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Trestle Support Systems: Entrepreneur of the Multitude by Sheila Dickinson

A critical essay in response to the exhibition and Rethinking Public Space Project, Trestle Support Systems by Pete Driessen, in the Boiler & Blacksmith Shops within the Northern Pacific RailwayYard in Brainerd, Minnesota, October 25 – November 4,  2017.

‘Trestle’ (Daytime w/Artist) Photo by Sean Smuda

The word that comes to mind is monumental, with the massive scale of both the Northern Pacific Railroad Complex (NP) and of Pete Driessen’s immense sculptural installation, Trestle Support Systems (TSS) within it. The site and this artistic project are monumental in scope, awe inspiring in sheer vastness. Take this word down to its core and Driessen’s TSS creates, in fact, a monument. As a testimony to a former time of industrial might of the region, TSS acts as monument not only to industrial history but specifically to the workers who powered industry. TSS becomes a monument to their work building the support structures of industry and community, for the region and for generations to come.  

‘Trestle Workers’ (Rear View) Photo by Makeen Osman

TSS consists of two sculptural installations both constructed out of raw untreated wood. The Trestle Workers installation consists of 35 larger than life workers that completely fill the old Boiler Room, a space vast in scale and height. Each worker is exactly the same, made from railroad tie-sized red pine timbers that have been adjoined on the back with a methodical, abstract looking formation of steel plates. They stand in seven rows of five, the amount of a platoon without a leader, here the workers band together, common in work and cause.  Trestle is installed two buildings over in the much larger Blacksmith Shop and consists of a series of trestle like sculptural forms reaching 16 feet high and repeating in staccato rhythm for the sectional length of the building (60 yards) down the straight path of the rail line that runs through the center of the building. With stunning vaulted ceilings and the low crescendoed rumblings of an accompanying sound installation by Michael Masaru Flora, the trestle forms create a majestic moment that reveals the sensation a worker may have felt high up on a trestle, building a bridge with rudimentary tools.

In favor of the common, Driessen employs both the common material of the wooden beam in combination with the common and basic form of the trestle support system as his aesthetic agents. What do these two components, the material of wooden beam and the support form of the trestle tell us about this artistic installation?  Rough sawn red pine used in TSS is common to Northern Minnesota forests. Without chemical treatment it reveals knots, splits, twists and crooks and much more lightweight than traditional wood of railroad ties.  The workers, who labored for days, months and years with this natural material, have morphed in TSS into the material of their tireless labor. One in the same, the worker and the wood, grown together, are now monumental in scale, towering over the viewer in stature, in multitude and in formation of a collective army or forest of human determination.  The trestle form, like the worker, is likewise repeated, putting the viewer’s focus on the trestle’s elemental design. Basic in logic and form, the trestle places wood and steel joiners together in such a way that it can  be then repeated and further joined, taking many parts to create a whole that could carry a train over a river. Together they hold steady for the safe passage of a weight much greater than each part alone can hold.

‘Trestle’ (Night-Overall) Photo by Makeen Osman

The result is an aliveness that these two elemental components, the wood and the trestle infuse into the art. Like minimalist sculptors before, such as Carl Andre who laid rectangular bricks in a line in the gallery, Driessen strips away the non-essential clutter in order for the psychological presence of the rail tie, a 6”x6”x8’ wooden beam to dominate.  The aliveness of the trestle form is held in the metal components that fasten and hold the wood together; the spacers, caps, braces and sills.  Also found in the trestle sculpture’s wings, which shift their heavy burdened beings into graceful otherness.  Then, let us not forget a third alive component, the one that makes this whole project possible and that is the epic spaces of the NP site itself.  Beyond our small human scale, it holds the ambition of an era gone by, giving the artist and entrepreneur the space to imagine, hope and build something unintended by the original builders.  A building’s dream from when it once sat dilapidated and unused it now moves into active renewal and regeneration.  

In this moment in time the NP site sits somewhere in between, in a liminal space that straddles a past of industry (then dereliction) and the present (then future) of entrepreneurship.  In our contemporary lexicon, the entrepreneur appears as sole agent acting for singular gain, ideologically opposed to the structures inherent in TSS of collective labor, collaborative work and the repetitive form of the 35 train workers. Michal Hardt encourages a different reading wherein “entrepreneurship fundamentally means creating new forms of social… and productive cooperation from below. That is a kind of entrepreneurship of the multitude.”  In the intersection between a rich historical space of NP and the imaginative space of the artist in TSS, this new entrepreneurial endeavor of NP and Driessen reminds economic and social leaders of Northern renewal that the core of this site are the united workers.  Driessen describes them as “collaborating workers: collectively creating, producing, distributing, empowering, and exchanging.” Could this describe a radical entrepreneur?

We stand in this history of larger than life components of community, collective labor, tightly knit worker units functioning in harmony, putting many parts together to construct a whole. Has this fabric of coming together to build something, that then through the process of working unites us, has this quality of working together been lost? Is this what TSS reclaims, within this space, monumentalizing the ability to work together, to find unity in what collectively binds us rather than what differences divide us?

-Shiela Dickinson

‘Trestle’ (Night-Detail) Photo by Makeen Osman

About Shiela Dickinson

Dr. Sheila Dickinson is a regional critic for Arforum's Critics' Picks, ArtNews and Hyperallergic and has published her art writing in a wide range of local and international publications. She is currently the Curator of Art and Public Programs at the Rochester Art Center.

Gratitude

Pete Driessen is a fiscal year 2017 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the MN State Arts Board. This activity is funded in part by the MN State Legislature from the State’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the creative people of MN on November 4, 2008.

This project is generously sponsored by Minnesota State Arts Board, The Soap Factory, NP Event Space, Northern Pacific Center, Driessen Water, TuckUnder Projects, Simpson StrongTie, Prairie Bay, Roundhouse Brewery, Discount Post & Pole, Progressive Property Management, Crow Wing Cty. Historical Society & Museum, Brainerd Community Ed.,Quality Forklift, Insty Prints, Mailbox Etc., Music General, Nitro Square, and many individuals.

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Kultivera/Soap Factory Residency Exchange

Sarita Zaleha, Larsen Husby, Kate Arford & Moheb Soliman

Artists-in-residence; Lela Pierce, Sarita Zaleha, Moheb Soliman, and Larsen Husby, discuss their month at the Kultivera residency in Trånas, Sweden as part an international residency exchange program with The Soap Factory. 

Lela Pierce & Sarita Zaleha pictured next to artwork by Zaleha

Work by Moheb Soliman

Sarita Zaleha, Lela Pierce, Larsen Husby, & Moheb Soliman

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Pete Driessen: Trestle Support Systems

In progress photo of Pete Driessen’s ‘Trestle Worker’

Check out the latest Soapcast with artist Pete Driessen discussing his Rethinking Public Spaces Project Trestle Support Systems. View the work in person at the opening reception on October 28th at the Northern Pacific Center in Brainerd, Mn.

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Monica Sheets: Collectively We Support Your Autonomy

Check out the latest Soapcast with Rethinking Public Spaces artist, Monica Sheets as she talks about her project ‘Collectively We Support Your Autonomy’ opening Saturday, October 14th. 

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Jess Hirsch: Emotional Platings

Check out the latest soapcast with Rethinking Public Spaces Artist, Jess Hirsch as she talks about her project, Emotional Platings.

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Sister Black Press: Poetry of Resistance & Change

Check out the latest Soapcast interview with Monica Edwards Larson the proprietress of Sister Black Press about her Rethinking Public Spaces project, ‘Poetry of Resistance & Change’

FEATURED POETRY

Excerpt from "The Bear" by Hawona Sullivan Janzen you.  me. he. man. woman. bear. we are now all hiding hiding in plain sight even if you do not believe this it is something you can never disprove. it is your word your word ... against mine. ------ Excerpt from "you get home okay" by D. Allen because the urgent wind is waiting to press its palm against your chest until your breathing slows and the salt sweat on your upper lip is no longer the taste of your own fear but the measure of your beauty ------ Excerpt from MY WHITE EX WOULDN’T LET ME HANG UP POLITICAL POSTERS IN OUR APARTMENT BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT THEY WERE AGGRESSIVE by Maitreyi Ray i am brave i am brave i am an underground fire i am the connective tissue in the body of the earth i am learning to walk on a gravel road i am barefoot i am grateful to be in this country

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Leyya Mona Tawil: Destroy//Minneapolis

Check out the latest Soapcast interview with artist and choreographer, Leyya Mona Tawil discussing her project ‘Destroy//Minneapolis’ following the day of the performance. 

‘Destroy// All Places’ is a new ritual for new times. The performance is composed, but untethered. The artists attempt a score imbedded with mechanisms that make its execution increasingly impossible, forcing the material into stages of deterioration and evolution. ‘Destroy// All Places’ began in San Francisco in 2012, and has since visited over 23 cities including Saint Petersburg, Rome, Cairo and Athens.  Over 100 artists have participated in the project internationally. The performance took place in The Soap Factory on August 26th, 2017.

PARTICIPATING MUSICIANS: Milo Fine (percussion,) Cyrus Pireh (electric guitar,) Benjamin J Mansavage Klein (tuba)

PARTICIPATING TWIN CITIES DANCERS: Leila Awadallah, Amelia Morris, Nicole Stumpf, Jenn Pray, Laura Levinson, Ben Swenson-Klatt, Non Edwards, Pedro Pablo Lander, Abby Taylor, Gabriel Mata, Rachel Horner, Halie Bahr, Erin Drummond, Tera Kilbride, H. Uyen Nguyen, Sarah Finley

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Aaron Dysart: Surface

Check out the latest Soapcast episode with Aaron Dysart as he talks about his Rethinking Public Spaces project, Surface.

See the project for yourself on September 15th or 16th from 8:00pm-10:00pm

This project is supported and presented as part of Here & There: Rethinking Public Spaces, The Soap Factory’s 2017 public programming. Rethinking Public Spaces presents artist projects that enliven underutilized spaces throughout Minnesota, rethinking public space and considering what it means to place-make through a contemporary, celebratory, and critical lens.

Also Presented by Northern Lights.mn, Mississippi Park Connection, the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area,  with support from St. Anthony Falls Heritage Board and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

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Andy Sturdevant and Sergio Vucci: Common Room

Check out the latest Soapcast with artists, Andy Sturdevant and Sergio Vucci as they discuss their Rethinking Public Spaces project, Common Room, a series of artist-led tours throughout the Twin Cities. 

Common Room is a series of artist-led tours of Twin Cities sites, with each tour themed around a specific concept that the group uses as a lens to explore facets of the urban geography — in the past, these themes have included cats, alleys, skyways, fishing, freeway construction, weather, community kitchens, personal memory, and many more. Common Room is the work by Sergio Vucci and Andy Sturdevant, along with a rotating lineup of contributors. Now in its eighth year, is using the occasion of the Rethinking Public Spaces project to expand the scope of its programming for this summer to travel beyond The Soap Factory, and various neighborhoods of the Twin Cities by foot, bicycle and bus. Common Room’s themes in 2017 will include silence, moving images, sacredness, islands, neighborhood music, and more.

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Maria Cameron: Is Your Rebellion Sitting Still?

Check out the latest Soapcast with artist, Maria Cameron as she discusses her Rethinking Public Spaces project, Is Your Rebellion Sitting Still?, a series of installations throughout the city of Rochester, Mn. 

Join Maria for a walking tour of the installations on August 19th at 10am at one of the installation sites at 14 4th St SW, Rochester, MN 55902.

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‘The Wall’ by Lamia Abukhadra and Leila Awadallah

Check out the latest Soapcast with artists, Lamia Abukhadra and Leila Awadallah as they discuss their Rethinking Public Spaces project, The Wall. The installation will be on view at Prospect Park Community Garden from August 5th through August 20th.

FEATURING ARTWORK AND PERFORMANCES BY:

Martin Gonzales, Alec Lossiah, Ananya Dance Theatre, Lula Saleh, Joel Valdez, Sagirah Shahid, Karmel Sabri, Oscar de la Luna, Nailah Taman, Bella Yaga

Improvisation piece: Leila Awadallah, Louie Darang, Essma Imady, Marggie Ogas, Sarah Abdel Jalil, Colin Walker Wingate, Veera Vasandani, Itly Thayieng, Khadija Siddiqui, Seng Xiong, Pedro Pablo and Jordan Lee Thompson.

DATES OF PERFORMANCES/ACTIVITIES:

Opening Ceremony August 5TH, 6:30PM – 8:30PM Performances, 6:30PM – 8:30PM

Paint The Wall August 13TH, 2:00PM – 5:00PM

Performance Night August 13TH, 6:30PM – 8:30PM

Closing Reception/Destroy The Wall August 20TH, 6:30PM – 8:30PM

LOCATION:

Prospect Park Community Garden

2909 4th St SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414

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Rethinking Public Spaces: Juxtaposition Arts

Listen to the latest Soapcast in which artists, Cameron Downey and Namir Fearce talk about their role in Juxtaposition Arts’ newest Mural which will be unveiled on July 29th as part of FLOW.  

ABOUT THE PROJECT

This summer Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA) will build on the momentum they’ve created over the last 3 years around the celebration of Black August by combining the respective placemaking and art-based engagement skill sets of JXTA’s Public Arts, Tactical, and Environmental Design studios; using these skills to bring 2017 Black August programming outdoors on the intersection of Emerson and West Broadway Avenues in North Minneapolis. To set the stage, in celebration of black life, JXTALab’s Public Art & Mural Teen apprentices are creating a new on-site mural. This new mural imagines black life beyond surveillance and policing, while referencing the aesthetic style of Aaron Douglas.

PUBLIC ART APPRENTICES:

Namir Fearce, Jahliah Holloman, Nya Jones, Kyla McCuren-Porter, Maná McBurnie, Savitri Mann, Imani Gates, Cameron Downey, and Salem Anderson-Murre.

JUXTAPOSITION ARTS

Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA) is a youth development organization and a social enterprise located in North Minneapolis. JXTA envisions the youth of North Minneapolis entering the creative workforce as dynamic innovators and problem solvers with the confidence, skills and connections they need to accomplish their educational and professional goals, and to contribute to the revitalization of the communities where they live and work.  

This project is supported and presented as part of Here & There: Rethinking Public Spaces, The Soap Factory’s 2017 public programming. Rethinking Public Spaces presents artist projects that enliven underutilized spaces throughout Minnesota, rethinking public space and considering what it means to place-make through a contemporary, celebratory, and critical lens.

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Artists Participating in 2017 International Residency Exchange

Meet the Mn artists participating in the first Soap Factory International Residency Exchange: Sarita Zaleha, Moheb Soliman, Lela Pierce, and Larsen Husby. These artists will be traveling to Kultivera in Tranas, Sweden to participate in their residency program for the month of August. 

Sarita Zaleha

Sarita Zaleha has a multidisciplinary creative practice that includes installation, photography, video, printmaking, fiber arts, and social practice. Zaleha received her MFA in Printmaking at the University of Iowa with a minor in Intermedia. Zaleha has exhibited her work extensively across the US, as well as in Canada, Germany, and Iceland. She is a fiscal year 2017 recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Visual Arts.

Sarita Zaleha’s current work explores the interaction between the Arctic as a specific place impacted by rising temperatures and human attempts to observe, control, and preserve their immediate environments. She is interested in the history of polar exploration and its contemporary relevance for climate change research. Sarita is looking to use her time at Kultivera experimenting with weighted helium balloons in temporary landscape installations, researching balloons in relationship to weather and the environment. Her research will include a visit to the Andréexpedtionen Polarcenter at the Grenna Museum in Gränna, Sweden, which chronicles (among other Arctic explorations) Saloman August Andrée’s failed attempt in 1897 to cross the Arctic via a hydrogen balloon.

website:

http://www.saritazaleha.com

Moheb Soliman

Moheb Soliman is an interdisciplinary poet from Egypt and the Midwest whose work often deals with nature, modernity, identity, and belonging through writing, performance, and installation projects. In the past few years, he has been exploring his practice extensively through the site of the Great Lakes region in which he has lived and He finds this area fascinating as an environmentally coherent borderland central to the history of North America. In 2015, he circled the region for four months under the banner HOMES [Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior] through a Joyce Foundation fellowship, doing site-specific work and collaborating with diverse partners.

 More recently, Moheb has collaborated with the five Great Lakes national parks on an installation of 25 poems disguised as official signs in conjunction with the NPS centennial. He is researching and developing a “poem of sublime proportion” through a Forecast Public Art grant to be embedded around the region as 50+ lines/sculptures. His previous major project, Habib Albi is...Not a Man, about romance, gender, and Arab American identity in the Midwest in light of 9/11, showed in New York, Toronto, and Montreal.  In September 2011, it was commissioned as the MAI season-opener in 10-year critical commemoration of 9/11. Moheb has degrees from The New School for Social Research and the University of Toronto, and lives in Minneapolis, MN where he also works as Program Director for the Arab American arts organization Mizna.

Websites:

mohebsoliman.info and agreatlakesvista.tumblr.com

Lela Pierce

Lela Pierce is a multiracial (Black: Negro, Creole, and White: Croatian, Lemko, Rusyn) American visual artist and dancer. She has been a student of the Himalayan Yoga Tradition since childhood, spending a significant amount of time in India over the past decade. Her work is inspired by her ancestors, the spirit world, and the intelligence found in nature.

Lela Pierce is interested in continuing her investigation of invasive plant species in Sweden, looking at the attitudes, language, stories and relationships people have to their presence in more rural areas. She is interested in witnessing the ways that indigenous communities, immigrants, refugees, and other minority groups exist and do or do not integrate themselves into the historic and current social-political climate of Sweden. She will be thinking about how this information may or may not relate back to the presence of Swedish settlers in Minnesota as agents of colonization. Additionally, she will draw upon her personal experiences growing up in a rural Minnesotan town where my family members were amongst a few people of color in a sea of Scandinavian and Western European descendants. Lela hopes to create an immersive installation during the residency, using plant matter from invasive species to express insights around migration, colonization, balance, control, violence, and acceptance/rejection. Additionally, she plans to cultivate and maintain a personal practice of dancing and painting during her time at Kultivera, striving to refine a non-eurocentric and properly appropriated personal aesthetic with clearly expressed ideology. Lela anticipates the time at Kultivera will provide ample space to imagine and dream of societal healing and transformation, while making new connections.  

Larsen Husby

Larsen Husby sees himself as an artist working in two distinct but related practices. In his studio practice, Larsen moves frequently between media, including printmaking, painting, sculpture, and installation. He is fascinated by maps, and his art explores the connections (and disconnections) between places and our representations of them. Husby’s other practice is more public and collaborative. In 2013, he established the Minneapolis Art Lending Library (MALL), a nonprofit which lends original works of art to the public, free of charge. Larsen’s work with the MALL stems from my desire to not simply produce art, but to share it broadly and provide new platforms for engagement.

A current project of Larsen’s is a conceptual drawing and durational performance, mapping the network of streets that make Minneapolis. Since October 3rd, 2016, Larsen has been attempting to walk every single street in the city of Minneapolis, recording each walk’s route, duration, and distance. Originally conceived as a means of delving more deeply into his adopted home, Larsen hopes to conceive of what it means to truly “know” a place. By tracing Minneapolis, Larsen is exploring how physical and conceptual understandings of place inform and conflict with one another, how place is defined and redefined, and how personal presence impacts place. And now, with the walking about half complete, he is looking ahead to figure out the best way to present his experience, documentation, and research to others in a way that is equally illuminating and engaging.

Website: http://www.larsenhusby.com/

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Laura Brown: COMING SOON!

Artist, Laura Brown talks about her upcoming outside installation at The Soap Factory ‘COMING SOON!’ Brown will be installing screen printed faux “construction signs” around the perimeter of the Soap Factory during the upcoming building renovation. The prints’ shapes and placement will allude to common safety signs found in construction zones. In this way the pieces will act as artworks hidden in plain sight to activate the exterior and build anticipation for the soon-to-be renovated Soap Factory building.

In addition to the installation, Laura will host Open A-I-R studio sessions, inviting the public to print signs of solidarity, protest, or encouragement that relate to their day-to-day experiences in a wider world that is in various states of literal and metaphorical “renovation”.

DATES OF OPEN AIR STUDIO SESSIONS:

SATURDAY, JULY 1ST FROM 12-4PM

SATURDAY, AUGUST 12TH FROM 12-4PM

For more information on this project and other upcoming Here & There projects visit soapfactory.org

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The Soap Factory Goes to Sweden

The building, Kraftverket, in which Kultivera is located

Earlier this month, The Soap Factory team went abroad to visit our new partners in Tranås, Sweden; Colm Ó Ciarnáin and Emma Wood from Kultivera and representatives from Nya Smaland Project and regional arts Council, Mike Bode, Jörgen Lindvall, and Jonatan Habib Engqvist. In the month of August The Soap Factory will be sending four Minnesota artists to participate in Kultivera’s residency program. During our visit we had the opportunity to not only see where the residents will be staying and working but the opportunity to visit several of the rich cultural institutions in the Smaland region which the artists-in-residence will have access to for inspiration, research, and possible collaborations.

TSF Team talking to Kultivera staff and New Smaland Representative Mike Bode in shared-use/multipurpose studio space

A peak into one of the individual studio spaces at Kultivera

The apartment building where artists-in-residence live only a few blocks away from Kultivera

Kultivera, much like The Soap Factory is located in a building that was previously used as an industrial factory. Kultivera shares the building with a number of other creative organizations and facilities including an open studio available for the local community to use, studios for local bands to practice and record, and even a performance venue that attracts international musicians. The artists-in-residence will benefit immensely from these neighbors as they provide facilities and audiences that would otherwise be unavailable.

The Gallery space at the  Utvandrarnas Hus

TSF Gallery Director, Kate Arford and Kultivera Executive Director, Colm Ó Ciarnáin exploring the archive at  Utvandrarnas Hus

One of the cultural institutions we visited was the Utvandrarnas Hus (The House of Emmigrants) located in Vaxjo, Sweden, only an hour train ride from Tranås. It is home to a large archive of material on Swedish emigration (including information on the Swedes that immigrated to Minnesota) and also to a unique gallery space.  The artists that TSF sends to Kultivera will have access to the large archive for research and/or material if they are interested.

Image of Vandorlum courtesy of http://www.vandalorum.se/

Vandalorum Museum Director, Elna Svenle talking with TSF Gallery Director, Kate Arford and TSF Executive Director Bill Mague.

Next we visited Vandalorum, a new museum in the Smaland Region for regional, Swedish and international contemporary art and design. The museum currently consists of four buildings/galleries designed to resemble traditional Swedish drying barns, with plans to build seven more. We had the pleasure to meet with their Museum Director, Elna Svenle and discuss how Vandalorum is making connections with their local community of makers and artists and designers from around the world. 

Mike Bode, Kate Arford, Emma Wood viewing the project space at the Jönköpings läns museum

The last space our partners shared with us was the Jönköpings läns museum, an art and cultural history museum with premises in central Jönköping. Jönköping is only an hour train ride from Tranås and will be easily accessible for the artists-in-residence. The museum is also home to a project space run by the local arts council. The artists the Soap Factory is sending over in August, if interested may have the opportunity to us this space for an exhibition or other projects. 

Selfie of Kultivera team, Mike Bode, and The Soap Factory team

The Soap Factory is very excited about this upcoming exchange, the opportunity to visit the residency and the surrounding area was extremely valuable in understanding their program and how the artists TSF is sending in August will benefit from the exchange. We are looking forward to this continued partnership and how we will continue to work and learn from them in the future. All of us at The Soap Factory are extremely grateful to Kultivera staff and representatives of the New Smaland project for their hospitality and the time they dedicated to showing us around and sharing their program with us.

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Rethinking Public Spaces Throughout Minnesota

The Soap Factory’s public space program invites artists to submit proposals for projects outside of The Soap Factory that re-think public spaces, and/or utilize spaces that are often neglected or overlooked.

The following artists and collaboratives have been chosen to present their projects as part of Rethinking Public Spaces Throughout Minnesota:

JESS HIRSCH

Emotional Intelligence is the ability to accurately identify an emotion and react appropriately through awareness. This may seem simple, however, emotions convolute our behavior, making us react quickly without recognizing our motivations. Emotional Platings is a series of picnic kits made from trees that heal specific emotions. Two people will check out a kit and have a series of prompts to explore the emotion together. Emotional Platings will take place throughout rural Minnesota.

Jess Hirsch is a conceptual artist investigating the healing world through installation and sculpture. She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2013 and is the recipient of the Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, MN State Arts Board Grant, and the Jerome Emerging Artist Project Grant. Her art practice focuses on educating the public on alternative health practices through everyday experiences such as bathing, eating, and sleeping.

AARON DYSART

Produced for specific purposes, data sets’ accuracy tends to limit their audience, as long lists of numbers need to be interpreted for non-specialists. Dysart’s project will turn over the aesthetics of a large colorful public spectacle in the Twin Cities to data in order to tell the story of place, highlighting the role interpretation and orientation plays in our understanding of different environments and how we process knowledge. The quantifiable will become qualitative as aesthetics mingles with interpretation allowing people to see place in a new light.

Aaron Dysart is a sculptor whose objects and environmental interventions push ideas of propriety, gift giving, and reciprocity, while showcasing his love of material’s ability to carry content. He has received awards from Franconia Sculpture Park, Forecast Public Art, The Knight Foundation, and The Minnesota State Arts Board and his work has been in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Berlin Art Link along with other publications He has shown nationally and is currently a City Artist through Public Art Saint Paul, embedded in the city of St. Paul.

Juxtaposition Arts

Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA) will build on the momentum they’ve created over the last 3 years around the celebration of Black August by combining the respective placemaking and art-based engagement skill sets of JXTA’s Public Arts, Tactical, and Environmental Design studios to bring 2017 Black August programming outdoors and onto the intersection of Emerson and West Broadway Avenues in North Minneapolis. This will include the creation and execution of Black August programming, the design and construction of a flatpak parklet, and the extension of Public Art’s 2016 mural, ​‘Who We Are​.’ The extension will ​use the aesthetic style of Chicago’s 1967 mural, ‘​The Wall of Respect​.’

Juxtaposition Arts (JXTA) is a youth development organization and a social enterprise located in North Minneapolis. JXTA envisions the youth of North Minneapolis entering the creative workforce as dynamic innovators and problem solvers with the confidence, skills and connections they need to accomplish their educational and professional goals, and to contribute to the revitalization of the communities where they live and work.

MARIA CAMERON

“Is Your Rebellion Sitting Still?” is a project by Maria Cameron that will transform public spaces in Rochester, MN into spaces of contemplation, self-reflection, and conversation. By installing a series of large-scale thought bubbles on buildings and in community spaces that are considered works in progress, this project highlights the present flux this city is currently in as it grows and expands. The questions aim to create dialogues about renovation and renewal inviting conversation about the meditative and often healing act of finding art in the every day. The viewer is given the opportunity to focus on some of the complicated questions that come with living, thriving, hurting, and healing.

Maria Cameron’s work examines the relationship between traditional techniques and modern methods by dissecting contemporary social behaviors and activities and reconstructing them into visual experiences. Her work is an extension and expansion of her experiences in Alzheimer’s research and memory care which she uses to reevaluate memory and personal experience. She has most recently been featured in Moon Magazine, at Coe College (Cedar Rapids, IA), and in collaborations for Northern Spark (Twin Cities).

ANDY STURDEVANT AND SERGIO VUCCI

Common Room is a series of artist-led tours of Twin Cities sites, with each tour themed around a specific concept that the group uses as a lens to explore facets of the urban geography — in the past, these themes have included cats, alleys, skyways, fishing, freeway construction, weather, community kitchens, personal memory, and many more. Common Room is the work by Sergio Vucci and Andy Sturdevant, along with a rotating lineup of contributors. Now in its eighth year, is using the occasion of the Rethinking Public Spaces project to expand the scope of its programming for this summer to travel beyond The Soap Factory, and various neighborhoods of the Twin Cities by foot, bicycle and bus. Common Room’s themes in 2017 will include silence, sacredness, islands, neighborhood music, and more.

Sergio Vucci is a Minneapolis-based artist. He is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his work focuses primarily on engaging his surroundings outside of gallery spaces and on relational interactions, co-authoring ephemeral creative experiences with participants in response to place.

Andy Sturdevant is an artist and writer living in Minneapolis. He is the author of two books of nonfiction, and his artistic projects have been exhibited at venues in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere.

LAMIA ABUKHADRA AND LEILA AWADALLAH

In the wake of an election that has left us facing such xenophobic rhetoric as “Build the Wall” and establishing a “Muslim Ban,” many activists have said we must build bridges in order to make human connections and provide people with sanctuary, not walls. As Palestinian Americans witnessing the destruction of communities and diverse ethnic and ecological landscapes both in the U.S. and internationally, Lamia Abukhadra and Leila Awadallah are interested in breaking down walls that should never have existed. With the support of The Soap Factory, they will build a physical wall in an outdoor or easily accessible indoor space, where it can be easily discovered and interacted with.The installation piece will culminate in a final interactive performance in which the lead artists will invite the community to break down “The Wall.” Lamia and Leila hope to ultimately convey that a concrete or metal facade is just that: a facade. A wall can divide and negatively define communities, landscapes, ecologies and livelihoods, but it can and will be dismantled by the subversive acts of our community.

Lamia Abukhadra is a Palestinian American artist based in Minneapolis. She is interested in the idea of art as a vessel of expression, communication, identity, and culture for and between the disenfranchised communities. Her art aims to dismantle harmful dominant narratives that cultivate and celebrate acts of colonialism, occupation, and genocide in Palestine and the Arab world through personal stories and historical events. Her work has been featured by Altered Aesthetics, the University of Minnesota T.R. Anderson Gallery, and the Quarter Gallery.

Leila Awadallah is a Palestinian-American dance artist and creator located in the Twin Cities. She explores movement by imaging where sensations moving from deep within the body begin and then how they move through the body in order to release energy. She crafts work built with the intention of nuancing, complicating and working to subvert narratives about Palestine. Her work has been presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. (2016) and in the Moultaqa Leymoun international dance festival in Beirut, Lebanon (2017). Her movement film reflections on ice received a SAGE Award (2016). She is in her fourth year as a company member of Ananya Dance Theatre.

PETE DRIESSEN

Pete Driessen will be orchestrating a large scale, abstract trestle sculpture and installation reflecting contemporary culture in the Blacksmith Shop building at the Northern Pacific Railway Yard, Brainerd, MN for The Soap Factory ReThinking Public Space in Minnesota program during June-October of 2017. A trestle is often defined as a complex of braced framework serving as a vertical support structure, created with wooden timbers, rock piles, and iron or steelwork for carrying a horizontal traversed beam, such as a table-like road or railroad over a lower geographic depression. Trestle language, semiotics and symbolism are synonymous with current self-help trends of scaffolding, bootstrapping, sustainability and empowerment.

The Northern Pacific Railroad yard is a large historic grouping of 12 brick and wood beam buildings that sit on a massive 47-acre plot of land in Brainerd, MN. The massive industrial site contains the aesthetic atmosphere and former physical workings of the past turn-of-the-century railroad era. The old railroad Blacksmith Shop building is 50,000 square feet, with 20-foot high sidewalls, an 80-foot wide cross span, and concrete floors. Listed on National Register of Historic Places, the NP site is centrally located near the geographic center of the state. Both the industrial rawness and the monumental scale of the Northern Pacific site and its Blacksmith Shop space are reflective of The Soap Factory’s artistic history and its current ReThinking Public Space in MN programming goals.

Driessen envisions an interior, site-specific abstract trestle installation based in found object sculpture and its connection to the physicality of train tracks, rail ties and site detritus. The main trestle sculpture will be a conceptual fallen train track “spur” that reflects a trestle bridge. The NP Blacksmith Shop trestle installation will physically explore the typical rail transportation form, the trestle as figural representation, and expand sculptural and public art vocabulary and personal spatial vernacular.

Pete Driessen is a Minneapolis based multipractice visual artist, curator and cultural producer who creates abstract and sociopolitical paintings, mixed media ship fleets, found object installations, conceptual art statements, interdisciplinary public art, and performative participatory projects.

Driessen received his MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, VT, and BA from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul. Pete was recently named Minneapolis City Pages 2015 Artist of the Year, and has been awarded numerous regional grants and awards, including a 2015 Jerome/FSP Fellowship at Franconia Sculpture Park for his Franconia Boat Tower project, a 2014 MRAC Next Step grant for his Silverwood Park sculpture project, and two MSAB Artist Initiative grants (2017, 2013). Pete’s exhibition record includes national and regional solo and group exhibitions at a wide range of venues. He currently directs and curates a hybridic, experimental garage-based gallery known as TuckUnder Projects that specializes in emerging and midcareer artists focusing on conceptual visual arts practice, curatorial projects, and institutional critique.

[thesoapfactory-art]

HERE COMES JESUS

Come to The Soap Factory on Saturday, April 15 to have your picture taken with Jesus and the Gang. The installation will be open from 7-10pm with a screening of the final episode starting at 7:30pm.

The Soap Factory Presents: Here Comes Jesus: A Video Series by Joshua McGarvey. The artist will be releasing the video series overtime on the Soap Factory's blog leading up to a final video to be screened in the Soap Factory's lower level on April 15th.

Jesus is a crinkled mirror. Jesus is Play-Doh. Jesus invented a table. Stemming from one scene in Mel Gibson’s film about the crucifixion of Jesus in which the Christian messiah is shown building a table for chairs, the series embraces the ambiguous identity of god's only son. Here Comes Jesus probes the westernization of the religious figure Jesus. Absurdity ensues as narrative and metaphor are conformed to relate to my own experience.

Release dates of videos:

March 8 :

Part 01: WWJD

https://vimeo.com/207402997

Part 02: Penance Therapy Enacted, Scene 2 - Resurrection Pig & the Dire Wolf

https://vimeo.com/207403335

March 15 :

Part 03: Dream #1 - The Emotional Antagonisms Concerning the Resurrection Tree

https://vimeo.com/208411433

Part 04: Pondering the Preservation of the Resurrection Tree - David & Goliath (Who Stole the Resurrection Tree First?)

https://vimeo.com/208411772

March 22 :

Part 05: The Flood

https://vimeo.com/209502633

Part 06: Storms Never Last (Do They, Baby?)

https://vimeo.com/209503556

March 29 :

Part 07: On Becoming A Waterfall

https://vimeo.com/210523079

April 5 :

Part 08: Dream #3 - Eden Gentrifies Tornado Alley

https://vimeo.com/211602405

Part 09: Jesus And The Secret Cave Table

https://vimeo.com/211593457

April 12 :

Part 10: Palm Sunday - Jesus & His Donkey Run the Ark Aground on a Sandbar (Walking On Water)

Part 11: Dream #3 - Walking On Water

Part 12: Screened at the Soap Factory on Saturday April 15 at 7:30 PM