Pioneer Works

I have visited Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn New York. Pioneer Works is a cultural center where everything from art exhibitions and theater, to concerts and lectures are set up. Since Pioneer Works deals with such a wide range of areas within art and culture, there are also many different people working in the building. On our tour, we met many young people who work as engineers and coders, for example. We also met artists who had been given what they call a "residency" in the house for anything from a week to several months. This means that the artist gets to live in a small studio and can use all the resources in the building to develop new projects. In return, the artist may take part in work at the house.

Most of the buildings in the Red Hook area are warehouses and factories, and the streets can seem a little dull and gray. In the middle of all this is Pioneer Works, which is actually an old warehouse that has now been transformed into a building for art and culture. Pioneer Works also acts as a meeting point for the people who live around it. They hold family days, lectures and open events to strengthen the sense of community in the surrounding area. Pioneer Works is a cultural center in the middle of a fairly troubled neighborhood. Nevertheless, they manage to bring a lot of people around in an inclusive way, by offering events of all kinds and constantly working with the environment in the surrounding area. I think this kind of environmental work is great no matter where you live, and I wish there was an equally good cultural offering in my hometown.

Pioneer Works also collaborates with all the schools in Red Hook, to spread art and cultural education to children and young people in the area. This means that the schools are invited to different performances and workshops. "I think this is incredibly important, and I believe that the work Pioneer Works does is a great inspiration to others. In Norway, we have DKS, which is the main source of art and theater for the vast majority of children and young people in Norway. Apart from the DKS visits we receive, there is rarely any collaboration between schools and cultural centers in the local area. This is a shame, because it would be great to see more art and culture in everyday school life.

Finally, we met Dustin Yellin, the man behind Pioneer Works. In 2011 he started the center, which today is mostly funded by the money he gets from selling his very popular glass sculptures. Dustin creates sculptures where he glues together large sheets of glass, and in between he either paints or pastes cut-outs, so that when he puts the sheets together a picture is created. The images he creates are very detailed and rich in content. One of the images, for example, was of a large person made up of lots of small clippings from newspapers and magazines. If you took a closer look, you could see that it wasn't just random clippings, but cars and houses and little people that made it look like a big city inside the picture.

Dustin has a team of around 20 people who work with him on his projects. The last big project he created was seven such glass blocks, put together to create an image of how the earth goes under and turns into mud to be swallowed into the sea. 

All in all, Pioneer Works was an extremely interestingand inspiring place to visit.

The last great work of Dustin Yellin.