—ended the show with zero bucks on the board, and another contestant and I went into Final Jeopardy! each with less than half of what the reigning champion had (meaning it was a shutout against us, for him). DANG! Well, I’ve offered my apologies to pretty much everyone I talk to about it: “Sorry I couldn’t bring home the win.” HOWEVER in another way, that is not really why I went (nice though it would have been), or why I tried out, or even why I crammed (yes, I actually tried to do some last-minute studying for Jeopardy!, and yes, that is pretty much impossible/worthless). Really I was just interested in having a great time, doing the best I could, and having an appearance on national TV that could last a lifetime, both in the oral tradition of the whole thing, and of course on YouTube (where you can see it for yourself, split into two separate parts, if you plug “Severson” and “Jeopardy” into a YouTube search). Of course, many/most people that have a clue know that winning wasn’t the most important thing, especially for me. It was all about the (long) process, the experience, the general accomplishment of the thing. Priority number one was to have fun with it, and in that regard, success on a monumental scale, success of an unfathomable degree, success times a billion, was achieved. Even if I didn’t win any real money or get to appear on the show a second time, I know I did great, and had real people, friends and strangers alike, pulling for me. Not necessarily to win, just to do it right, just to make people proud. Really, my Jeopardy! experience was a sort of microcosm for my outlook on most everything from Pancake Productions to softball games to live performances to living life and more: have fun, try your hardest, and do something of which you can be, and stay, proud.
Your power animal and/or icon: A roll of 5 in the game of Yahtzee; Lots of maple syrup.
*
Your name or the title of your organization:
Eric Ryszkiewicz | proprietor of “Commerce Information Entertainment”
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
I will use a sloup grant to fund 50 copies of an EP titled “daydream lullaby: daydream vacation”. This will consist of an albums’ worth of instrumental music that is an extension of another work in progress, which also falls under the “daydream lullaby” moniker. Funding will primarily go towards CDR duplication and the production of handmade packaging. This will include a custom digipak with color photography, and letterpress and/or screen printing for the text. Unlike other recent recordings, the music on this release can be performed by a single player, and there will be some live performances to promote it. The music consists of many layers of intricate, sparse guitar work, and may appeal to fans of Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and other modern composers. If awarded this months’ grant, sloup will be recognized as a contributor in the liner notes.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
I don’t have time for a band, and am far more interested in creating music as art than live entertainment. I’m doing a series of related music and media projects as “commerce information entertainment” with a focus on the creation of quality goods, services, and experiences. After spending several years recording exclusively heavy music, I was interested in writing and recording some lighter material that you might put on if you just felt like chilling out for a while.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed:
"Suicide Revolutionary Jazz Band" (SRJB) was initially conceived as a hardcore punk band that existed solely for the purpose of playing a single concert – the intent being that it was an experience that could only be had once. Those in attendance would simultaneously catch a band's first and last show. An EP of the material would be given away in boutique packaging featuring photography by local artists and friends.
This project succeeded in that after producing and distributing 125 copies of the SRJB EP “we could be sirens”, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on it.
Unfortunately, this project failed to meet the original intent of a live show. After writing and recording the material, I realized how hard it would be to recruit other musicians to rehearse for several months with the intent of playing a single performance. To fully realize the material as written, a live band would require at least two percussionists, four guitarists, bass guitar, and a dedicated vocalist.
Your power animal and/or icon:
My power animal is a muppet. I have sweet facial hair, a tiny neck, and a wobbly head.
*
Your name or the title of your organization: CAMP Bike Shop
What you will do with your Sloup Grant: The CAMP (Community, Arts, and Movement Project) Bike Shop is a place where neighborhood kids (and grown-ups!) can come get their bikes fixed, earn a bike, and learn how to work on bikes. Sloup funds will be used to restock the bike shop for the coming summer with basic tools and supplies such as: bike tubes, patch kits, brake pads, spokes, wrenches, grease and chain lube, and if funds allow, a wheel-truing stand.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: I moved to St. Louis in February and immediately found, fell in love with, and moved in at CAMP. I love the outreach the collective offers to the neighborhood, and it feels like I found CAMP at a time when it is "growing up." The Bike Shop is in 3 garages in the backyard of CAMP. I have moved and traveled a lot and have loved many bike projects in other cities: Yellow Bike Project in Austin, The Bike Church in Philly, Plan B in New Orleans, and the Santa Fe Bike Project. All have supported me in various ways, and I love not only the technical support, but also the community engagement and camaraderie they offer. I really want to see such a project be successful in my new neighborhood in St. Louis, and we've already got the space, the old bikes to work with, and the reputation in the neighborhood as a place for kids to come for bike help.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I spent 2 years in Thailand helping start and run a permaculture and natural building education center north of Chiang Mai. One thing I really learned there was that in the day-to-day hard work of running the place, it could seem like we were making no headway--maybe we would spend a whole day working on (and not solving!) a water crisis in the dry season, but when we stood back and looked at all we'd accomplished since we started, it was astounding--I designed and built my own house, we hosted tons of workshops and courses, put in huge gardens, food forest, ponds, firebreaks, and 8 buildings. The big picture is attained by the the little step-by-step tasks.
Your power animal and/or icon: What has more power than an elephant? Also, self-control, longevity, group-bonding, and memory. In Hinduism, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is the remover of obstacles.
*
name of organization:
The May Day Orchestra
what we will do:
The May Day Orchestra is recording a new musical project which we would like to release as a vinyl LP as well as a CD. "Songs For Ota Benga" is the working title.
about us:
The May Day Orchestra consists of members of various local bands including The Union Electric, Tenement Ruth, The Rats & People, Theodore and Grace Basement. Tim Rakel, the songwriter in the group, has composed "folk operas" to do more than just play songs but tell some stories and history as well. The Ota Benga project has local connections to Saint Louis and has relevent ties to the current war in Congo.
a previous project:
The group's first project "May Day, or Songs For Lucy Parsons" was in some part successful in that we released a vinyl-only record and got it out to a small audience. Its failing was a lack of distribution which could be improved upon this time with CD and vinyl options and a recent offer of help with distribution.
icon:
Ota Benga, pygmy man kept at the Saint Louis World's Fair in 1904.
Sloup #3: April 2010
Name:
Jenny Murphy, Joey Korein, and Janelle Jones
What will you do with the Sloup Grant:
If awarded the Sloup Grant, the money will support a ‘mobile-bicycle-studio’ that three artists (listed above) will use to document their bicycle adventure from St. Louis to the West Coast creating a body of artwork about their journey. Part of the funds will also support a small exhibit of their work upon their return to St. Louis! We will be on the road this summer from the beginning of June to mid-August.
As artists and makers, we are interested in exploring how we can document, record, and map the memories of this unique experience. While we don’t want to give the project tight parameters, so that our experiences can shape the form of the piece, some ideas we have brainstormed are:
• Send one postcard a day to someone (family or friends,) and have them copy it and send it back to us once we are home and compile a journal of the trip
• Embroider our clothing as we travel
• Send artifacts to friends and family from the road and collect them when we return
• Electronically map out our route through photos taken and stored in Evernote (an application for iphones that allows you to take photos, and then it organizes them for you geographically)
• Photographic documentation by Janelle Jones with her Hasselblad 500c/m
• Document gifts made and given to people that host us along the way
• Drawings and Illustrations Galore!
Help us make art on the road! Sloup would cover cost of basic supplies for improvised projects, photography supplies and processing, postage for mailing work created on the trip to a ‘foster home,’ and costs for the final exhibit of the work.
A little bit about yourself and what led you to this project:
Jenny, Joey, and Janelle all graduated from Washington University with BFAs in May 2009. Jenny received a degree in sculpture, Joey in printmaking, and Janelle in photography. For two years we created a lovely home for ourselves living in an apartment together. There, we often sewed, gardened, cooked wonderful food, and had fun like 70-year-old women often do.
After graduation, Joey (a New York native) and Janelle (a St. Louis native) moved to New York City. Jenny, in love with St. Louis, stayed. Joey had the idea to reunite and go on a bicycle tour across the country. Excited (and a little scared) about letting go of all our responsibilities, belongings, and comforts of our communities to explore the country on two wheels, we wanted to give our trip some direction.
We decided to create a work of art along the way. We hope that by ‘making’ on the road we can not only capture the memories of our trip in unique ways but also enjoy the experience on a deeper level as we engage with the journey through our natural need to create.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
When we first moved into our third floor apartment, we explored the space and discovered a few metal pulleys attached to our fire escape. Immediately, we all sprung into action attempting to create a pulley system to carry objects (groceries, tools, love notes, etc.) up and down the fire escape with ease.
We rounded up supplies from what we had in the apartment, began creating different vessels to transport objects up and down, and tested out different rope configurations through the pulleys. An hour later the system still wasn’t working (fail) but we experienced the creative collaboration and excitement that could happen between us. The project was small and our goal (to have a working pulley system) was not achieved, but at this moment we connected through our inquisitive personalities and joined forces to create (success!)
Your power animal and/or icon:
chickens riding bikes. tandem bikes.
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Rebecca Estee
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
Travel across America and write tiny poems and draw pictures and make small books about my adventure to send to loved ones and strangers
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: I have a pretty silly personal goal that is feeding into this project: I really want to visit all 50 states before I turn 25 and have 13 to go (I'm turning 24 in November so the clock is ticking). Also I've been living in St. Louis awhile now but have recently been feeling pretty itchy to travel. It is hard sometimes to write and get your work moving when you are in the same place and have lots of life things to deal with. I have trouble giving myself the time to get really involved with my creative work when I am so involved at my job and working on other community projects. So I'd like to open my eyes wide and take a little time to step away and see what kinds of things I can produce creatively on my own.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I did an internship at the community arts organization in Nairobi called Haba na Haba and was supposed to help start their visual arts program. Basically I just brought in a few supplies and played silly drawing games with a group of 6 boys. They told their older brothers about the classes and they started coming and helping with the teaching and suddenly we grew to a group of 30. It grew and developed really naturally and a lot of the older kids were involved in how and what we taught so that they took over once I left for the states. I think one of the shortcomings of the project was that there were a lot of similar organizations doing similar projects but we had difficulty connecting. While we grew as an organization we were still pretty isolated and had a lot of trouble with funding.
Your power animal and/or icon: DINOSAUR!!!
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Slow Rocket Urban Farm (on Cherokee Street)
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
Although our primary day-to-day focus is growing veggies for you (and for us), we see our new little farm as having a large focus on events including acoustic music shows, readings, and video screenings (maybe your videos) on our big wall. While we’re set for all things acoustic, we do not own a video projector or a sound system. With the generous help of Sloup-goers, we would like to acquire these items and then invite you to hang out at the farm to watch films of all sorts while our chickens eat mosquitoes. We are particularly interested in including more imaginative films about food and farming, as opposed to the wonderful -- yet polemic -- documentaries that people often use to promote local and sustainable agriculture.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
In March, we were given access to a bit of land to farm on, located at 1944 and 1946 Cherokee Street. We feel really lucky to be part of the unique and increasingly culturally flourishing area that is Cherokee Street. For us, good art, good food, and a strong sense of community go hand in hand; it seems natural for us to use our space to host visual and performing arts events. The wall of a historic two-story brick building is conveniently located on our farm, and would be fantastic for projecting videos. We would like to start a film series at Slow Rocket, screening a wide variety of films including, but not limited to: short/long/art/experimental/local/documentary/international.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
Jaffa: I am involved with the garden at the St. Louis Juvenile Detention Center. Teaching kids who’ve often barely/never eaten fresh veggies about growing their own food is great. That being said, the program is within a structure that I do not feel very connected to. In my head, I try to balance the practical and the creative. I feel that for me, and probably a good number of people, it’s probably healthiest to mix the things you love. Among other things, I love art, community, and sustainability; I strongly feel that a project combining these passions of mine will be much more successful than one separating them.
Joss: Having little predisposition towards the technical, and yet loving food and its creation, I have often battled with the strange processes that produce bread, cheese, and vegetables. I've made brittle wheat baguettes and concocted cheese porridge when I should have come out with mozzarella. I once gathered an entire wheelbarrow of the wrong white flower that I was collecting for a French llama-handler and sowed entirely irregular lines of greens in Vermont. Having only recently turned my attention to the cultivation and production of food, I make a lot of mistakes. But I am nonetheless committed to creating a space where people can transition to and explore areas that they were not necessarily trained to inhabit.
Slow Rocket's power animal and/or icon: A nice brown-egg-laying hen.
Jenny Murphy, Joey Korein, and Janelle Jones
What will you do with the Sloup Grant:
If awarded the Sloup Grant, the money will support a ‘mobile-bicycle-studio’ that three artists (listed above) will use to document their bicycle adventure from St. Louis to the West Coast creating a body of artwork about their journey. Part of the funds will also support a small exhibit of their work upon their return to St. Louis! We will be on the road this summer from the beginning of June to mid-August.
As artists and makers, we are interested in exploring how we can document, record, and map the memories of this unique experience. While we don’t want to give the project tight parameters, so that our experiences can shape the form of the piece, some ideas we have brainstormed are:
• Send one postcard a day to someone (family or friends,) and have them copy it and send it back to us once we are home and compile a journal of the trip
• Embroider our clothing as we travel
• Send artifacts to friends and family from the road and collect them when we return
• Electronically map out our route through photos taken and stored in Evernote (an application for iphones that allows you to take photos, and then it organizes them for you geographically)
• Photographic documentation by Janelle Jones with her Hasselblad 500c/m
• Document gifts made and given to people that host us along the way
• Drawings and Illustrations Galore!
Help us make art on the road! Sloup would cover cost of basic supplies for improvised projects, photography supplies and processing, postage for mailing work created on the trip to a ‘foster home,’ and costs for the final exhibit of the work.
A little bit about yourself and what led you to this project:
Jenny, Joey, and Janelle all graduated from Washington University with BFAs in May 2009. Jenny received a degree in sculpture, Joey in printmaking, and Janelle in photography. For two years we created a lovely home for ourselves living in an apartment together. There, we often sewed, gardened, cooked wonderful food, and had fun like 70-year-old women often do.
After graduation, Joey (a New York native) and Janelle (a St. Louis native) moved to New York City. Jenny, in love with St. Louis, stayed. Joey had the idea to reunite and go on a bicycle tour across the country. Excited (and a little scared) about letting go of all our responsibilities, belongings, and comforts of our communities to explore the country on two wheels, we wanted to give our trip some direction.
We decided to create a work of art along the way. We hope that by ‘making’ on the road we can not only capture the memories of our trip in unique ways but also enjoy the experience on a deeper level as we engage with the journey through our natural need to create.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
When we first moved into our third floor apartment, we explored the space and discovered a few metal pulleys attached to our fire escape. Immediately, we all sprung into action attempting to create a pulley system to carry objects (groceries, tools, love notes, etc.) up and down the fire escape with ease.
We rounded up supplies from what we had in the apartment, began creating different vessels to transport objects up and down, and tested out different rope configurations through the pulleys. An hour later the system still wasn’t working (fail) but we experienced the creative collaboration and excitement that could happen between us. The project was small and our goal (to have a working pulley system) was not achieved, but at this moment we connected through our inquisitive personalities and joined forces to create (success!)
Your power animal and/or icon:
chickens riding bikes. tandem bikes.
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Rebecca Estee
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
Travel across America and write tiny poems and draw pictures and make small books about my adventure to send to loved ones and strangers
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: I have a pretty silly personal goal that is feeding into this project: I really want to visit all 50 states before I turn 25 and have 13 to go (I'm turning 24 in November so the clock is ticking). Also I've been living in St. Louis awhile now but have recently been feeling pretty itchy to travel. It is hard sometimes to write and get your work moving when you are in the same place and have lots of life things to deal with. I have trouble giving myself the time to get really involved with my creative work when I am so involved at my job and working on other community projects. So I'd like to open my eyes wide and take a little time to step away and see what kinds of things I can produce creatively on my own.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I did an internship at the community arts organization in Nairobi called Haba na Haba and was supposed to help start their visual arts program. Basically I just brought in a few supplies and played silly drawing games with a group of 6 boys. They told their older brothers about the classes and they started coming and helping with the teaching and suddenly we grew to a group of 30. It grew and developed really naturally and a lot of the older kids were involved in how and what we taught so that they took over once I left for the states. I think one of the shortcomings of the project was that there were a lot of similar organizations doing similar projects but we had difficulty connecting. While we grew as an organization we were still pretty isolated and had a lot of trouble with funding.
Your power animal and/or icon: DINOSAUR!!!
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Slow Rocket Urban Farm (on Cherokee Street)
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
Although our primary day-to-day focus is growing veggies for you (and for us), we see our new little farm as having a large focus on events including acoustic music shows, readings, and video screenings (maybe your videos) on our big wall. While we’re set for all things acoustic, we do not own a video projector or a sound system. With the generous help of Sloup-goers, we would like to acquire these items and then invite you to hang out at the farm to watch films of all sorts while our chickens eat mosquitoes. We are particularly interested in including more imaginative films about food and farming, as opposed to the wonderful -- yet polemic -- documentaries that people often use to promote local and sustainable agriculture.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
In March, we were given access to a bit of land to farm on, located at 1944 and 1946 Cherokee Street. We feel really lucky to be part of the unique and increasingly culturally flourishing area that is Cherokee Street. For us, good art, good food, and a strong sense of community go hand in hand; it seems natural for us to use our space to host visual and performing arts events. The wall of a historic two-story brick building is conveniently located on our farm, and would be fantastic for projecting videos. We would like to start a film series at Slow Rocket, screening a wide variety of films including, but not limited to: short/long/art/experimental/local/documentary/international.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
Jaffa: I am involved with the garden at the St. Louis Juvenile Detention Center. Teaching kids who’ve often barely/never eaten fresh veggies about growing their own food is great. That being said, the program is within a structure that I do not feel very connected to. In my head, I try to balance the practical and the creative. I feel that for me, and probably a good number of people, it’s probably healthiest to mix the things you love. Among other things, I love art, community, and sustainability; I strongly feel that a project combining these passions of mine will be much more successful than one separating them.
Joss: Having little predisposition towards the technical, and yet loving food and its creation, I have often battled with the strange processes that produce bread, cheese, and vegetables. I've made brittle wheat baguettes and concocted cheese porridge when I should have come out with mozzarella. I once gathered an entire wheelbarrow of the wrong white flower that I was collecting for a French llama-handler and sowed entirely irregular lines of greens in Vermont. Having only recently turned my attention to the cultivation and production of food, I make a lot of mistakes. But I am nonetheless committed to creating a space where people can transition to and explore areas that they were not necessarily trained to inhabit.
Slow Rocket's power animal and/or icon: A nice brown-egg-laying hen.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Sloup #2: March 2010
Your name or the title of your organization:
"Forrest Yoga at C.A.M.P."
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
This Sloup grant would help us buy yoga equipment. We need more mats, and we also need blocks, straps, and yoga blankets. Community Yoga Classes have been going steady at the Community Arts and Media Project since early January. I teach an hour and a half Forrest Yoga class every Monday and Wednesday
morning at 10 AM. The classes are well attended. On Martin Luther King's B-day we had 9 yogis and raised and donated $100 to Haiti relief via Action Aid. We regularly have around 10 students. This morning we had 13. The money that we bring in is split between C.A.M.P. and me. It's a helpful little source of revenue for C.A.M.P.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
I am a musician and activist. I started practicing yoga seriously in 2004. I went through the Forrest Yoga Teacher Training program in 2005. Now I'm in the Mentorship program, working towards my certification. I've enjoyed helping C.A.M.P. with various youth and community oriented projects since I moved here last year . Lyndsey Scott told me about Sloup.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal)
When I lived in Chicago, I started Karaoke Against Racism. A good sized group of people would meet weekly to re-write pop songs with new subversive lyrics that spoke of political disdain, and anti-war sentiments, and the problems we have with racism throughout the world. We re-created 20 really funny karaoke videos that we performed at festivals and in bars, encouraging audience members to pick songs and sing as well. Eventually we hooked up with Red Moon Theater people and were able to borrow a bike that had a giant TV with DVD player and ran off a car battery - this way we were able to demonstrate in the street. The failure was recognized towards the presidential election in 2004 - people on the streets stopped participating - we couldn't figure out how to connect with people once the battle for president started to heat up. After the election, the project collapsed.
Your power animal and/or icon:
My power animal is the Hawk. My current power stone in Lapis Lazuli, and my current power scent is "Earth" :) My power flower is.... a crocus? Hoping to see one soon, anyways!
*
Your name or the title of your organization:
StudioSTL (community writing center for St. Louis youth) www.studiostl.org
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
We have an afterschool program (in addition to our workshops, in-school programs, annual regional literary magazine and newspaper summer camp) where kids are here at our writing studio doing creative writing twice a week, and they would love to be creating products for us to have and sell as part of our social enterprise. We won the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition in 2008, what your recent recipient and our friend Urban Studio Cafe won this past year! Thus, we are working to sustain our nonprofit through enterprise activities and would love our kiddos to be involved in the process of design and production of writer's manuals, volunteer handbooks, journals, and anything else we (or they) dream up! We would love to get a coil binding machine so that our young writers can be binding their own publications here in our studio.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
During college, I visited a friend in NYC and she took me to the Superhero Supply Store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Somewhere between the cape-trying-on-station (complete with a fan to check for flow) and the oath I had to recite to purchase my tote-bag and black hole in a jar, pledging to use what I had found for good and not evil, I was mesmerized. As I learned more about how this silly store funded a nonprofit writing studio, free to neighborhood kids, and then watched a bold 10-year-old saunter past, push a secret button on the wall, and enter into this magical land, I was hooked.
The Superhero Supply Company store is just one 826 project, a social enterprise started by author Dave Eggers in San Francisco. Raring to go in 2007 with a bachelor's in advertising and a desire to bring that background to the nonprofit sector, I contacted 826 and asked if there was such a magical land in St. Louis. Their response, "Not officially, but there's StudioSTL." Friends of theirs, based off of their model, but not an official chapter, this is now what I do. We've been around since 2005 and have grown faster than the Facebook group bashing Nickelback. Our goal is to make everything we do relevant and out-of-the-box, so that words and writing are fun. Third graders need to learn about writing to an audience? Skip the old letter to the parents trick, bring in a puppy. Another trivia night fundraiser? Ours is called WordFest, the Olympics of Word Games. Punctuate is our happy hour celebrating National Punctuation Day in September. Our studio has chalkboard walls and movie theater seats and a card catalog filled with ideas.
We have a myriad of FREE programs that empower kids to discover, develop and celebrate their individual voices through writing. As often as possible, we publish kids' work in books, magazines and newspapers and then celebrate that with a gigantic (300+ people) party, where the general public get to hear these young writers read their words and autograph their publications. A lover of kids and words alike, I am thrilled to be working alongside a huge, energized St. Louis community of volunteers and supporters that turn kids into writers.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
Although I wear many hats at my current job, the first I ever wore was that of a summer camp counselor. Having been a camper for 5 years, staff member for 6, and now on a committee of their board, Camp Ondessonk is near and dear to my heart. Frustrated by young, under-financed alumni like myself using camp's fundraising gala as a reunion site, I decided we needed an event to cultivate younger donors. My idea was based off of the concept that people in their 20s and 30s don't quite know the culture of writing a donation check to a nonprofit, especially when they see camp as just their former summer job, not a million-dollar organization serving thousands of kids every year. What culture DO they know? Weddings. Boy, do we know the culture of weddings. You bring a gift, you get a party.
So I got a committee together and planned the first birthday benefit for camp. Generously hosted by the Thaxton Speakeasy downtown just last month, we got people to come from as far as Nevada to see all their camp friends again and enjoy food and drink. Instead of tickets, we created registries at Target and Amazon, full of enticing items like backpacks, coolers, and other amenities that we never had while we were on staff. Camp is now $2,000 richer in donations and goods, with only the most minimal of costs for the event. Table tents with fun facts about the cost of electricity and water to run camp for a year educated our young group about the realities of the business. A quick, friendly speech encouraged folks to come volunteer and tell others to send their kids to camp. A themed drink list and matchbooks with our logo on them made the event a hit.
For the first year, we did pretty well. We kept our costs low, we galvanized a group of people who all loved the cause but don't always outwardly and monetarily support it. We made a great relationship with an amazing venue, and we had a killer party. But we also only had about 90 people out of ~250 e-vited. Ondessonk's database is full of 50 years of information, and the list we had was not only outdated, but incomplete. I personally was not able to rally my committee enough to truly stalk everyone, get their current information, and encourage them to attend. Although we did get some out-of-towners, the main bulk of the crowd were folks who already sort of "get it." So, while the event was a success, the challenge of building and maintaining a base of supporters is just beginning. It's a great start to a fun concept that could go a long way, but we have our work cut out for us to find and excite people about something they may not think about on a daily basis. However, one unanticipated positive outcome was that most people gave more than the suggested $25 in both cash and registry items. Perhaps my generation isn't as out-of-touch as I first thought...
Your power animal and/or icon:
Wizard!
"Forrest Yoga at C.A.M.P."
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
This Sloup grant would help us buy yoga equipment. We need more mats, and we also need blocks, straps, and yoga blankets. Community Yoga Classes have been going steady at the Community Arts and Media Project since early January. I teach an hour and a half Forrest Yoga class every Monday and Wednesday
morning at 10 AM. The classes are well attended. On Martin Luther King's B-day we had 9 yogis and raised and donated $100 to Haiti relief via Action Aid. We regularly have around 10 students. This morning we had 13. The money that we bring in is split between C.A.M.P. and me. It's a helpful little source of revenue for C.A.M.P.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
I am a musician and activist. I started practicing yoga seriously in 2004. I went through the Forrest Yoga Teacher Training program in 2005. Now I'm in the Mentorship program, working towards my certification. I've enjoyed helping C.A.M.P. with various youth and community oriented projects since I moved here last year . Lyndsey Scott told me about Sloup.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal)
When I lived in Chicago, I started Karaoke Against Racism. A good sized group of people would meet weekly to re-write pop songs with new subversive lyrics that spoke of political disdain, and anti-war sentiments, and the problems we have with racism throughout the world. We re-created 20 really funny karaoke videos that we performed at festivals and in bars, encouraging audience members to pick songs and sing as well. Eventually we hooked up with Red Moon Theater people and were able to borrow a bike that had a giant TV with DVD player and ran off a car battery - this way we were able to demonstrate in the street. The failure was recognized towards the presidential election in 2004 - people on the streets stopped participating - we couldn't figure out how to connect with people once the battle for president started to heat up. After the election, the project collapsed.
Your power animal and/or icon:
My power animal is the Hawk. My current power stone in Lapis Lazuli, and my current power scent is "Earth" :) My power flower is.... a crocus? Hoping to see one soon, anyways!
*
Your name or the title of your organization:
StudioSTL (community writing center for St. Louis youth) www.studiostl.org
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
We have an afterschool program (in addition to our workshops, in-school programs, annual regional literary magazine and newspaper summer camp) where kids are here at our writing studio doing creative writing twice a week, and they would love to be creating products for us to have and sell as part of our social enterprise. We won the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition in 2008, what your recent recipient and our friend Urban Studio Cafe won this past year! Thus, we are working to sustain our nonprofit through enterprise activities and would love our kiddos to be involved in the process of design and production of writer's manuals, volunteer handbooks, journals, and anything else we (or they) dream up! We would love to get a coil binding machine so that our young writers can be binding their own publications here in our studio.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
During college, I visited a friend in NYC and she took me to the Superhero Supply Store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Somewhere between the cape-trying-on-station (complete with a fan to check for flow) and the oath I had to recite to purchase my tote-bag and black hole in a jar, pledging to use what I had found for good and not evil, I was mesmerized. As I learned more about how this silly store funded a nonprofit writing studio, free to neighborhood kids, and then watched a bold 10-year-old saunter past, push a secret button on the wall, and enter into this magical land, I was hooked.
The Superhero Supply Company store is just one 826 project, a social enterprise started by author Dave Eggers in San Francisco. Raring to go in 2007 with a bachelor's in advertising and a desire to bring that background to the nonprofit sector, I contacted 826 and asked if there was such a magical land in St. Louis. Their response, "Not officially, but there's StudioSTL." Friends of theirs, based off of their model, but not an official chapter, this is now what I do. We've been around since 2005 and have grown faster than the Facebook group bashing Nickelback. Our goal is to make everything we do relevant and out-of-the-box, so that words and writing are fun. Third graders need to learn about writing to an audience? Skip the old letter to the parents trick, bring in a puppy. Another trivia night fundraiser? Ours is called WordFest, the Olympics of Word Games. Punctuate is our happy hour celebrating National Punctuation Day in September. Our studio has chalkboard walls and movie theater seats and a card catalog filled with ideas.
We have a myriad of FREE programs that empower kids to discover, develop and celebrate their individual voices through writing. As often as possible, we publish kids' work in books, magazines and newspapers and then celebrate that with a gigantic (300+ people) party, where the general public get to hear these young writers read their words and autograph their publications. A lover of kids and words alike, I am thrilled to be working alongside a huge, energized St. Louis community of volunteers and supporters that turn kids into writers.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
Although I wear many hats at my current job, the first I ever wore was that of a summer camp counselor. Having been a camper for 5 years, staff member for 6, and now on a committee of their board, Camp Ondessonk is near and dear to my heart. Frustrated by young, under-financed alumni like myself using camp's fundraising gala as a reunion site, I decided we needed an event to cultivate younger donors. My idea was based off of the concept that people in their 20s and 30s don't quite know the culture of writing a donation check to a nonprofit, especially when they see camp as just their former summer job, not a million-dollar organization serving thousands of kids every year. What culture DO they know? Weddings. Boy, do we know the culture of weddings. You bring a gift, you get a party.
So I got a committee together and planned the first birthday benefit for camp. Generously hosted by the Thaxton Speakeasy downtown just last month, we got people to come from as far as Nevada to see all their camp friends again and enjoy food and drink. Instead of tickets, we created registries at Target and Amazon, full of enticing items like backpacks, coolers, and other amenities that we never had while we were on staff. Camp is now $2,000 richer in donations and goods, with only the most minimal of costs for the event. Table tents with fun facts about the cost of electricity and water to run camp for a year educated our young group about the realities of the business. A quick, friendly speech encouraged folks to come volunteer and tell others to send their kids to camp. A themed drink list and matchbooks with our logo on them made the event a hit.
For the first year, we did pretty well. We kept our costs low, we galvanized a group of people who all loved the cause but don't always outwardly and monetarily support it. We made a great relationship with an amazing venue, and we had a killer party. But we also only had about 90 people out of ~250 e-vited. Ondessonk's database is full of 50 years of information, and the list we had was not only outdated, but incomplete. I personally was not able to rally my committee enough to truly stalk everyone, get their current information, and encourage them to attend. Although we did get some out-of-towners, the main bulk of the crowd were folks who already sort of "get it." So, while the event was a success, the challenge of building and maintaining a base of supporters is just beginning. It's a great start to a fun concept that could go a long way, but we have our work cut out for us to find and excite people about something they may not think about on a daily basis. However, one unanticipated positive outcome was that most people gave more than the suggested $25 in both cash and registry items. Perhaps my generation isn't as out-of-touch as I first thought...
Your power animal and/or icon:
Wizard!
Sloup #1: February 2010
Your name or the title of your organization:
The Urban Studio Café
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
The Urban Studio Café will purchase a YUDU Personal Screen printer to use in evening art screen-printing workshops for teens in the community. Additionally, teens will create Urban Studio Café apparel (totes, shirts, scarves) that will not only promote the café but will be unique, creative, pieces of art. Apparel will be sold at the cafe and profits will be reinvested in Urban Studio community programs.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
In the summer of 2007, I started working at The Urban Studio teaching photography and media literacy to teens. This summer job turned into a passion for the Urban Studio’s neighborhood. I love Old North St. Louis, home to Crown Candy Kitchen, because of its strong sense of community, character, and diversity. However, due to years of disinvestment, the neighborhood lacks local businesses, job opportunities, community gathering spaces, and positive outlets for youth.
After spending time working with the community, we decided to work on creating a solution that addressed the aforementioned issues while showcasing the strengths of the neighborhood. This experience birthed The Urban Studio Café, a non-profit, social venture café that opened in September, 2009. Profits from coffee and food sales will generate sustainable funding for The Urban Studio’s youth art programs. The Urban Studio Café creates jobs for low-income individuals, fosters a sense of creativity and possibility, and strengthens social bonds while serving a quality cup of joe. This social venture won the Skandalaris Center's Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition in April, 2009.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
A previous project was Picture the Future, a darkroom photography summer camp for youth ages 11-16. We took the participants on photo shoot field trips to places like City Museum, Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Loop, and the Contemporary Art Museum, and spent the afternoons in the darkroom developing and printing the pictures. The youth produced incredibly powerful photographs and were able to explore their city through the lens. Success! The failure of this program was that we couldn’t continue providing the program the following summer because of lack of funding.
Your power animal and/or icon:
See power icon below. If you tattoo this on your body, I will give you free coffee for LIFE from the Urban Studio Café.
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Jordan Hicks (My project is a collaboration with photographers David Johnson and Brett Beckemeyer. It also includes photos by Lyndsey Scott and Michael Allen).
What you will do with your Sloup Grant: This summer, I worked with two photographers to create a set of 19 postcards about St. Louis' urban landscape - specifically, how it is impacted by the city's precipitous 59% drop in population from 1950 – 2000. There are cards about the urban wilderness on the former Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing complex site; the reuse of materials from demolished buildings; abandoned schools; urban agriculture, and more. I selected 19 sites, the photographers shot at the sites, and I wrote text for the back of each card. We printed a small run of cards. Instead of selling the cards in shops, we gave a few sets to friends, and left a few sets out in public places, to be picked up, discussed, and shared. I left sets of cards at the arch grounds, the downtown public library, and City Garden. I have two sets of these cards at home, if you'd like to see them.
With the Sloup Grant, I would print more sets of these cards (and $10 could print about 1 and 1/4 sets at Kinko's, the least expensive option) and leave them, free for the taking, in more public places. I would like to leave them at markets, parks, and institutional buildings (places with a lot of foot traffic), but I am open to / looking for more suggestions. Also (though I would still need to coordinate with the photographers) I would like to add a few cards to the set – maybe one about squatting, one about urban wildlife, one about brownfield reclamation, and one about that old core of a building on the north side that fireman use for training.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: In the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot about urban planning and design issues. I became pretty interested in work being done in shrinking cities – cities that are losing population, and as a result have lots of leftover, abandoned building and landscapes. I noticed, around St. Louis, a lot of interesting and unique approaches to the problem, many of them in direct ideological conflict with one another. I felt like that was the real story about urban planning in St. Louis, and it is ultimately more pertinent and more interesting than the "urban development" issues that garner attention in the press – sports stadiums, downtown lofts, highway improvements, and new shopping districts. I wrestled with various ideas to address this, but ultimately decided on the postcards for their symbolic value (being postacrds and all) and their accessibility (Few people will pick up a two-page text article, found sitting on park bench. Many will pick up beautiful pictures by talented photographers).
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I feel like Open Lot has been successful in some ways: it has been a good studio environment for a number of artists, a good venue for visiting musicians, and a good gallery space. However, when we (Me, and my friends Aaron and Jonathan, who have since moved to Toronto and Nashville, respectively) founded the project, I think we intended to have more community involvement. We weren't really sure what that meant, but we discussed hosting free classes for kids, creating some kind of communal arts library, or maybe public service projects – something that extended beyond our own social group (you know, young, college educated people with an interest in the arts). We never really got around to that, and if I start another similar project elsewhere, I will want that to be part of it.
Your power animal and/or icon: Komodo dragon, or maybe a Gila Monster. Some kind of big lizard. They're like contemporary dinosaurs.
The Urban Studio Café
What you will do with your Sloup Grant:
The Urban Studio Café will purchase a YUDU Personal Screen printer to use in evening art screen-printing workshops for teens in the community. Additionally, teens will create Urban Studio Café apparel (totes, shirts, scarves) that will not only promote the café but will be unique, creative, pieces of art. Apparel will be sold at the cafe and profits will be reinvested in Urban Studio community programs.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project:
In the summer of 2007, I started working at The Urban Studio teaching photography and media literacy to teens. This summer job turned into a passion for the Urban Studio’s neighborhood. I love Old North St. Louis, home to Crown Candy Kitchen, because of its strong sense of community, character, and diversity. However, due to years of disinvestment, the neighborhood lacks local businesses, job opportunities, community gathering spaces, and positive outlets for youth.
After spending time working with the community, we decided to work on creating a solution that addressed the aforementioned issues while showcasing the strengths of the neighborhood. This experience birthed The Urban Studio Café, a non-profit, social venture café that opened in September, 2009. Profits from coffee and food sales will generate sustainable funding for The Urban Studio’s youth art programs. The Urban Studio Café creates jobs for low-income individuals, fosters a sense of creativity and possibility, and strengthens social bonds while serving a quality cup of joe. This social venture won the Skandalaris Center's Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition in April, 2009.
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal):
A previous project was Picture the Future, a darkroom photography summer camp for youth ages 11-16. We took the participants on photo shoot field trips to places like City Museum, Laumeier Sculpture Park, the Loop, and the Contemporary Art Museum, and spent the afternoons in the darkroom developing and printing the pictures. The youth produced incredibly powerful photographs and were able to explore their city through the lens. Success! The failure of this program was that we couldn’t continue providing the program the following summer because of lack of funding.
Your power animal and/or icon:
See power icon below. If you tattoo this on your body, I will give you free coffee for LIFE from the Urban Studio Café.
*
Your name or the title of your organization: Jordan Hicks (My project is a collaboration with photographers David Johnson and Brett Beckemeyer. It also includes photos by Lyndsey Scott and Michael Allen).
What you will do with your Sloup Grant: This summer, I worked with two photographers to create a set of 19 postcards about St. Louis' urban landscape - specifically, how it is impacted by the city's precipitous 59% drop in population from 1950 – 2000. There are cards about the urban wilderness on the former Pruitt-Igoe Public Housing complex site; the reuse of materials from demolished buildings; abandoned schools; urban agriculture, and more. I selected 19 sites, the photographers shot at the sites, and I wrote text for the back of each card. We printed a small run of cards. Instead of selling the cards in shops, we gave a few sets to friends, and left a few sets out in public places, to be picked up, discussed, and shared. I left sets of cards at the arch grounds, the downtown public library, and City Garden. I have two sets of these cards at home, if you'd like to see them.
With the Sloup Grant, I would print more sets of these cards (and $10 could print about 1 and 1/4 sets at Kinko's, the least expensive option) and leave them, free for the taking, in more public places. I would like to leave them at markets, parks, and institutional buildings (places with a lot of foot traffic), but I am open to / looking for more suggestions. Also (though I would still need to coordinate with the photographers) I would like to add a few cards to the set – maybe one about squatting, one about urban wildlife, one about brownfield reclamation, and one about that old core of a building on the north side that fireman use for training.
A little about yourself and what led you to this project: In the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot about urban planning and design issues. I became pretty interested in work being done in shrinking cities – cities that are losing population, and as a result have lots of leftover, abandoned building and landscapes. I noticed, around St. Louis, a lot of interesting and unique approaches to the problem, many of them in direct ideological conflict with one another. I felt like that was the real story about urban planning in St. Louis, and it is ultimately more pertinent and more interesting than the "urban development" issues that garner attention in the press – sports stadiums, downtown lofts, highway improvements, and new shopping districts. I wrestled with various ideas to address this, but ultimately decided on the postcards for their symbolic value (being postacrds and all) and their accessibility (Few people will pick up a two-page text article, found sitting on park bench. Many will pick up beautiful pictures by talented photographers).
A previous project of yours, and some ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): I feel like Open Lot has been successful in some ways: it has been a good studio environment for a number of artists, a good venue for visiting musicians, and a good gallery space. However, when we (Me, and my friends Aaron and Jonathan, who have since moved to Toronto and Nashville, respectively) founded the project, I think we intended to have more community involvement. We weren't really sure what that meant, but we discussed hosting free classes for kids, creating some kind of communal arts library, or maybe public service projects – something that extended beyond our own social group (you know, young, college educated people with an interest in the arts). We never really got around to that, and if I start another similar project elsewhere, I will want that to be part of it.
Your power animal and/or icon: Komodo dragon, or maybe a Gila Monster. Some kind of big lizard. They're like contemporary dinosaurs.
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