Two Nights with Artist Jessica Frelinghuysen

Mark your calendars for this month, Detroit artist, Jessica Frelinghuysen, will be joining the Mattress Factory for two events that explore the use of language and community through story collecting, literary readings, and music!

Two of Frelinghuysen's pieces are currently featured in the Detroit: Artists in Residence exhibition. "My City is Your City" and "Sound-Collecting Suit and Backpack" are on-going investigations that document audio from four years of living in Hamtramck, MI, located two miles north of Detroit. Frelinghuysen's sound-collecting suit allows her to acclimate to the sounds and voices of a foreign city and collect shared experiences of those who live there.

Join us on March 14th for the "Let Me Tell You" Pub Crawl ($5, but you must RSVP[at]matterss.org because space is limited) starting at 8pm at the Mattress Factory. You are invited to join Frelinghuysen and writer, Steve Hughes, and then explore the North Side, collecting new stories and conversations by drawing and writing on your bar napkins as you go. These napkins will then come part of a one-night-only collaborative installation that will be installed in the Mattress Factory lobby during the Good Tyme Writer's Buffet the following evening.

Jessica Frelinghuysen, My City is Your City, 2013

If you aren't able to go out for drinks on Friday, then come in for delicious food on Saturday! On March 15th, the Mattress Factory will be hosting Good Tyme Writer's Buffet a neighborhood potluck where six writers (Sherrie Flick, Steve Hughes, Joy Katz, Lori Jakiela, Daniel McCloskey, and Dave Newman) will read their works on neighborhoods and community while visitors celebrate with music, food, and good company. If you haven't seen Frelinghuysen's work, come at 6:30pm to check it out. The potluck will be at 7pm and the readings at 7:30pm. Admission is $10 ($5 for MF members) or FREE for those who wish to bring a dish to share.

To reserve a spot for either, or both, of these wonderful events, please respond to RSVP[at]matterss.org or call 412.231.3169.

Jessica Frelinghuysen, Sound-Collecting Suit, 2013

For more information about Jessica's work, check out her awesome review in February's ArtForum!

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!

Visiting the Mattress Factory Museum's New Exhibitions!

Karen Forney, Mattress Factory education intern, shares her thoughts:

This is an exciting time at the Mattress Factory! If you haven’t visited in a while, there’s a lot of great new work to see: THREE brand new exhibitions across three buildings, and all included in your museum admission! That’s a pretty good deal don’t you think? To sweeten the deal, I wanted to share my thoughts on the new exhibitions to give you an idea of what to expect when you visit.

  

The first thing you will notice when you come to the Mattress Factory is a large brown creature in the parking lot. That Godzilla-sized chupacabra is actually a really big prehistoric sloth, a found object installed by artist Scott Hocking, one of nine artists participating in the museum’s residency program. It welcomes visitors coming to the main building to see the show Detroit: Artists in Residence.

DETROIT: ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

500 Sampsonia

“Here to see the museum today? Great!”

Your friendly Visitor Services Coordinator, Maria, will welcome you to the museum, take your admission, and suggest you start on the 4^th floor and work your way down. So grab your handouts, affix your museum tab to your collar, and head up to 4.

As you step out of the elevator on the 4^th floor and let the doors close behind you, pause and listen; you’ll notice a variety of mingling sounds from each of the four new Detroit installations. You’ll hear a faint murmuring of voices and music from the hanging cans in Jessica Freylinghuysen’s My City is Your City, the chiming of clocks, bells, and excerpts of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring from Frank Pahl’s 1913 Revisited in Three Parts, the ominous clanging and buzzing of power tools in Nicola Kuperus & AdamLee Miller’s Diptyching, and, more subtly, the occasional clicks of heaters and electronic devices transforming wind turbine and solar power into heat that warms the Michigan picture rocks in Design 99’s Following the Sun 2. Sound is what linked these pieces for me.

On the third floor you turn to your left from the elevator to see Cured by Russ Orlando. A blue-lit room enshrines auto parts encrusted in salt, hanging silently from shiny new meat hooks. In contrast to the 4^th floor, this room is quiet. Dead quiet, except for the stray pieces of salt that crunch between the soles of your shoes and the white tile of the floor.

Scott Hocking’s Coronal Mass Ejection is in the Mattress Factory’s lower level, a space known for it’s original cellar-like stone walls. You’ll see more of the quirky figures and beasts similar to the sloth you saw in the parking lot: a pyramid of biblical-looking figures in the back of the room, dinosaur heads hanging from the walls, and a hot metal train car, also called a torpedo car, rests like the sunken Titanic in the middle of the floor. If you’re super sure nobody is looking, do you think you might be able to climb the ladder and look into the torpedo car itself for a better look? If you feel adventurous, and nobody is looking, you should go exploring.

JANINE ANTONI -- WITHIN

1414 Monterey

When you’ve finished seeing the Detroit show and head back to the lobby, Maria will check in with you to see how you’re doing and tell you how to get to the annex gallery at 1414 Monterey to see Janine Antoni’s solo show Within.

What interests me most about Janine’s installation is her use of vast amounts of beautiful empty space. The entrance features a completely empty room leading towards a massive tree trunk and root system that has been split in half--one half on the floor, the other half floating into the ceiling. What you will discover upstairs is that the tree passes completely through the ceiling and up through the floor to become part of the table holding curious cast resin body parts and bones in Graft. Hip bones appear in several of Antoni’s installations in the building, so be on the lookout: hip bones are what shaped the raku fired bowls in Gertrude, Margaret, and Mary, and what may seem like an unused room has a bigger surprise for those who are patient and take a moment to consider the space in Crowned. You may find yourself wanting to sit for an extended period of time watching Honey Baby, a collaboration with choreographer Stephen Petronio. That’s ok; it’s what the bench is for!

CHIHARU SHIOTA -- TRACE OF MEMORY

516 Sampsonia

First of all, this building is amazing, and I think this new installation is a lovely compliment to the previous installation at this site before the building was renovated. The previous installation, In the Dwelling-House, artist Ruth Stanford researched the previous inhabitants of the house and installed tombstone-like memorials in the windows listing each family members’ names and occupations.

Similar to Stanford’s work, the webs in Trace of Memory gives form to the unseen memories of this house. Every room is a cocoon of black yarn suspending different objects in each room – a desk, a pile of books, old suitcases, chairs, a wedding dress, a single pristine white bed. Exploring this house reminded me of the heroine in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey; I felt like Catherine exploring the abbey and wondering excitedly if it was haunted, if there were any secret passageways I could discover, and what really happened in this house so long ago? In my quest, I discovered a storage closet, the bathroom, and some quirky dead-ends that you’ll always find in a fabulous old house. Every ambient sound made my hair stand on end; was that just another visitor walking around upstairs, or a ghost? I could have walked forever through that building; the presence that exists in those spaces where Shiota has woven her webs is truly haunting.

For me, installation art is unique because it is experiential. Everyone’s experience will be different, and what activates the artwork is your participation. When you go to an installation art museum, you’re not going to just see the artwork. You are going to complete the artwork by interacting with it. I think of it as a collaboration with the artist. When you think of yourself as a collaborator with the artist, that immediately makes your participation important and relevant. And I think that’s awesome!

So, fellow potential collaborators, I’ve shared my experience of the new exhibitions; now I want to hear about yours. Come visit the Mattress Factory and get a chance to be a part of this great new work in Pittsburgh, and let me know what you think by e-mailing me at eduintern@mattress.org! And stay tuned to special events coming up including ARTLabs, performances, and other educational opportunities.