Drawn from our annual submissions this exhibition will feature new work from 11 artists from across North America.
Curated by Ben Heywood
Participating artists: Peter Owen (RI), Alison Owen, (RI) Adam Parker Smith (NYC), Scott Rogers (Canada), Wendy DesChene (AL), Lauren Herzak-Bauman (MN), Gregory Fitz (MN), Brett Smith (MN), Sarah JaneGorlitz and Wojciech Olejnik (Canada), Eileen Maxson (PA)
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Soap Factory October 09 from Soap Factory on Vimeo.
Soap Factory September 09 from Soap Factory on Vimeo.
The Soap Factory has stood by the Mississippi since 1883, and each generation has put it to a different purpose. It began as a warehouse for the railroad, and during America’s second world war, it became a soap factory. Closing in the recession of the early 1990s, in 1995 it became an art gallery, a studio space, a creative laboratory for new ideas. During our great recession of 2009, The Soap Factory presents The Austerity Cookbook.
Published in England in 1975, The Austerity Cookbook by Bridget Ardley is a beloved holdover from harder times. Ardley’s brisk schoolmarm prose and sensible recipes for offal, beans, and vegetables hearken back to 1939, when heroic Britons ate Woolton Pie and bred rabbits in the gardens as bombers droned overhead. The cookbook reminds us that during times of adversity we make do and mend, keeping calm and carrying on. As The Soap Factory’s building has been constantly re-purposed over a century of human activity, we use and re-use whatever we have at hand, turning our human creativity to humble materials and found treasures.
Creativity at times of adversity and calm preparation for the on coming storm are key organizing principles behind this exhibition of eleven artists from our annual submissions. Gregory Fitz’s humble sculpture shows one possible future, as Brett Smith’s miniature barricades leave us wondering if we can ever really keep anything at bay. Lauren Herzak-Bauman creates the landscape of a fully-realized apocalypse, just as Alison Owen’s dust-wallpaper suggests a hopeful transformation of desolation into comfort and even beauty. As always in these desperate years, it is artists who show us the way forward; setting the agenda for a harsh winter, picturing our current demise, and figuring resilient survival strategies for art, artists, and the rest of us. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good.