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.