The Soap Factory

The “Soap Factory” in Minneapolis was a worn out brick building with railroad tracks behind it. In the back of the building, each window had a letter that spelled SOAP FACTOY. When I walked up to the porch like entrance that curved like the letter “L”, I saw rusty colored railings and stairs. There was a long red vinyl bench and a long wooden bench to the left. Right next to the wooden bench on the left was a black equipment that kind of looks like a barbeque grill.
Reading about the history of the building was interesting because it is an old building dating back to the 1800’s that had lots of owners. The last owner was “National Purity,” in 1924, which became the actual soap factory for 75 years. National Purity manufactured soap and detergent for dairy farmers to clean the waste from milking equipment, milk tanks, and cows. Later in 1960, it included products used for cleaning, maintenance, and sanitation. When National Purity moved out, the old building became vacant. David Graeve at the “No Name Gallery,” luckily bid and bought the place for one dollar in 1995. The “No Name Gallery” was a non-profit that had contemporary art exhibits from emerging young artists and well known artists. When the “No Name Gallery” moved to the “Soap Factory” it kept the name.
Walking through the door entrance, I see the receptionist desk and I noticed right away the large sized lighted white umbrellas above it. Most of the ceilings in hallways and some rooms had large lighted white umbrellas all bunched together. The umbrellas on top of others remind me of a community of jellyfishes in water. I really like the umbrellas because it’s so pretty and I’ve never seen anything like it. The rooms had wooden floors, brick walls, rusted pipe lines in the wooden ceiling, wooden square poles in the middle of rooms, and one room even had an elevator that was used for freight loading. There were large rooms and small rooms. The smaller rooms were used for playing videos that were projected on projector screens. I saw conceptual art on the floor, walls, ceilings, and basically every space of the room. I walked into a room and the lights automatically turned off and everything was dark except for the glowing tape in the room. I thought someone turned off the lights on me! Then, I realized conceptual art can be so creative and cool!

The first artwork I chose was by the artist Allison Owen. She didn’t give her art a title, it just had the title “Untitled.” Her art piece was creative and unique because she collected debris from the gallery onto adhesive tape to make her art. When I looked real close at her art it looked like she had all kinds of debris like dirt, dust, small pieces of paper, confetti, fluffy things, hair, and many other stuff. The colors of the debris were mostly brown in color and had texture. It looked like she took the pieces of tape and cut them into the design she wanted and glued them to the two walls in one of the larger rooms. I like what she said in her artist statement “a parasitic relationship with the host space.” I like that she is relating her art to women’s household activities and duties like cleaning. Most people don’t realize how much stuff can be collected when cleaning. But at the same time, Allison is giving the gallery walls a creative touch of decoration using simple patterns that you could see if you look around the building.

The second artwork I chose was by the artist Wendy DesChene. Her art title was “Pinkhorn Duckfeet - Generation 9.” She used colorful acrylic paint in colors pink, gold yellow, green, red, blue, sky blue, and purple. When I first saw her painting, I thought it was a huge pink peacock’s feather. After reading her artist statement, it is really showing nine generations of decay using distortion to separate and end each generation. I think that her mural is portraying that after many years, the “Soap Factory” got old and worn out from different owners. And, now artists have the benefit of using the building’s structures as part of their artwork pieces. I really like the ideas and meaning that she is portraying in her art piece.

The “Soap Factory” gallery space inside and outside wasn’t what I expected at all. After seeing all the very creative conceptual art, I realized how cool it was to see how much space each artist used and how they were able to use different parts of the rooms as part of their art. I’m glad I got to see the “Soap Factory” and the many creative conceptual arts.

Minnesota Center for Book Art and Rosalux Gallery

The exhibition “None of the Above” at Minnesota Center for Book Arts was designed like a collection of mail arts from various artists. On the walls, had lines of mail art bagged and hung on strings. In the middle, sides, and corners of the exhibition had the mail arts of various artists inside glassed cases and glassed shelves. There were mini booklets made out of toilet paper, rubber stamping, postal stamping, trading cards, bookmarks, photos, comics, postal cards, and homage or tribute arts to influential artists. On the right of the exhibition, was a store with colorful patterned papers, artwork, and cards. To the left of the store was a place where artists work to make prints. I saw work tables, printing presses, rollers, paints, inks, tools, chemical solvents, wooden frames, and more.

Most of the artworks are assemblings of mail art. The mail art are collections of postal mail, rubber stamping, trading cards, concrete poetry, and visual poetry. The mail art collections were small like the size of Hallmark cards and 8.5X11 inches letter paper size. All of the artwork was very colorful in color and each had its own different look especially the artworks that are hanging on the walls. Interestingly, when I looked closely at each artwork I saw the different printing press processes in relief, intaglio, lithography, and screenprinting. I have never seen this kind of work and I thought they were neat because they had more texture and I could see how much detail there was in the pictures. The rest of the artworks had photos, drawings, rubber stamps in wooden boxes, pictures from magazine, cardboard boxes, collages, currency, and artistic handwritings or letters in them.

I thought the exhibition was unique because the viewer can see a variety of mail art next to a printing press work setting. The artworks are on the left side and the printing press work room on the right side. Having both visuals gave me a more understanding knowledge of how the assembling of mail art was done in a printing press type of environment.

The exhibition “Praise and Punishment” at the Rosalux Gallery was behind the cafeteria. There was a second level where more paintings and art were. Some of the art were large size paintings. Others were large drawings right on the wall with cassette tape strings used as part of the art. A few of the art were cassette tape strings glued into small frames and white background board.
Most of the artwork’s titles seemed to tell what the art was trying to portray.
The painting called “Spotlight” by the artist Toni Galio had a girl with her face, nose, and chin pointed rather high up. On the floor, the spot where she stands is a white circle of light. The way she is posing with her left hand on her hip behind her and right arm and foot is in front seems to portray that she feels proud. There are men dressed in suits behind her. Two of the men has their backs turned to her and one man looks like he is going to walk pass her with his head looking down to the floor looking rather sad. His right hand is in his right pants pocket and the colors in the background are black. The men look disappointed. According to the title of the painting and the way the painting is portrayed tells me that the girl feels special or has a proud authority over the men behind her.
The painting called “Praise and Punishment” by the artist Toni Galio had a girl with a smiling face holding a bouquet of white flowers looking at us. A few white flowers and petals fell to the ground by her feet. Behind her there is a boy sitting in a wooden brown chair in a black background with his right elbow resting on the arm of the chair. His head is looking down to the floor and with his cheek resting on his right hand. According to the art title and the painting, it showing me that the girl is happy and holding white flowers because she is praised for being good. The boy is looking very sad in a blacker background behind the girl because he is being punished for being bad. I believe that the title of the paintings by Toni Galio, portrays how the person in the painting feels or thinks.
I liked both exhibits at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Rosalux Gallery. The artworks I saw were new to me and I learned that there are many different types and styles of art.

The Minnesota State Capitol was important for Minnesota because the artists wanted to portray how much Minnesota or the Northwest’s has grown into a modern, westernized, and civilized society. The State Capitol was influenced by Beaux-Arts and Renaissance architecture in the time it was built. The artists wanted to give American buildings an ancient architectural design that is similar to Greek and Roman buildings. You can see Beaux-Art and Renaissance characteristics inside and outside of the building. There is the grand entrances and staircases, the large dome, painted ceilings, masonry floors and walls, arched windows and doorways, painted and sculptured mascarons in rooms, women and men that look like gods and goddesses, murals, life size figural sculptures, balustrades on the stairs, pilasters, and large columns that can weigh more than 800 tons. The Capitol would have modernized technology in heating, electricity, elevators, and more.
The walls, floors, and stairs are decorated with marble and stone in many colors of white, yellow, gray, blue, green, pinkish red, and dark red. Most of the walls are limestone. There are huge sets of columns that have different types of stones and marbles. Most of the stones are right from Minnesota. The marbles are mostly from Italy and all over the world.

Right in the middle of the marbled floor of the rotunda is a glass star framed of brass to represent the North Star and provide light to the basement. When you look up in the rotunda, you see a crystal chandelier right in the middle of the domed ceiling that is decorated in dark teal blue and gold. The architect wanted visitors to look up and see an enormously beautiful dome. Not too far under the dome are decorated with a series of four murals that depicts “The Civilization of the Northwest” painted by the artist Edward Simmons. All the panels were made in Paris, France on a seamless canvas and shipped to Minnesota. “The Civilization of the Northwest” panels are very colorful in green, blue, pink, and flesh tones. The colors compliment the dark teal blue and gold dome nicely. The four panels have a young man who represents the brave American Spirit. The artist chose the theme “The Civilization of the Northwest” to show how northwestern America started with hope and wisdom. By being able to get control of the American land, being able to utilize the earth’s minerals, and through agriculture the northwestern grew to power and wealth.

The paintings that are realism are in the governor’s reception room in the west corridor. One of the realism paintings are “The Battle of Nashville” painted by Howard Pyle. It is a painting of men in Minnesota in action at a battle in Nashville under the command of Colonel L.F. Hubbard. In the background, you see a hills covered with large clouds of smoke. Men are dressed in blue uniform and blue caps on their head lying very low on the dried yellow grass hill. You can see that there are still snow on the ground. Most of the men are holding guns in their hands. When you look at the painting you can see that Howard Pyle can really depict the emotions in the men’s facial features. You’ll see men shot at, wounded, and bleeding.

The paintings that are allegory are “The Contemplative Spirit of the East”, “Messrs. Garnsey and Willett’s Lunettes”, and “Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” I chose the painting “The Contemplative Spirit” which is located in the eastern skylight where the Supreme Court Chamber is. This is the perfect place to put the symbolic painting since the Supreme Court is where the seven Justices in Minnesota come together to listen to cases about if the law could have violated a person’s right. The artist is Kenyon Cox. The painting has three women all sitting on yellow Kasota stone. The lady in the middle has wings and she represents “Thought” and is depicting her in deep thinking. The two ladies on either sides of “Thought” have their heads turned towards her and look like they are stressing her. The woman to the right is “Law” and she is holding in her hand a bridle. The woman the left is “Letters” and she is holding a book and on the book cover is a bridle.

Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum

This is my first time at the Weisman museum! I would say that this museum has unique features on the outside and it is plain and small when you walk around inside. I like the views I saw from looking out the window and on the balcony. It was an enjoyable view.

I really like Abdi Roble’s photographs. His black and white pictures really draws your attention to the events that are happening and facial expressions that he was able to capture.

By reading the didactics, it shows Abdi Roble's outlook in Somali life from Kenya, Africa to the United States. I learned that even though Somalis have westernized a little in the United States, they still have their Somali values, norms, and traditions. Abdi's photos gives us viewers an idea and to see what the living conditions were like in Kenya, Africa for Somali men, women, and children in the home and in school. Then he shows photos from all over the United States of Somalis of how much their society has grown over the years. The photos show that more Somali’s are having decent jobs because of education such as the professor at University of Minnesota, a dentist, and a pharmacy drug store owner.

The first photo I chose was the photo of a Somali style wedding. It had about five women in their traditional dresses. It looked like there were a grandmother, a mother, and daughters/ sisters. They were holding hands together in a circle and two girls had their eyes closed. It looked like it could be a prayer or a blessing. It gives me an idea of how Somali style weddings are like.

The second photo I chose was the photo of a group of boys that are sitting down under a tree with their teacher. They are reading off of large tree barks that have words written on it. Abdi Roble noted that, “school supplies are a luxury.” It shows me how much we have in America and how less people still have in other parts of the world.

I can relate to his photographs because I am from a culture that shares similar goals, norms, and values. And because of war, my parents could not live in their country and had come to the United States to have better opportunities. To me, Abdi Roble’s photographs show how much a Somali society have grown in a few years.

I think that Robert Rauschenberg’s exhibit was impressive. He had old newspaper clippings that he had and he wanted to do something with them and decided to turn them into his kind of art.
Most of Robert Rauschenberg didactics was not informative like Abdi Roble’s didactics. But I read from one of Robert Rauschenberg didactics that he is trying to show government corruption, drugs, race relations, terrorism, astronomical events, concerns, and crises. I see he has a collection of newspapers and pictures of events that took place around the 1970’s. Truthfully, I could relate to his art because it had many different events and pictures that was mixed together. The artist didn’t have informative didactics that explains or really supports what he was trying to portray but the art explains it just by looking at it.

I liked one collection that the Weisman museum had. The painting was “Untitled” by the artist Douglas Argue. The oil on canvas painting that had the illusion of the viewer looking through the door and could step into where hundreds of chickens are caged. I was amazed at how many chickens he had to paint into that huge painting.