20 Under 20 St. Paul

This post was written by Marty Marosi, current Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC) member, about the 20 Under 20 exhibition.

Hello from St. Paul! This day is significant because it’s the second and last day of curating, and also the same for how many times I’ve been in St. Paul.

We’ve been putting the St. Paul show together by working with each piece like, well, let’s just say they don’t call ’em ‘pieces’ for nuthin. We’ve looked at all the pieces in a giant group and picked out ones that seemed to work together. If an artist had multiple works, we considered it in its entirety. Then from there, we put it on the wall, and have been practicing a whole ‘mix ‘n match’ and trial and error process. Luckily we don’t make mistakes.

(Here’s a picture of Witt spouting off some philosophy)

Witt (WACTAC superfan) is workin like a dog over here, he paces back and forth all the time. With how long the spaces are in this warehouse, each trip takes alost 20 minutes. He hasn’t eaten anything all day except doritos for lunch and toast for breakfast. But I think he’s milkin it a little bit because he said he ate just ‘a piece of toast’, leaving much to the imagination as to the scantness of his meal. Nonetheless, I saw him sporting the tired-man’s beard a couple days ago and I think he needs to just kick back and let the WACTAC’rs do some work for a change.

While David puts his life on the line to hang up all the art, I get the real cush job of documenting our progress and eating snacks to sustain myself. David is the real strong-silent type, but we like having him around.

Putting all this together has been a trying process, both emotionally and physically. At one point I thought my body wouldn’t take another kit-kat after eating so many during the initial curating phase, but I endured.

Before we got to this point, we spent countless hours down in the WACTAC bat-cave looking at what seemed like, and probably was, thousands of artworks. It was like No Exit down there. Sartre said ‘Hell is other people’ and the temperature became infernal with all the bodies in the room. One benefit, however, was how much muscle mass I gained from raising my arm for multiple votes and re-votes.

Overall, this has been a great experience. It’s been a long and elaborate process, but that makes the fruit of our labor that much sweeter. We hope this contest and show will be successful in continuing our objective to reach other teens (and tweens) out there who want to get involved with the art world.

If you have a chance, check out the series of 20 Under 20 events happening in the coming weeks.