Hedge Magic, with projects by Jess Hirsch and David Hamlow
June 2 – August 5, 2012
Participating artists: Chris Lawrence, David Hamlow, Jess Hirsch, Amy Reckley, Meredith Foster, Peter Goche, and Keith Lemley
The Soap Factory has always been a nexus of transformation between the various states of matter; artists take this alchemical process further into a transformation of states of being. Filling the Soap Factory’s Victorian warehouse space with site-specific installations, the artists in Hedge Magic look at the processes of transformation and culture through the super-natural lens of art, with the artist as the interrogator of the secret process of nature.
Peter Goche takes the natural forms of the Mississippi ox-bow, forms made over millennia, and transforms them into sinuous sculptures of crafted wood. Meredith Foster also looks to the ageless river for her inspiration, drawing out the river and its landscape through water and ash. Keith Lemley works with wood and neon, creating an illuminated arbor of wonder with the ancient timber of The Soap Factory, while Amy Reckley gathers material from the building and its environs for an explosion of sculptural gesture. Chris Lawrence arranges objects into patterns that evoke the hidden occult geometries of the gallery space. Jess Hirsch takes abandoned and forgotten furniture and transforms it into sculpture, changing the pieces beyond recognition and then re-presenting them to the original owners. David Hamlow takes the refuse and detritus of our commercial life and fashions this material as building blocks for his own interpretive structures.
Join the Soap Factory on the night of June 9 for Northern Spark.
David Hamlow will be making bricks of recycled cardboard and plastic packaging. Bring cardboard to contribute, or use David’s stockpile to help create bricks and add to an ever-expanding room-sized structure. Jess Hirsch will host an old-fashioned tent revival in front of The Soap Factory, exorcising the demons out of abandoned furniture. Her white tent will be full of sage, smoke, eerie music, and candlelight while hosting tarot card readings by Stefanie Motta and vocal loops by Tabitha Sheets.
