Material Exchange

If It Ain’t Broke – Katherine’s Table, 2010Igloo Gallery, Portland, OR and Tufts University Gallery, Boston, MA In May, 2010 we conducted the first round of conversations introducing the now ongoing project entitled, “If It Ain’t Broke.” This phase of the project was to consult with three owners of “broken” things. Together, with the object’s…

Rebuilding Mayfield, 2010Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland ORGestures of Resistance Curated by Judith Leemann and Shannon Stratton The Guinness Book of World Records, lists the first whisper in the current record-holding “telephone game” as “They inherited the world and then the army came and scorched it.” The final words passed on were “Mayfield College.” In…

The Fortuitous Sequel to Means Means Value, 2010Contemporary Masters, Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City, UT This final project of Material Exchange was a contribution to the exhibition called, Contemporary Masters, an artist-made mini-golf course. Material Exchange was invited as the out of state guest as inspired by our 2007 Putt Putt exhibition at…

King Ludd’s Midway Arcade, 2009 [Curator]Experimental Station, Chicago, IL 9 artist-made, family-friendly, analog arcade and carnival games, from air-hockey to lawn bowling, pinball to video games. The Midway Plaissance in Hyde Park was the site of the World’s Fair of 1893, an international celebration of the landing of Columbus in North America 401 years prior. Chicago…

Repair Shop, 2009CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY During the second week of September, Material Exchange, InCUBATE, and Adam Bobbette traveled to Buffalo, New York to develop a project called Repair Shop. The Repair Shop is our contribution to the larger exhibition entitled, Conversation Pieces, hosted by CEPA gallery. The following images document the project from the…

I’d Rather be Fishin’, 2009DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan University and the City of Marquette, MI In conjunction with the Smart Museum’s traveling exhibition Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art, members of Material Exchange were invited to participate in a short project-based residency in Marquette, Michigan through the DeVos Art Museum at Northern Michigan…

Bus Stop Shelter, 2008Points of Interest, Braddock, PA We participated in Points of Interest, conceived by Braddock Active Arts, a collaborative group of Braddock, PA residents that “aims to provide living models of possibility and transformation and catalyze sustainable growth and revitalization. We envision a community in which all residents are considered artists, empowered to change…

Convergence Cafe, 2008 A contribution to Democracy in America: The National Campaign Exhibition, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY curated by Creative Time InCUBATE invited Material Exchange to design and build a temporary cafe to facilitate their Sunday Soup Granting Program. We had access to some materials from the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts and…

MX Pinball, 2008Eyebeam, New York, NYGoods and Services, Pittsburgh, PAGallery 206, Grand Rapids, MI Created for the traveling exhibition Other Options, organized by InCUBATELike all artists, we face the dilemma of funding, and of how to support ourselves and sustain the art-making process. We made the machine as an inquiry into forms of currency. We…

The Way Things Drag Their Futures Around, 2008Threewalls SOLO, Chicago, IL Materials: White Oak sp. Quercus alba, White Mulberry sp. Morus alba, Yellow Pine sp. Pinus palustris, Plastic, and Terracotta Beginning with a fallen tree, and parts of other trees slated for felling, we have fashioned an uncanny artifact suggesting a variety of possible causes…