Featuring Jen Bervin, Steve Healy and William Waltz.
The History Room, The Soap Factor
8pm
FREE
In conjunction with the ongoing exhibition The History Room: 20 Years of No Name and The Soap Factory, Jen Bervin will be at The Soap Factory to read some of her new poetry with two local poets, Steve Healy and William Waltz.
Jen Bervin was among the first artists to show at No Name’s new space in The Soap Factory when it opened in 1995. She has since received fellowships in art and writing from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The MacDowell Colony, Centrum Arts, and The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Her books include The Desert (Granary Books, 2008), A Non-Breaking Space (Ugly Duckling, 2005), Nets (UDP, 2004) and Under What Is Not Under (Potes & Poets, 2001). Her interdisciplinary work has been featured most recently in Esopus and Double Change. Bervin's large-scale sewn composites of Dickinson's fascicle marks and other works have been exhibited in the US, Canada, and France. She is also a contributing editor for jubilat.
Steve Healey’s first book of poetry, Earthling, was published by Coffee House Press. He has published poems in numerous magazines, including American Poetry Review, Fence, and Jubilat, and in anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. He lives in Minneapolis, where he is a PhD candidate in Literary Studies at the University of Minnesota and a Visiting Instructor of Creative Writing at Macalester College.
William D. Waltz is the author of Zoo Music and the editor of Conduit. His poems are in or are forthcoming in Forklift Ohio, H_NGM_N, Black Warrior Review, POOL, and jubilat.
ONGOING in Project Room 2:
History Room: 20 Years of No Name and The Soap Factory
April 19-October 26, 2008
Opening reception: 7 – 11pm, April 19, 2008 / Closing reception: October 4, 2008
In October of 1988, a new art space calling itself No Name Gallery opened its doors in the Warehouse District of downtown Minneapolis. That gallery would eventually become the Soap Factory, one of the longest-lived contemporary art spaces in the Twin Cities. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Soap Factory, curator Andy Sturdevant has created The History Room, a gallery dedicated to telling the saga of Soap from the depths of 20 years of archives. Including photographs, artwork, promotional posters, historic documents, personal recollections and video, the History Room gives visitors an opportunity to learn more about the gallery famed for its raw space, its brutal lack of heat, and its remarkable following of artists who have tirelessly transformed it over the years. The Soap Factory is one of the largest spaces for contemporary art in the Twin Cities, and the exhibition History Room charts not only the story of No Name and The Soap Factory, but also the story of the thriving, exciting, and ever-evolving art scene for which Minneapolis is so renowned.
In addition to a thoughtful sampling of Soap's 20 year paper trail, History Room also features over a dozen artists who have been invited back to show new work and share their experiences at No Name and the Soap. Beginning April 19 with work from Mark Nielsen and Ilene Krug Mojsilov, the first two artists shown at No Name, the History Room will rotate new work on a monthly basis. Some artists featured on the roster include Jen Bervin, Matt Bakkom, David Lowe, David Lefkowitz, Emily Lutzker, Tamara Albaitas and many others.