For the second year in a row, The Luminary has been awarded St. Louis Magazine’s A-List. This year, we won for Best Music Series for the Elevator Music Series. Pick up a copy of the magazine throughout July to read about the award and to check out all of the other incredible award winners.

Here is a sample of what they had to say about us:

“How do you get folks to get out and support local bands? Find a venue with one of the best sound systems in the city…make it feel more like a happening and less like a gig.”

Thank you to St. Louis Magazine and to all of the bands, fans, and artists that make it all possible!

OPEN CALL FOR 2011 INSTALLATION PROPOSALS

The Luminary Center for the Arts is a nonprofit contemporary arts organization based in St. Louis, MO. The Luminary seeks to provide meaningful support to emerging artists, audiences and appreciators in the St. Louis area. As a combined studio, education, and exhibition space, we bring together a conversation from all areas of the art world, encouraging creative engagement with contemporary art production and processes.

The Luminary invites artists and curators to submit proposals for site-specific installations to be realized in our dedicated Installation Space throughout 2011. The 500 sq. ft. space is a renovated former chapel with 20 ft vaulted ceilings, natural light, and a one-of-a-kind environment for the presentation of new work. Each artist accepted will have up to two weeks for installation and each project will remain up for six weeks from the date of the opening. The Luminary serves as an incubator of new ideas and proposals with an innovative, interactive and experimental approach will be given priority.

GUIDELINES

•    Proposals must be emailed to info@theluminaryarts.com no later than October 1, 2010. Emailed submissions should use ‘Installation Proposal 2011’ as the subject line. Physical submissions will also be considered and may be mailed to 4900 Reber Place, St. Louis, MO 63139.
•    Proposals must include a short (no more than 500 words) summary of the project, at least 5 examples of past work, timeline, contact information and a CV.
•    Applicants will receive a confirmation email within 2 weeks that your materials have been received.
•    Successful proposals will be notified within one month of the deadline.

At our first installment, BJ Vogt and Theodore, along with Spelling Bee, brought out over 250 people, from families to retirees, artists to residents of area lofts. We are getting ready to host the second event on Saturday, June 19th from 7-9pm with producers Phaseone and Parisian pairing with video artists Daniel Shown and Matt Strom. Check out the video of the first Performance below.

The Luminary presents POST PERFORMANCES: Theodore & BJ Vogt from Ryan Powell on Vimeo.

One of the hallmarks of The Luminary’s curatorial practice is that we seek out work that actively engages with the cultural landscape around us. By presenting work that speaks to shared areas of life, this organizational principle allows anyone an entry point. To the extent that the exhibitions are successful, the audience will find their own questions, thoughts, and concerns played out in the gallery setting. The concept behind this practice is that it opens the art world to intersect with life and gives a new ability for emerging audiences to interact with art.

Our exhibitions have always been thematic. In 2010, we are extending this practice to envelop a yearly theme that will grow over each exhibition to create a narrative arc. We will be curating each exhibition along the larger theme of information: How we generate it. How we manage it. How it manages us. Why we are addicted to it. What it means for how we will structure our lives this year and every year after. Information has never had such a dramatic effect on how we view the world and what we view as possible.

As we launch our 2010 Exhibition Season, Answer Factory, we are excited to announce the four major group exhibitions that frame our season: Old Media/Old News, Cause + Time, Answer Factory, and Future Perfect. In March, we will also be announcing the selections for the installation space, which will open in April and feature openings every other month alongside the major exhibitions.

Old Media/Old News

January-March

This high-profile exhibition brings together six innovative emerging artists working with concepts of news reception, media saturation and the role of the artist as documentarian and mediator of information in our increasingly rapid global news culture.

Cause + Time

May- June

Cause + Time is an exploration into art that responds to its environment, whether through interactivity, social broadcasting, advertising that changes based on the viewer or growth over time. Cause + Time will also feature the first of our public projects launched in conjunction with the exhibition schedule. The project will focus on a moss painting project that will grow over the course of the exhibit on buildings, streets and overpasses across the city.

Answer Factory

August-October

Answer Factory will be a large-scale public project incorporating billboards, text work and yard signs that will culminate in a town hall meeting and group exhibition. The exhibition itself is based around the concept of the enigmatic ways we generate truth, propose answers to unknown questions, and navigate through contradictory information.

Future Perfect

November-December

Future Perfect focuses on a wide variety of future-focused work from data models to hysteric predictions in a fitting end-of-the-year exhibition. As a closing exhibition, Future Perfect brings the theme of information into our projections, conjecturing about what comes next.

To this end, we have created a short survey for you to share your thoughts. It will take 5 minutes of your time, but could have a very real impact on what The Luminary looks like for years to come. If you have any questions about the survey or would like to add any thoughts not addressed in the questions, we would love to hear from you at info@theluminaryarts.com.

The survey is now closed. Thank you for participating!

In the meantime, we have compiled a list of concerts at other venues in our area that we really think you should consider attending. Consider it our way of extending the curated experience you have here into the rest of the rich St. Louis music scene.

Off Broadway

Sunset Rubdown and Tune Yards: October 17

The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra soundtrack “Nosferatu”: November 28

Camera Obscura and Papercuts: December 1

The Firebird

White Rabbits with Suckers (did you see them here??): October 27

Why? with Au: November 11

The Billiken Club

Nurses: November 9th

Japandroids with Surfer Baby: November 20

The Gargoyle

Peter, Bjorn and John with El Perro Del Mar: November 13

Elvis Perkins in Dearland with AA Bondy: November 20

Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center

Noisefestl 09: October 16-19

Antarctic and Victor Fix the Sun: November 1

And, lastly, we leave you with the Pitchfork-approved video of The Books performing at The Luminary on September 20th.

The Books ~ Group Autogenics from Ciao Music on Vimeo.

Thank you for supporting the series so far and we look forward to an even better 2010 season.

“Home, or a sense of place, seems to be an ever-elusive but primary concern for the creative set, as this group show by local artists confirms. B.J. Vogt piles strata of Styrofoam and tufts of green twist ties to create a mountainous, occasionally green-sprouting form based on the shape of his arm. Christine D’Epiro consumes a discrete gallery space with a floor-to-ceiling patchwork of paper bags painted black and punctured with small holes that reveal bits of luminous color. The body, here, becomes a kind of location; and what seems like the density of night becomes a dense, all-consuming place. Also participating are Jessica Kiel-Wornson, Brea McAnally and Peter Marcus, who explore the spirit of the habitable environment from the stock form — or shards of form — of a house.”

We would love to hear your feedback as well and will potentially post some of your thoughts on the exhibition here over the next few weeks. Let us know your own take by emailing us at info@theluminaryarts. Your feedback helps us shape future curation and find out what you connect with most.

Simply put, The Luminary seeks to serve the St. Louis region by providing resources and thoughtful programming to artists and art appreciators. However, that simple vision has led to work as diverse as a residency program, monthly music series, public studio space, group exhibitions, an art and literature library, weekly educational events, and many other areas you will hear about in coming months as we update The Modifier blog. All of it is part of the same process for us—change in community. It is about social economy, the aesthetics and effects of community. We’ve named our blog The Modifier not only because we like naming things, but also because it speaks to the core reasons for our work: the idea that we change in community and that communities then change cities. Our work is with and for artists because we are artists and see the artistic community as one of the most dynamic, active and transformative populations and because we think great art deserves the support it needs to be created for all of our benefit.

We work in a specific context that informs all that we do. St. Louis has a great arts scene, but we felt there was a gap here in organizations that directly affected the daily working life of artists, as well as those willing to bridge the gap for potential art appreciators intimidated by the art world as a whole. We are continually amazed by the work of so many around us, from the dynamism at place in and around Cherokee, to the engaging, context-shattering work The Pulitzer has begun, the continually challenging exhibition program at White Flag and CAMSTL to area colleges and universities consistently bringing up incredible emerging artists that nourish all the rest. We hope that, over time, the effects of these and others, as well as our own, accumulate into something we are all proud to have been involved in and begin to affect change in our city that lasts far beyond our tenures here.