West Edge Factory

The first time I visited West Edge Factory in 2021, I felt like I was dreaming.

The building itself is HUGE, and extremely cool…exposed beams and brick everywhere, remnants of all the ways it served the community since it was built in 1930. It was still rough in places, but absolutely full of energy and possibilities. A woman named Gina Milum was the first to ever walk me through the building. There was already so much going on there…a huge wood shop, organic greenhouses, a solar company, and a recycled t-shirt printing business. Gina’s enthusiasm for the unfinished spaces was infectious. She wildly gestured at the piles of lumber and architectural drawings, showing me where the future black box theater and artist studio spaces would be. When she showed me the turret space, I think my jaw hit the floor. The LIGHT. THE LIGHT in the turret studio is UNREAL. At the time, I didn’t fully comprehend what the space was about, or what we were going to do with it.

Fast forward many months, through many in-person and zoom meetings and edits of grant documents, and I officially became the first artist-in-resident at West Edge Factory. The first time I really got to spend time in the space was with a group of students from Notre Dame who were enrolled in an Appalachian studies course. They came to visit and graciously helped clean the studio, which had been newly fitted with ductwork and outlets.

I chose to focus on the theme of “Healing” for my residency period. Everyone in the world was in a place of healing from the pandemic, and I wanted to create an antidote to some of that through connection, collaboration, and uplifting public art. With this theme in mind, we began the process of hiring an apprentice for the duration of the residency. Applicants installed selected works in the gallery space downstairs in the turret, and we held a public opening to let the community meet the artists and learn about upcoming events. Barb Lavalley Benton was selected for the position. Her passion for helping others and her personal experience with using artwork to facilitate her own healing made her the perfect fit.

Barb and I got started offering community workshops. I wanted the workshops to be low-stakes and playful. All kinds of art can be healing, but I wanted to start simple by just facilitating a space for people to be in community without fear of messing up.

Our workshops often had some element of meditation, a practice intended to help release expectations and be fully present in the moment. We worked with printmaking, painting, photo transfers, collage, and other materials.

All of the work done in these workshops stayed at the West Edge studio with the intention of using them to create a large-scale collaborative work of art that would be permanently housed in the factory. We set up at several events to allow community members of all ages to contribute to the piece.

As the workshops were happening, I envisioned a mosaic-like collaborative snake, with each scale being hand-cut from the work everyone made. I designed the piece to be permanently installed in the West Edge factory where it would be easily seen by visitors. The snake design was projected onto seven eight-foot wood panels. After the background was painted, Barb and I cut what felt like seven million individual scales from the work everyone made. Some scales are painted, some are thick collaged fabric, photos, photo transfers of people’s family memories, and more. The mountains at the bottom were cut from pieces painted by kids in Central City. There are also some beautiful contributions made by my 2022 Governor’s School for the Arts students, who got to visit West Edge and paint. I chose the image of a snake because they have long represented creativity, rebirth, transformation, and healing, and I felt the scales lent themselves perfectly to this type of collaboration. The sun in the background is a nod to the healing that our region is experiencing due to efforts in harvesting the sun for power. One of my favorite things about West Edge is that it has hundreds of solar panels on the roof!