Juan William Chávez presents at the 2013 Creative Capital Artist Retreat from Creative Capital on Vimeo.

Juan William Chávez (2013 Emerging Fields grantee) presented on his Creative Capital-supported project, The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, at the 2013 Artist Retreat. Read more about his project here: creative-capital.org/projects/view/745.

Michael Allen is an architectural historian and founder of Preservation Research Office. He authors the blog, Ecology of Absence. Allen’s research is concerned with the impact of deindustrialization, population loss and postwar urban renewal projects on the preservation of historic urban landscapes.

Roundtable Discussion Part 2-Michael Allen by Juanwilliamchavez

Sylvester Brown, Jr  talks about the Sweet Potato Project.  The mission of the Sweet Potato Project is to create a North St. Louis program that offers educational and money-making opportunities for “at risk” urban youth. The expanded goal of the project is to bring vibrant economic activity back to long-neglected urban areas by creating alternative and progressive ways to create and distribute products that are grown and created within these disadvantaged communities.

Sylvester Brown, Jr. is an award-winning journalist, former publisher of Take Five Magazine and metro columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In January 2011, Brown established When we Dream Together, a nonprofit aimed at revitalizing long-ignored urban areas.

Roundtable Discussion Part 3 – Sylvester Brown Jr by Juanwilliamchavez

Video by Timothy Nordmann from Nordmann Video.
The Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary is a proposal for the City of St Louis to transform the urban forest where Pruitt-Igoe housing development once stood into a public space that cultivates community through education and urban agriculture. Drawing parallels to the depleting population of bees and shrinking cities, this interdisciplinary project-in-progress has the unique opportunity to reignite the conversation about urban abandonment and creative strategies for addressing it.

Luxembourg Conversation from Juan William Chavez on Vimeo.

An interview at the Luxembourg Gardens with a French teacher who taught in the Saint Louis Public School system for two-years. The film touches upon issues of public space and includes footage of the first Beekeeping School in world, Jardin du Luxembourg Apiculture founded in 1856 located in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris France.

English Translation
_____________________

“I think that for me, the Luxembourg Garden is a unique place in Paris because it is a big green space dedicated for quiet rest and meetings, but in a very urban setting. It is not the lung of the city because it is not big enough or vegetated enough, but it is a peaceful respite in a very active, dynamic urban environment in the heart of Paris. And it was this idea that I found very seductive when I first discovered this garden when I was a student quite a few years ago.”

“There is also the aesthetic aspect. The Luxembourg Garden has been the subject of literature in the 19th century, notably for it’s aesthetic, architectural quality, but also for the theatrical scenes you can witness. Typical scenes with families and friends meeting, luncheons on the lawn, lectures, etc. There is therefore a sense of poetry around the Luxembourg that I like very much.”

An Old Sicilian Honey Press in the Buscemi Museum.

Learn more about the Pruitt Igoe Bee Sanctuary by following us in the media.

PRUITT-IGOE ART
By Kelly Shindler, Bad At Sports 

2013 Creative Capital in Emerging Fields

Juan William Chavez wants to inspire new ideas for Pruitt-Igoe
By Diane Toroian Keaggy, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Review: Well deserved buzz for Juan William Chavez
By Sarah Hermes Griesbach, St. Louis Beacon

An SAIC alumnus hopes to transform a fading Midwest metropolis one community at a time.
by Brandi Kulakowski

2012 Guggenheim fellow
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

2012 Graham Foundation exhibition grant
Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary,
Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis
Oct 27, 2012 to Jan 20, 2013

Walking St. Louis with artists — and making back-home comparisons
04/18/12 By Andy Sturdevant

Best of 2011: Part 6 | Blog | Frieze Publishing
Jan 01, 2012 by Dominic Molon

art :21 blog Of Monuments and Memorials: St. Louis Modernism and Juan William Chávez’s Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary
July 26th, 2011 by Francesca Wilmott

Temporary Art Review Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary: A Conversation with Juan William Chávez
Jun 9, 2011 by Marie Heilich

The snow globe that provides the cinematic link to Charles Foster Kane’s halcyon days crashes to the floor after he whispers his one final word (and subsequent trivia-card answer). Ornamentally staged, it is a textbook example of all that shadows and wide-angle lenses can do to establish a fragile reality within a motion picture. Kane’s terminal body shakes brought the globe to life seconds before it too, tumbled and expired.

Consider a snow globe for a minute: a miniature environment inside a glass sphere, filled with water, and that when shaken, causes symbolic particulates to flit about, evoking a snow storm or cyclone of musical notes, or accolades of “Congratulations 2009 Grads!,” depending on what gift shop one visits. That such an object-environment is possessable is hopefully not lost upon its gazers who may be overcome by waves and drools of nostalgia and tranquility.

Shaking is necessary and unavoidable for a snow globe to properly ‘be’. Until the globe is shaken, the environment is at rest. Upon shaking, the environment is activated to produce the intended scene. When the glass is breached through careless shaking, and the water comes gushing out onto the carpet, we have robbed the globe of its purpose. For an instant, the break yields a glass beach and a cleansing wave, a life out of balance.

Opposing forces of constructivist idealism and survivor’s immediacy activated an environment that came to be known as the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects. When the cracks began to emerge in old Igoe’s sphere, what ultimately gushed out were sorrow, guilt, and handwringing. The problems pre- and post-Igoe are the same today.

Honestly, I don’t know if the “glass” around the Pruitt-Igoe lot ever really broke or if it repaired itself without anyone knowing, but the lot where the projects once towered now stands as a working model of a snow globe once again, the glass replaced by aging chain-link and public indifference. Ruderal and other pioneer species have emerged in the last 40 years, yielding numerous city-states of floral colonies. Where 1950s trees prosper overhead, patrolling the premises are dragonflies, rabbits, and of course bees, all of which activate an environment with few reminders of human interference. They are tissues forming new organs, supporting new circulatory systems, priming the pumps of young hearts. The environment is self-sustaining, self-shaking. Our ignorance has produced something quite special and reverent.

As cultural activists and performers, we seek to activate environments around us by aesthetically being. Bee-ing, if you will. In regard to Pruitt-Igoe, I think it’s foolish to presume that artists can necessarily solve all of the problems that led to its demise. That isn’t really what we do. What we do have is the opportunity to help preserve and establish something great. For all that has happened, I think we can do something good for once. The Bee Sanctuary isn’t even a real bee sanctuary (not yet, at least), but rather, a mantra attracting positive states of being and methods of activation. Activate, not deactivate. We’re looking for a few good ideas. Pruitt-Igoe is ultimately what we will make it to bee.

[Open/Closed] Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary presentation by Juan William Chavez from nextSTL on Vimeo.

I was invited by R.J. Koscielniak and NextSTL to give a presentation on the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary project.
The talk was part of the Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis conference.

For more information about Open/Closed: Exploring Vacant Property in St. Louis please click on link http://nextstl.com/media/open-closed