To Pillar, To Platform
To Pillar, To Platform
October 20th –
December 2nd, 2023
"It's not a question of being against the institution; we are the institution. It's a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to."
-Andrea Fraser
Who really builds an institution?
The artists presented in To Pillar, To Platform exemplify a wide range of practices, subsequent research methodologies, and outputs — many of which occur both intra and extra-institutionally. A common thread among them is their engagement with The Luminary, where many act as volunteers, offering their expertise and insight, time and labor. In some cases, the institution physically holds their practice as studio members.
Andrea Fraser wrote about artist-run institutions in her pivotal essay, "From The Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique":
"It's not a question of being against the institution; we are the institution. It's a question of what kind of institution we are, what kind of values we institutionalize, what forms of practice we reward, and what kinds of rewards we aspire to."
For the first time in its history, The Luminary is entirely artist-run and operated. To mark this transition into its new future, To Pillar, To Platform makes visible the creative practices that build us. It enables space through the interdependent relations of an institution with its practice, output, and engagement. It highlights the creative labor that very much supports and builds the organization, its community, and its networks.
Curated by Kalaija Mallery.
About the Artists
The exhibition features new works by thirteen artists engaging the institution from many levels and perspectives:
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Judy is a work Bennet made in 2005 as part of the series “The Uncovered Works of Hannah Berman” which quotes cultural female types and the associate assumptions. Judy is not the starlet, but the aging, B movie actress looking away wanly from her present and incoming obsolescence. She used herself in this picture to reference the artist subject playing the female object, a classic feminist strategy to complicate objecthood. To author this image of herself, Bennett worked with a make-up artist and photographer. So the image is created in her gaze, but not fully of it. She is not actually looking through the camera out of necessity. Nearly 20 years later, inevitably she looks at this image with a different perspective. She is a character, not Bennett, but it is her, a former Bennett playing a she. The audience is meant to see not just the character, Judy, but the artist playing her; she becomes a confidant and a foil. How differently does Bennett see them now? How does her own gaze hit the side of her face? – to invoke Barbara Kruger. To interrogate her gaze, Bennett photographed Judy, sealed up and coming back out (Judy Veiled). She also filmed her, and projected her present gaze upon her former creation (Judy Concatenated). What does her gaze mean upon a self within a work meant to critique the gaze in the first place?
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Grant Benoit is a interdisciplinary artist who observes notions of memory through printmaking, sculpture, and craft methods. In his practice, Benoit combines traditional papermaking and printmedia with installation and sculpture to reinterpret the mechanics of memory in more human ways through the lens of the domestic space.
He received his Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from Southern Illinois University in 2015. Benoit exhibits nationally and internationally, most recently being selected to exhibit solo projects at Millsaps College, University of Dallas, Tennessee Tech University and Spring Hill College. Benoit was a 2016-17 Artist in Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and of the invitational Pentaculum artist residency at Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft. Benoit is a grant recipient of Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis and is part of the inaugural cohort of Mid America Arts Alliance’s Artist INC St. Louis. Benoit is the Director of Education and Artist Residencies at Craft Alliance in St. Louis, MO.
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Emma Bright is a filmmaker and photographic artist whose work transcends the boundaries of convention, opening doors to both the realms of professional editing and experimental artistic exploration. With years of industry experience, Emma possesses a unique ability to blend professionalism with the avant-garde. In the realm of storytelling, Emma's work defies categorization, spanning a rich spectrum from experimental to documentary. Emma's true magic lies in her ability to create a safe and nurturing space for those on the other side of the camera. Her experience and confidence instill trust and a sense of belonging in her subjects. This trust empowers individuals to share their stories in the most genuine and vulnerable ways possible, resulting in narratives that resonate deeply with audiences. At the heart of Emma's work is her practice with crystals and light refraction. Through her lens, she weaves ethereal narratives that dance with prismatic light, unveiling hidden dimensions of the human experience. Emma's visual storytelling is a journey of mystical proportions, where emotions are opened and connections between storyteller and audience are forged in the crucible of raw authenticity.
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Vaughn Davis Jr. (studio member) produces vibrant, expressive, organic, shape-shifting objects that teeter between painting, performance, and sculpture. While Davis builds on principles of painting movements like Abstract Expressionism, he challenges painting’s traditional methods by shunning stretcher bars, tearing apart the canvas support, and draping and folding the materials instead of leaving them flat against the wall. In doing so, he dismantles the picture plane, calls attention to the performative nature of painting, tests its boundaries as moments cross into sculpture, and meditates on the passage of time and change.
Vaughn Davis Jr. received his BFA in 2017 from Webster University, St. Louis. His work has been exhibited at Craft Alliance, St. Louis; Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis; Malin Gallery, New York; The Luminary, St. Louis; Gazebo Gallery, Kent, OH; among others. He has had solo exhibitions at Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco; Dragon Crab & Turtle, St. Louis and Monaco Gallery, St. Louis. Davis lives and works in St. Louis.
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Jessie Donovan (volunteer) is a St. Louis based multidisciplinary artist, working primarily in printmaking, drawing and text. Jessie's practice explores topics of anthropological categorization, the bounds of human language, and the dissination of information. Her experience working and researching in printmaking, linguistics, German literature, and computer science, help inform her art practice. She has exhibited in local, national, and international group and solo shows; served as guest curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; was selected as the Sister City Exchange Artist in Residence awardee in Stuttgart, Germany; and exhibited in the Luminarys 2020 "I watch for good news..." billboard exhibition.
For Jessie, medium, materiality, and process is as important as imagery. When she is using any printmaking technique, she considers the ways in which the history of printmaking and the idea of creating multiples relates to the piece. Typically prints are used to create an edition of exact replications, but in this series she wanted to create unique prints from a single image. As a mixed race person, Jessie can never predict how someone will perceive me, and although my existence remains constant, I show up differently based on an individual’s background, experiences, and biases. For this concept, I wanted to use a medium that produced various outcomes from a single original image.
In this case, she created a half-tone image of a self portrait, then used photo-sensitive emulsion to block the ink from passing through the screen to the paper. For the printing medium, she used a homemade “ink” consisting of gel hand sanitizer and charcoal powder – a process that she learned from a friend and fellow artist, Simon Tatum. After printing, the alcohol evaporates leaving only charcoal on the paper. Charcoal is such an impermanent and easily manipulated medium, so for obvious reasons it’s not the usual medium for creating prints.
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Kalven Duncan (volunteer) is an artist working in photography whose practice and work focuses on compression of time and space in photographic documents, plays with the corruption inherent in reproduction, and interrogates the implicit connotations of certainty in photographs. Duncan’s other interests include literary modernism, continental philosophy, and Greco-Roman tragedies.
Duncan received a BA in art history in 2019 from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO in 2019. Duncan spent the following years employing varying photographic processes and methods of reproduction, experimenting with image association and manipulation, and the deconstruction of their personal visual vocabulary. Duncan has shown throughout the Midwest in various group shows including those at Bruno David Gallery in Clayton, MO, St. Louis Artists’ Guild, Lodger Art in Kansas City, MO, Art Saint Louis, Interurban Arthouse in Overland Park, KS and a solo exhibition “through this window, another side” in early 2022 at the Foundry Arts Centre in St. Charles, MO. The exhibition featured a body of cyanotype prints from a series of the same name. Beyond exhibitions, Duncan also been interviewed and published through Magazine TM, The Coastal Post, ode to queer, dead peasant, Hazel Art magazine, and other publications. Duncan lives and works in Saint Louis, MO.
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Kevin Harris (studio member) lives and works in St. Louis as an artist, curator, composer, and electrical engineer. His practice is broadly focused on using media installations to establish methods of communication and communal conditions by which to explore the psychological manifestations of the contemporary life, industry and empire. Harris is known for his large-scale sculptural installations involving sound, video, text, electronics, motors, wood, and metal.
In 2016, Harris designed Octarrarium, a multisensory media environment installed inside the Regional Arts Commission St. Louis, which was utilized as a gallery installation and performance event platform. He was artist in residence at The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis where he curated the sound art series, Audible Interruptions. Prior to that, he ran the St. Louis performance space Floating Laboratories. He is currently program director at the non-profit arts organization, HEARding Cats Collective.
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Macayli Hausmann (studio member) is a photographer currently based in St. Louis, MO. She graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a Bachelors of Fine Art in Photography and spent the foundational years of her career working and living in the Bay Area.
Using 35mm film fosters an intentional practice of photographing, as she is working with a limited number of frames. She views the process of photographing as an experimental engagement with my surroundings as she is inherently aware of her own headspace and how the internal affects her perspective of the external. The initial part of her practice is heavy on observation of the external as a means to finding purpose for the internal. After the photograph is taken and the film is developed she moves onto editing and sequencing. She rarely views her photographs as stand alone pieces, rather they are all a part of a larger ecosystem. The sequencing process is intuitive, adding, removing and rearranging photographs is an ongoing undertaking as she continues to create new photographs.
In 2022, as a means to cope with anxiety attacks she began filling my notebook with repeated circular motions of colored pencil. After a year of compiling these abstract manifestations of anxiety - it has evolved into a large tactile piece on plywood with acrylic paint. She was drawn to using Plywood, a structural material, as a means to hold this manifestation of emotions. Plywood is primarily used as a structural material and is composed of an assemblage of wood veneers bonded into one piece.
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Brian Lathan (studio member) is an artist and educator who explores printmaking and sculpture as his primary form of art creation. Though his specialization is printmaking, he examines the dynamics of print, digital illustration, and sculpture,persistently exploring these mediums as means to express personal and subjective commentary and narration. Currently, he’s an instructor of Printmaking at multiple universities around St. Louis including STLCC, SLU, Washu and Fontbonne as well as Craft-Alliance. Alongside his personal practice, Brian simultaneously continues to build his collaborative printmaking practice (Free Press Project) where he works with other St. Louis artist to create prints and print ephemera.
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Haveyah McGowan (studio member) is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus in painting & design. Their current studio practice centers around the ways in which black women create and maintain autonomy. In a world that has denied this right, they see this work as a revolutionary and healing act. Their most recent exhibition "Feelings of Home: A Need to Simplify" explores the ideas and practices of sacred space making, as passed down from my matriarchal lineage. To embody a space of healing, they use symbolism from nature, numbers, and patterns to create a divinely feminine experience that houses the qualities of receptivity, nurturing and sensuality. Through this process they call attention to the unique ways that the black maternal lineage creates safety and also the collective need for safety that we all share.
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Dr. Bill Russell is a conceptual folk artist, committed to the process of using readily available resources to tell stories with implicit social commentary. He creates memorials of people who have influenced him throughout his life.
For the past 50 years, he has been producing works through anonymous platforms and alter egos as a vehicle to explore his identity and stimulate discourse of cultural norms in America. Adopted at a very young age, he was given stories of his origin, later influencing the birth of one of his aliases, Charles and Chalot. “Memory is like a one-person game of telephone. When you are given your origin story, though it may be suspect, it becomes as true as any origin story. Half Irish, half Anything. What more could you ask for?” Coming of age in the 60s and the combining influences of radical art movements and the civil rights era catalyzed his rebellion against his inherently prejudiced, adoptive family.
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Jen Wohlner (volunteer) makes detailed pen, ink and colored pencil drawings, ceramic and wood sculptures, and Internet art. Wohlner is interested in real and imagined connections, unchecked growth, endurance, and how individuals find their place in digital and physical communities, and these themes recur in her artwork.
Wohlner’s solo exhibitions include Wildfruit Projects in Saint Louis, the Saint Kate in Milwaukee, and the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery in Los Angeles. Wohlner’s notable Internet work includes co-founding Lex (https://www.lex.lgbt/), a popular location-based queer community and dating app.
Jen Wohlner lives and works in Saint Louis, Missouri. She received her BFA from the University of Southern California in 2010 and will receive her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024.
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Kellen Wright (studio member) is an artist and arts administrator interested in queer temporality, landscape, and process based artistic research. Their work for To Pillar, To Platform is the result of their material experimentation and their consistent drawing practice akin to daily journaling. River Drawing #5 (RUFFLE) and Untitled Exercise exemplify the high chroma, gestural abstraction Kellen has been drawn to in their recent work.
Kellen graduated from Webster University in 2022 with a Bachelor of Art History and Criticism after the completion of their undergraduate thesis, Between Space and Place: The Art of Rachel Whiteread. Since then, Kellen has worked at several art institutions across St. Louis. They currently work as the Gallery Manager at The Luminary.