After taking on a few small projects, she was given permission to take on an abandoned church. Knowing it was too big for her to handle alone, the Brooklyn-based artist called together some friends, and “Transformazium,” the collective, was formed. Erin Harrell, Dana Bishop-Root, Ruthie Stringer and Leslie Stem, and Swoon, began developing the idea of the church as an art space, with workshops, gallery events, and a community garden. It’s an intense, in-progress task that has all five women getting their hands dirty. Four of the five have even moved to Braddock while the project is underway.
“You’ll have these towns with huge levels of abandonment,” Swoon says, “with all these resources there that can be put to good use if you engage with them. They just need something to connect them.”
Swoon says she and her posse are planning “all kinds of experiments” for the former church space. “We want it to be a big project.” They’re still at the beginning of what will be a long ongoing project—just defeating the code regulations for their ideas has been half the battle so far—but it’s one that Swoon and the other artists are excited to be taking on. “It’s about looking at cities and the ways that industrial areas that have collapsed have left space for growth,” Swoon says. “The point is to bring our creative artistic resources to the table, and create a model to make them useful in these areas.” –Lori Fredrickson / Against The Grain
For more, go to http://www.transformazium.org/.
Editor's Note: A collaborative exhibition by SWOON Allison Corrie and Solovei La Boca Del Lobo installation at Blackfloor Gallery Philadelphia Pennsylvania 2006
