This is the second in a series of ongoing blogs tracking the production process for Andy Ducett’s upcoming exhibition at the Soap Factory titled Why We Do This.
Andy shared some of his planning tools including two sketchbooks and multiple versions of a 3D model (pictured in the previous post). There is also an ongoing Adobe Illustrator document used to work out various concepts and layouts over the last two years of planning. Andy, comments “Sketching in different environments has been helpful too, sometimes it would be in a friends basement studio or in a cabin at a state park in the winter… I like traveling with my sketchbook.”
One of the unique challenges of this exhibition is the enormous scale of the Soap Factory site. Andy views each page of his sketchbook and various rough ideas as pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle. The pieces get shuffled around, moved in and out of the frame, until the picture becomes clear. Quite often less work is needed to fill the space than you originally thought.
Throughout the planning process many ideas are edited, altered and often discarded completely. An example of one of the ideas which has been left along the ways is a balloon idea idea sited in the Soap Factory’s vacant elevator shaft. This idea was edited out, mainly because of pragmatic issues. The elevator shaft in the Soap Factory is sealed off at this point, and a certain number of pigeons have decided to make their home at the top of the 3 story space, making the floor of the elevator car look a bit like a monochromatic Pollack. No problem, back to the drawing board and maybe the balloon can make an appearance at a different site.
Making It lifts the curtain on art-making around the state with posts that go inside the process of making and showing work. You’ll find these visually-oriented little pieces on both the Education and Community Programs’ blog and here, on the mnartists.org blog, and they’ll include a broad-mash up across disciplines, with everything from staff dispatches from Arty Pants and Open Field to rehearsal notes and studio visits, maybe even a few DIY tutorials by and with Minnesota artists.