Family Day

November 29th is Family Day at the Mattress Factory! That means from 11am to 4pm we’ve planned fun activities for your whole family to come and enjoy. No extra charge - it’s included with your museum admission. We assure you that these collaborative activities are fun for ALL AGES and each one is related to one of the artists currently on exhibit in the galleries.

Some details on the projects:

Scavenger Hunt

Not sure where to start? Maybe this is your first time at the museum? Try the scavenger hunt first. This interactive activity is a fun way to get kids excited about exploring the museum, and together you can generate thoughtful ideas about the artwork that you see.

Gigantic Kinetic Mobile

Play with silhouettes and light as this large collaborative sculpture comes to light behind a curtain. Inspired by the work of Frank Pahl, an artist featured the current DETROIT: ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE exhibition in the main building.

Tin Can Telephones

Create and decorate your own tin can telephones and transmit your own stories and sounds with your family and friends, also inspired by a featured DETROIT: ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE artist Jessica Frelinghuysen.

Draw Clouds

Contemplate the sky and the outdoors and draw what you see. This project is inspired by Design 99’s solar and wind-powered installation Following the Sun 2 in the DETROIT:ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE exhibition.

 

Trace of Memory

Add your own web of yarn and weave in your personal trace of memories in a large collaborative yarn installation inspired by Chiharu Shiota’s installation Trace of Memory in the new 516 Sampsonia Way gallery.

Hot Chocolate Bar

There’s a lot of art to see and a lot of projects to do, so we know you’ll need a break at some point in the day. That’s why we made sure to set up a FREE Hot Chocolate Bar with all the fixins. That’s a treat you can really get into.

In addition to the activities in the lobby, we’ll have a lot of extra museum educators and volunteers in the galleries to help make the day fun and educational. Hope to see your entire family there!

November 2nd ARTLab Presents: Tied to Memory

If you were asked to draw or make a model of your childhood home from memory, how accurate would it be? What would your house include? Maybe more importantly, what would you FORGET to include?

Our next ARTLab is inspired by Chiharu Shiota installation Trace of Memory located in the Mattress Factory's brand new exhibition space at 516 Sampsonia Way.

When Shiota visited the Mattress Factory in 2011, she was inspired by the old Victorian rowhouse at 516 Sampsonia and curious about the previous inhabitants and their lives. “I work always with someone’s memory because it is strong and it exists but I cannot touch the memory,” says Shiota about her work in an interview with Felice and Shannon of the Mattress Factory Education Department. She describes her use of black yarn as a 3D drawing material that she weaves through the air to create space, and sees the act of weaving the yarn in these spaces as a way to give form to memory and create a new world. Human relationships are complex, and she describes the yarn as analogous to human connections:

“The string makes tension or is tangled or is loose. The string is like feeling or relationship to people, and the relationship is connected, or loose or tight. I feel like this is just like a mirror of my feelings.”

For Shiota, the yarn gives form to unseen feelings, memories, and history, and once the installation is cut down, the memory of the installation is what remains.

What we learn from Shiota’s process is that making art (through any medium) is a way of remembering. In our November 2^nd ARTLab, visitors will be invited to recreate a model of their childhood home, and through this process of artistic creation, allow the faculties of the brain that conjure memories and create art to work simultaneously. ARTLab participation is open to all visitors and is included with admission to the museum.

BONUS: Richard Morris is a former resident of 516 Sampsonia Way and shared photos of the house when it was occupied.

MF at 35: Barbara Luderowski

We're celebrating a big milestone in 2013: the Mattress Factory's 35th anniversary! Our office has been abuzz with all of the wonderful things to come: our 35th Anniversary Bash next week, our Urban Garden Party: Soul Factory and Community Garden Party in June, the summer opening of our new building at 516 Sampsonia Way with an installation by Chiharu Shiota, our fall exhibitions Detroit Artists in Residence and Janine Antoni, as well as our 35th Anniversary Art Auction in October. So much is in front of us, we sometimes forget to look back at how we got here. If you know about the Mattress Factory, then you know about our founder, president and co-director Barbara Luderowski. Barbara, an artist herself, has a story for every year this museum has been alive. And then some. We caught her this week and asked her to talk about how the MF came to be, and this is what she had to say:

When I bought the Mattress Factory building 35 years ago, I had no idea that this is what it would end up being. 

I was looking for a new space, because I had just had a show at the Carnegie Museum and I was seeking a bigger studio. As a sculptor, I envisioned a place where I could work with other artists, because at the time, Pittsburgh didn’t have a strong identity as a city with a community of artists. I came across this huge empty building, which had formerly been a Sterns & Foster mattress factory. 

In the very early days, artists rented studios throughout the building, and we started a vegetarian co-operative restaurant to bring many different people together. We had a little bit of everything, good food, performance art, visual art, experimental theater, even a children’s theater group. There was a lot going on all over the place. It was a true collaboration.

I had absolutely no recognition, at all, that I was biting off more than I could chew. I just did it anyway. I didn’t have some grand vision all those years ago—I was just trying to create a place where I wanted to be, with other creative people. That place didn’t exist, so together we made it happen.

Even as we began to focus on installation art, we didn’t set out to become a museum. It happened organically. It came out of the energy of the art—the intersection of art and sculpture and architecture and sound and space and light. There wasn’t an end destination in mind. It has always been about the journey.

I got sucked in because it was a challenge, and it was a way to combine my interests in contemporary art, architecture, design, community development, and collaborating with other artists. When people said it couldn’t be done, we did it anyway. If we stumbled upon a problem, we went about solving it our own way.

Now, 35 years later, all I can say is, “to be continued…”

     

     Barbara Luderowski

     President and Co-Director