Workplace

This interactive space takes its cue from the innovative pairing of arts and industry that defines the Arts/Industry residency. In the gallery, demonstrations, lectures, hands-on workshops, and skill-sharing opportunities will connect visitors with the processes and techniques implemented by artists and industry workers.

Artists Billy Dufala (Arts/Industry alumnus) and John Greig designed the floorplan of Workplace to reference the artists-in-residence studios in the Kohler Co. factory. In this context, the space becomes a hybrid gallery/studio, where creative practices are enacted and the outcomes shown.

Throughout the year, artists will use aspects of their practice to investigate the problem-solving, experimentation, and production that characterize both their work and that of other creative fields. They will pose questions about mold making, an integral part of the Arts/Industry residency, and how that process shows up in other areas of creation. In other cases, the artists will investigate the act of growing our own food and what the experience might teach us about creativity. Through skill sharing and responding to a prescribed set of constraints, bakers, designers, gardeners, printers, and fabricators will demonstrate a common language with artists, factory associates, and Arts Center visitors.

Inspired by a series of workshops in the 1970s, when Kohler Co. associates and ceramic artists shared industrial and artistic techniques in a red-and-white striped tent, Workplace reveals the ad-hoc and exploratory spirit that fuels interdisciplinary collaborations and offers future possibilities for the Arts/Industry model.