There once was a curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum who wanted to do a contemporary show of ceramic work. The curator decided to select a rising star with a background in ceramics—to maybe make some pots and such. The artist was given pretty much full rein. But when the curator checked on the progress of the show a couple months later, instead of making bowls or plates or whatever, the artist had formed a gospel choir from people he found on Facebook, all set to sing about ceramic objects in general.

These (literally) off-the-wall projects are standard fare for artist and cultural architect Theaster Gates.

I recently sat in a room with the fast-talking, bursting-into-song, impassioned Gates—and a group of SAM curators who are about to have an equally unscripted experience with the artist. Gates is Seattle Art Museum’s 2011-2012 Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellow, which means he’ll receive a $10,000 award as well as a solo show at the museum. (The show opens December 11.)

What will he do at SAM?

Naturally, it's still up in the air. But it will possibly include a large collection of soul records. Gates said he recently acquired the collection from a small shop that closed in Chicago. At SAM, he said, he’d like to possibly build a soul ‘lounge’ of sorts, where people can discuss the importance of soul, all while unpacking issues of race and creating “cultural moments” in Seattle.

He wants people to be able to “chill out and talk about these issues—to be able to talk about things that are hard, via things that are much easier.”

Gates began gaining notoriety in 2007, when he built a community temple in an art gallery in Chicago. It was made from wood pallets he found in an abandoned bubblegum factory in the Chicago neighborhood where he grew up. He paid for the pallets and to rent the gallery space, and after it was built, he posted “meditation hours” on the door. Eventually, people began to come in and sit, bring their yoga mats, and meditate with their neighbors.

He said creating this kind of space allowed him to explore the spiritual versus the political—to see how objects and places can have multiple meanings. He prefers to use found objects, like pallets, because “found objects have both history and potential,” and have a way of “adding a quality of emotion to things.” The bubblegum factory pallets, which were “covered in rat shit” when Gates got them, began to have a new life as a temple.

Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art took notice, and asked him to recreate the temple on a larger scale in one of its galleries. Gates’s band, The Black Monks of Alabama, performed in the gallery weekly, gathering a variety of communities who were looking for what he called “a black monastic experience.”

In addition to ceramics, Gates also studied urban planning. His care for environments helps him create what he calls “cultural moments.” In his talk at SAM, he said that if he “could find sources in all these big-ass white museums, how could I do real projects in places like Philly, Chicago, and Detroit? People go other places for culture besides museums. I needed to understand where cultural moments are born.”

Since then, Gates has worked to construct cultural moments in and out of museums all over the country. His works closely examine race and social relations in cities and neighborhoods, hoping to bring people together in their own neighborhood cultures. He works to “restore beautiful things in unexpected places. It’s all about neighborhoods. How do I highlight all the cool shit going on in these neighborhoods?”

In a predominantly white art world, Gates is looking to make what is considered “culture” less exclusive, less hoity-toity, more about real people. He’s built a soul-food pavilion, created a Facebook gospel choir, repurposed the glass slide collection at the University of Chicago, and repurposed abandoned houses in St. Louis. Many of these projects have gone back to their communities. For example, the house in St. Louis (commissioned by the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and in response to works by Gordon Matta-Clark) is now a nonprofit artist’s residence.

Though Gates is from Chicago, he has artistic roots in Seattle. He lived here after college, doing urban planning work with black churches. While developing a ceramics studio for the youth center at Union Gospel Mission, he was inspired to begin reappropriating spaces in the Central District. He said he liked his time in Seattle, because people here were sympathetic to his ideas.

“I came into my art career in Seattle,” he said. “I got a lot of yeses from people here, and through this I became much more ambitious.”

I can't wait to see what he makes happen at SAM.