Sheyi Bankale (SB): Tell me how the Mattress Factory began?

Barbara Luderowski (BL): The early days of the Mattress Factory were an uphill fight, because Pittsburgh was more conservative – even more so than it is now. But what was magical was the energy that came from fighting a war on behalf of what we were doing, and the freedom to take liberties with the law, the rules and the building codes – something you can no longer do in this area. We occupied this building for eight to ten years before the building department knew we were here and then, finally, we got enough press coverage in the paper and somebody must have said, “what the hell are they doing in there?”

SB: I’m interested to find out the rationale behind the programme here.

BL: We set up commissions for new work, we invite artists to stay here (to live in the building as well as to make work) and we help them with projects. The programme extends to artists from around the world, and it’s totally open. If you had a project in mind, we could help out. We choose people based on other artists’ recommendations but also what we’ve seen or what they present us with, past work, so you’re taking a bet on the future. There is a total empathy and sympathy. I was an artist, Michael was an artist, and we haven’t produced anything except the Mattress Factory.

Michael Olijnyk (MO): We have no art history background, so we basically look at each individual artist’s work. We provide artists with their own gallery space to make new pieces. That’s kind of what we’re interested in.

BL: I’m always interested in what other people think, I have to say, but there is an emphasis on the fact that we do not come from an academic background, we come from a ‘doing’ background, a hands-on background. And that, for me, is the most interesting part; the process and the product and how that piece tickles the mind and makes you think. How it can steer you in a direction – a different direction to where you had been in the past. It may sound entirely un-intellectual but that’s the part that interests me – not the history of it or its place in history, either.

SB: This is an honest approach: we do work in an industry that is academically layered.

MO: The scary part is that it’s commercially driven.

BL: The art market! Who can make the best noise, the best press? I feel in many cases that some artists are driven like sheep to become successful, and suddenly the spirit of the thing is lost. We’ve had a number of artists here in a certain stage in their career, which is not why we chose them. But they have moved on, and made a good name for themselves. Pittsburgh has evolved, especially since we started out about thirty-five years ago. The thought process that was evident here was ‘anything goes’. But that attitude was catching, and I would like to say that we were, at least in part, responsible for the little start-up galleries that began to happen because people began to think, ‘well, Jeeze! I can do it! Let me just have this space and we will have a show’, and so the artists have their own show and then go away, and I don’t think that even at that time it had a pop-up name to it – but it occurred and that’s what is was. I think it is a freeing-up of the thinking, which is an aspect that obviously interests me. I think that, in part, we helped to get that momentum going and it was a seed on ripe ground that took off. We also tried to promote the arts as a generator of economic development, not economic business development but community development, which was not a good kite to fly. But they’ve finally caught on.

SB: Nurturing the avant-garde is the ethos. What has made the Mattress Factory an international platform?

MO: From its very inception we felt it was very important to have artists’ voices from all over the world, not just regional artists. We looked for an international voice. We’ve never felt we were part of the avant-garde. When we started we were called ‘alternative’. We still feel we fit into that category: a non-bureaucratic artist-centered organisation. We are more interested in individual artists’ voices. We were not looking to connect them by any theme.

SB: What becomes central is the importance for artists, invited to the Mattress Factory, to be empowered with the freedom to create original works.

MO: The whole dialogue comes from us being artists. We feel we speak the artists’ language. We talk ideas. Budget is part of the process but it is not the beginning, the idea is.

SB: With continuing expansion of the exhibition sites, how does the Mattress Factory envision its future?

MO: We feel that the international artists we invite guide that direction. We are always artist-centred.

SB: What is the potential for Pittsburgh’s contemporary art landscape, and how does it measure up in comparison to other major national and international cities?

MO: Pittsburgh is not New York, Los Angeles or London. But it provides opportunities for interesting and challenging work to be created and shown.

SB: Is there a Pittsburgh arts scene?

BL: Yeah – some of it’s very good and some of it’s lousy.

SB: Let’s discuss the good elements. Would you say that there is a particular conversation taking place?

BL: I don’t sense that. It’s really a mixed crowd.

MO: That’s what the staff here really appreciate – to have artists here long enough so that someone from the education department can get to know them, can be around whilst they’re working, can ask them questions whilst they’re working. You can understand them on a different level compared to what you would learn from a statement written on a piece of paper. You’re witnessing their process.

BL: It becomes a family. The artists have always had total freedom of the place. They have keys to the front door, they can come and go as they want and, wherever possible, we help them, from international banking to how to get a crib for the baby they brought with them.

MO: But we’ve yet to help anyone get out of prison!

BL: Something you need to see other than Pittsburgh itself is Braddock.

SB: Yes, I’ve heard that repeatedly. And the Mayor, John Fetterman, has self-supporting ideas to change Braddock?

BL: Yeah. He is a force: a six-foot white man with a black beard and shaved head. His tattoos are a separate force; along one arm is the Braddock ZIP code, 15104, and down the other are the dates of people lost to senseless violence in Braddock since he took office. He is all about social change through the arts for a majority that is African-American and female, and lives in poverty. He has become the face of Rust Belt renewal. The mayor created the first art gallery in Braddock with artists’ studios, as well as public art installations.

MO: But that is really Braddock. It was a steel town that, basically, died. In the seventies the steel mills closed and people just disappeared, and the population went from 35,000 to 3,500 people.

BL: It’s the rough-and-tumble start that is, from my point of view, the only way to go.