Williams and Hernandez discuss PXSTL

March 8 talk will launch Sam Fox School’s spring Public Lecture Series

PXSTL winners and visiting assistant professors Andres L. Hernandez and Amanda Williams work with students in the Sam Fox School. (Photo: James Byard/Washington University)

Creativity is a form of research — a way of grappling with the history and community of a place while also demarcating its future potential.

This spring and summer, Chicago-based artists Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez will transform a vacant lot in St. Louis’ Grand Center neighborhood into a temporary space for public programs and events.

At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, the pair — who are also part of the team designing the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago —  will discuss their commission, developed for the 2015-17 iteration of PXSTL, in a free lecture in Washington University’s Steinberg Hall.

Established in 2013, PXSTL is jointly sponsored by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the university’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. (The name is an acronym for the Pulitzer, Sam Fox School and St. Louis.) The competition is intended to explore the ways in which small-scale creative interventions might serve as meaningful catalysts for urban transformation.

Williams and Hernandez’s design, titled “A Way, Away (Listen While I Say),” will activate both the vacant lot and a building adjacent to it, which has been slated for demolition. In so doing, the project will examine the idea of building and “unbuilding” as both a working methodology and as a response to a particular place and site.

Studio Odile Decq, Saint-Ange Residence, Sessions, France, 2015. (Photo: Roland Halbe]

The PXSTL Lecture by Williams and Hernandez will launch the Sam Fox School’s spring Public Lecture Series. In all, the series will feature 11 presentations by nationally and internationally known artists, architects, curators and designers.

The series will continue March 20 with Diana Guerrero-Maciá, the Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist. Other speakers will include landscape architect Thomas Woltz (March 28) and architect Odile Decq (April 7) as well as artists Shimon Attie (March 31) and Tom Friedman (April 19).

All talks are free and open to the public and begin at 6:30 p.m. in Steinberg Hall Auditorium, unless otherwise noted. Each will be preceded by a reception at 6 p.m.

Steinberg Hall is located near the intersection of Skinker and Forsyth boulevards, immediately adjacent to Givens Hall and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. For more information, call 314-935-9300 or visit www.samfoxschool.wustl.edu.

Spring 2017 speakers

March 8
Amanda Williams & Andres Hernandez
Williams: Adjunct professor, Illinois Institute of Technology
Hernandez: Associate professor and chair,  Department of Art Education, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
PXSTL Lecture

Diana Guerrero-Maciá, “Minding the Gap, 2059,” 2016. Wool, cotton, hand cut and stitched, dyed canvas, on canvas. 72 x 108 inches. (Image: Courtesy of the artist.)

March 20
Diana Guerrero-Maciá
Artist
Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist Lecture

March 22
Researcher & Designer
Lecture at 11:45 a.m. in Kemp Auditorium, Givens Hall

Louis D. Beaumont Visiting Assistant Professor Lecture

March 22
Howard Lay
Associate professor, Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan
Reception at 6 p.m. in the Kemper Art Museum.
In conjunction with “Spectacle and Leisure in Paris: Degas to Mucha,” on view through May 21 at the Kemper Art Museum.

March 23
Dan Michaelson
Founding partner, creative director and technical lead, Linked by Air
Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Visiting Artist Lecture

March 28
Thomas Woltz
Principal and owner, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects
Anova Lecture for Landscape Architecture

Attie (Photo: Whitney Curtis/Washington University)

March 31
Shimon Attie
Artist
Lecture at 7 p.m. at the Saint Louis Art Museum
Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow Lecture

April 7
Odile Decq
Co-founder, Studio Odile Decq
Coral Courts Lecture
Graduate Architecture Open House Lecture

April 12
Erik L’Heureux
Architect
Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor Lecture

April 18
Silvia Kolbowski
Artist
Brabson Filmmaker Lecture

April 19
Tom Friedman
Artist
Reception at 6 p.m. in the Kemper Art Museum
Art on Campus Lecture

Tom Friedman, “Swamp Creature Friends” ( 2016), installed outside Helen F. Umrath House. Powder-coated steel, 77 x 102 x 23″. Collection of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, University purchase, Art on Campus fund.
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