RECAP // Best of Instagram 2015!

What a year it's been! A lot has happened at the Mattress Factory, and what better way to remember it all than to embrace the nostalgia and reminisce with all the awesome pictures taken by visitors this year. The #mattressfactory hashtag has over 7,500 posts now (only a few of those are actually mattress related)! We thank you all for your continued support of the museum, and for documenting your visits so beautifully via Instagram. So here's to you MF visitors - our favorite Mattress Factory photos of the year!

Permanent Installations

by James Turrell, Greer Lankton, and Yayoi Kusama

photo creds: @petra_palumnbo, @paigebeers, @heatherkresge.photo, @ecervantez, @jendingding, @erinhollywould

The MF Garden

by Winifred Lutz

@412made, @davidsciortino, @ainemarielaff, @mzicka, @ofkrista

Factory Installed @ 1414 Monterey Street

by Jacob Douenias + Ethan Frier, Julie Schenkelberg, Anne Lindberg, and John Morris

@santi1916, @gregoryoleander, @ueckerist, @sluna7, @stripedarchitect

Factory Installed @ 500 Sampsonia Way

by Rob Voerman, Bill Smith, Lisa Sigal, and Marnie Weber

@codymsolberg, @pswansong, @cecilopezgonzalezduran, @marnieweberofficial, @santi1916, @steven_werth

Trace of Memory
by Chiharu Shiota

@kaela_speicher, @saracals, @moeian, @instakneels, @alk5161

Events

Dinner Lab, M is for Mattress Factory: Urban Garden Party, and an MF Wedding

@ginana17, @jeshaka, @mrbattle, @gavinbenjamin

Mattress Factory Views

@wanderburgher, @conormcgrann

Fun @ the Museum

@themightykim, @lordhissyfit, @kainazamaria, @ljhotojourneys, @heidimariemuller, @ayedud

That's all for this year folks! Don't forget to follow us on the Mattress Factory Instagram, and keep using the #mattressfactory tag in all your 2016 MF adventures for your chance to be featured as a guest photo on our account!

RECAP // Mini-Factory: SEASONS!

What a beautiful time of year! Tje sunshine, breeze and slight chill in the air made for a perfect chance to talk about SEASONS at Mini-Factory, the Mattress Factory's program for adventurous young art explorers. Using two great installations as our focal point, we discussed the characteristics of each season such as hot versus cold, green versus brown, or growing versus hibernating.

Garden Installation by Winifred Lutz provided the perfect example for our group to discover and talk about these SEASONal traits. Leaves are just beginning to turn colors of yellow, red and brown, yet the grass is still tall and green. The breeze was chilly yet the sun was bright and sky blue - a perfect Fall day to explore these color and temperature changes through landscape art.

Rolf Julius provides a more abstract example of SEASONS with Ash located at the Mattress Factory's 1414 Monterey satellite building. Here, our group of 3 to 5 year-olds listened to a synthesis of crickets and radiator whistles pouring out of two terra cotta flower pots covered in ash. The sounds of crickets are reminiscent of warm summer nights, contrasted by the whistle of a radiator which makes us think of chilly winter days. If you could choose a sound to put in the flower pot, what would it be? A kiss! ...well that reminds us of Valentine's day when it is cold outside.

Returning to the Garden, we set out on our activity - a chameleon for all SEASONS. Each young artist was given a blank picture of a chameleon along with a basket of crayons and colored pencils. Choose where the chameleon would live in the garden, then reflect this in his colors. Would he live in a tree? ... in the grass and dirt? ... on the pile of yellow and red leaves? There were green and brown chameleons, yellow and purple chameleons ... each one was different and unique depending on the area of the garden, yet all reflected the colors of the SEASON.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3 - 5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10am on October 24th for LIGHT.

RECAP // Mini-Factory: PATTERNS!

PATTERNS surround us in our world. They can be created using colors, shapes, and different sizes ... on our clothes, dinner plates and sidewalks, PATTERNS allow us to find repetition at its best. Thick, white stripes on a street indicate it is safe to cross. Rows of alternating red rectangles reach up to the sky exemplifying the craftsmanship of a multi-storied building (like the Mattress Factory!). Some artists use PATTERNS to convey feelings, set a mood, or shock our senses. Mini-Factory visited shift lens by Anne Lindberg. Using tightly pulled thread secured to each side of the room, a colorful yet surreal crisscross PATTERN is created. Light filters from the windows behind allowing colors to bend and play with your visual senses. The consensus? ... Very cool!

Yayoi Kusama uses polka-dots throughout her installations so viewers may experience her point of view - literally - and the ensuing feelings. What do you feel when walking through Infinity Dots Mirrored Room and Repetitive Vision? Calm, jolted, dizzy? The abundance of polka-dots plays a large role with how we feel in these installations.

PATTERNS also occur naturally, such as the lines in a blade of grass, the veins of a leaf and the speckles in a piece of granite. Our young artists were given magnifying glasses and asked to walk through Winifred Lutz's Garden in search of patterns. Leaves, bricks, rocks and water were inspected for naturally occurring PATTERNS - success!

Of course given the chance, these energetic artists love to create something new. Using their imagination and inspiration learning and observing PATTERNS, our young crew created their own installations with various materials such as yarn, stickers, markers, pipe cleaners and tape. There were PATTERNS of all kinds; two-toned stripes, colorful polka-dots, sparkling spirals, and more.

Mini-Factory is an interactive learning program for children ages 3-5 years old and their parents or caregivers. Using contemporary installation art, parents and children will explore new ideas and concepts from the everyday world. Join us at 10am on August 22, 2015 to explore the theme of SCIENCE.

GardenLab@510

As Pittsburgh moves into warmer and sunnier weather, consider visiting one of the Mattress Factory's outdoor projects: Rose Clancy's GardenLab@510. This summer marks the fourth year that Clancy has worked with abandoned sites neighboring the Mattress Factory. GardenLab@510 is the second of two reclaimed spaces that Clancy has used to explore the relationship between neglect and nurture. Clancy experiments using aspects of archeology, gardening, sculpture, and her personal history. In the spirit of the Mattress Factory's focus on how a site influences how an artwork is developed, Clancy reflected on how her more recent GardenLab@510 has evolved:

Originally, the GardenLabs project began when I transplanted potatoes from a former project to 516. Once GardenLab@516 ended, I made elements of that project portable and moved them to 510. During GardenLab@510's first year, I observed the natural conditions of the site and then worked with those conditions to maximize the success of a garden in that space. I also kept some of the elements that already existed in that space: some plants and some man-made items. In contrast to 516, the garden at 510 is not completely enclosed. This has allowed for more community access: there have been tours, an ArtLab performance with children dressed as bees, and many impromptu conversations with neighbors passing by. As this became apparent to me, I wanted to show appreciation to my neighbors so I grew communal herbs. This year's focus at 510 is on the garden as a studio. I'll be making work in a bean house that will house a workbench. Some of the work that I make could make its way back into the community...

Clancy works with aspects of gardening, but she does not consider herself a gardener. She makes choices in her GardenLabs primarily on how: elements can be metaphors for her personal history, how plants respond to being neglected or nurtured, and also how the community responds to the plants and overall project. While Clancy highlights the conceptual aspects of her GardenLabs, she recognizes that she is working with actual plants in a real neighborhood and that she must be sensitive to how this ecosystem evolves. Her choices affect nature and the neighborhood, and their evolution affects the practical and conceptual choices in her artmaking. Clancy invites visitors to stop by anytime, but encourages people to make more than one trip since the space changes so much from week-to-week.

Check out images of GardenLab@510 on Rose Clancy's Facebook page.

EARTH DAY at the MATTRESS FACTORY

The natural world, including human beings, is connected through a sacred energy.  When you walk through the woods or a beautiful garden you are connected to this wonderful energy. Earth Day helps us to remember this and to realize that we must protect and take care of our natural environment. Art can represent the spirit and beauty of the natural world by exactly replicating nature (such as photography and certain painting processes) or through more conceptual art, representing the spirit or ideas of the artist such as Winifred Lutz’ Garden at the Mattress Factory. With this in mind, we are planning plenty of Earth-friendly events to celebrate Earth Day!  

Earth Day at the Mattress Factory will take place Saturday, April 6, 2013. The museum will host three special events: Backyard Composting, Water & You: How Rain Gardens Clean & Protect the Environment and Art Lab: From Herbs to Art.  

Backyard Composting will be held from 10am to noon. Not sure what to do with your kitchen, garden and yard scraps? Would you like natural, home-made compost for your lawns and gardens? Expand your recycling efforts to include kitchen scraps and yard debris. Nancy Martin-Silver of the Pennsylvania Resource Council--who taught the Rain Barrel workshop, “Celebrate the Rain!” last fall--returns to present this workshop. Backyard Composting will cover the importance and benefits of composting, the process of setting up a compost pile, proper maintenance, and ways of using finished compost. Participants will receive an Earth Machine Compost Bin, which is approved across the state as an ideal bin for urban and suburban areas, and has an eighty-gallon capacity. Registration is required and costs $50 single/$55 couple (includes one compost unit per registration). Sign up at www.prc.org or call (412) 488-7490, ext. 226. 

Water & You: How Rain Gardens Clean and Protect the Environment will follow the Backyard Composting workshop. Free with museum admission, Water & You will be hosted by The Urban Gardeners, the local and creative North Side gardening center and artists. The Urban Gardeners are not strangers to the Mattress Factory: in 2009, they created a beautiful site-specific living plant installation, Lawn, outside the entrance to 1414 Monterey Street. We are thrilled to have them back to lead this interactive demonstration about the significance of rain gardens and how they aid in naturally protecting our environments. The Urban Gardeners will also discuss what watersheds are and how they function in rain gardens. The Urban Gardeners will provide useful information about how to build and maintain your own rain garden so we all can do our part in saving the environment. 

Art Lab: From Herbs to Art is the final installment of Earth Day at the Mattress Factory and will take place from 1pm-4pm. This special ArtLab will be guided by museum educator Rosalind Santavicca. Rosalind will demonstrate the special technique she uses to create watercolor prints of beautiful herbs, plants and flowers. Participants will be able to pick from a selection of herbs, or use leaves from plants in the Mattress Factory’s own urban garden. This is a fun project that can be done at home with your friends and family as well! ArtLab is free with museum admission.

POSTED BY CAITLIN Read All Posts by Caitlin