SoFA gallery builds alternative art space

Penske rental trucks sat in the McCalla School yard Friday night, but this time they were filled with art instead of furniture.

The second phase of “HUB: A Collaboration of Art and Space” opened Friday. The first part of the show took place at the School of Fine Arts Gallery, but moved to trucks for an alternative gallery.

“Physically, the whole presence of the thing is pretty awesome,” said Betsy Stirratt, the SoFA gallery director. “It might be kind of confusing to some people when they walk into the trucks. People expect pictures on the wall, and that’s not what’s here. It’s pretty much work that’s related to moving or space or transience.”

The second phase was open Friday night and Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. The gallery rented moving trucks to hold the art, then built the central HUB platform to bring them together. Artist Jonathan Dankenbring said he was surprised when he saw the actual space.

“The first thing I noticed about it once we got all the trucks backed up was how much smaller the HUB actually feels,” Dankenbring said. “It was a little bit of a shock because you get a sense of how something works spatially for a couple of months during the summer while we were building it, then all of a sudden it seems like half the size.”

Dankenbring said setting up for HUB exhibit took about 40 hours straight, and the artists worked in shifts to put it together. Stirratt said the artists had to make sure the structure would hold all of its visitors for Friday and Saturday.

“They were amazing,” Stirratt said. “They took great care in crafting the platform, and making sure it was safe and it was strong.”

Rob Off, another artist involved with HUB, said the entire project was extremely time-consuming.

“We’ve probably been working on this whole project, cumulatively, for eight months,” said Off, who is also the gallery associate director. “We installed the show in the gallery a month ago, which, from my end of the spectrum, was really easy. We bring it into the gallery, install it, have a reception and it’s done, but there was no breather after the reception of the gallery. I think we went from gallery reception planning to event planning.”

But after the strenuous set up and planning, the alternative gallery received good reviews. Artist LaRinda Meinburg said people thought it was a great idea, yet they were surprised by the look of the trucks.

“I think a lot of people are surprised at the cleanliness of the moving trucks,” Meinburg said. “Usually they think of moving trucks as being dark and damp and scary.”

The gallery has also received good feedback from galleries around the country. Stirratt said they have requests to bring the structure to cities such as Kansas City, Indianapolis and Louisville. But while the HUB structure will travel, the art will change according to the new location, Off said.

“We don’t want to become another traveling show where our work goes somewhere else,” Off said. “It’s going to go to a location, contact artists, bring them together and have an exhibition. So the art hopefully changes everywhere, we’re just relying on this consistent structure to bring it all together.”