Exhibitionists It’s the artists who are on display at the Torpedo Factory Art Center.
Once a Naval weapons factory and now a living art center, the Torpedo Factory Art Center on the Alexandria, Virginia, waterfront, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., serves as a cultural hub for historic Old Town Alexandria. The three-story building, which includes an art school with more than 2,000 students each semester, 83 working studios and six galleries, is home to more than 160 artists in all media. Every year, the center attracts 800,000 visitors who want to see the creative process in action.
Donald Cohen shows off his homemade milling machine as it cuts components for his handcrafted bows fashioned out of tropical pernambuco. A violinist-turned-bow-maker, Cohen has been an artist in residence at the Torpedo Factory for the past 18 years. His roster of customers past and present includes violinist Joel Smirnoff of the Juilliard String Quartet, Russian virtuoso and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, Anna-Sophie Mutter, and the late Yehudi Menuhin. Bow prices start at $3,000 and can rise as high as $5,000 when he adds, say, gold and mother-of-pearl trim. Cohen’s latest product? Dyed stallion horsehair to put in any bow; it’s available in more than a dozen colors, including teal, turquoise and fuchsia. At just $18, it’s a big seller for children.
Jewelry designer Dawn Benedetto creates signature, one-of-a-kind “bumpy” jewelry of sterling silver and 18-karat gold. Relatively new to working in a living museum and a studio that offers a view of the Potomac dotted with sailboats, Benedetto has been at the Torpedo Factory for nearly four years.
The building, now rich in art as well as history, was constructed during World War I to manufacture torpedo shell casings and, later, 9,920 MK-14 torpedoes. The “green torpedo” display in the main hall of the Torpedo Factory Art Center explains how torpedoes were manufactured during the two world wars. After each war, the U.S. government used the space for storage. During the 1950s and ’60s, the building held congressional archives and dinosaur bones from the Smithsonian. Then, in 1969, the city of Alexandria purchased it. Five years later, volunteers transformed the site and the building into an art center.
More than a quarter of the artists working here today, including fiber art and jewelry designer Helen Banes, were founding artists a quarter of a century ago. Banes, who teaches fiber and bead jewelry classes, developed an original process to create wearable art that is inspired by ancient artifacts. She strings beads on a double warp, using a shaped loom. She not only appreciates feedback from the public about her work, she says, but welcomes the opportunity to participate in a very “stimulating, creative atmosphere” with the other artists in residence.
All resident artists in the Torpedo Factory go through a screening process that includes a jury of three people-outside artists, curators, gallery owners, professors, instructors and/or critics. Painter and printmaker Betsy Anderson, president of the Art League, the group that founded the Torpedo Factory, echoes the feelings of many of these residents: “I’m so comfortable painting in front of people, and I’m creatively inspired by the other artists here. We’re supportive of one another.”
Matthew Harwood, a former president of the Torpedo Factory Artists’ League, which manages the building, uses his architectural education in his three-dimensional watercolor collages and assemblages of European villages and tropical landscapes. “I learned the old way,” he says, “the hand skills of architecture. The end product isn’t quite painting and isn’t quite architecture.” But it is unique. “Shifting planes give you depth; it’s mounted with bevels,” Harwood explains. Like many of the artists there, he takes personal commissions-$250 to $15,000, depending on the size and complexity of the piece. “It’s the connection to the public. I like the most,” says Harwood. “Painting can be isolated and lonely. Here, I get instant feedback-good and bad. When I started adding fiber to my paintings, I went downstairs and talked to a fiber artist.”
But it’s not just the artists who benefit from the Torpedo Factory concept; customers do, too. “I can sell my work here and not mark it up for a middleman,” says Harwood, “so I can keep prices down.” The city keeps the rent low-$8.34 per square foot-and there aren’t sales commissions.
No salespeople are permitted. The artists are required to work and personally sell their original art in their studio/galleries, where each agrees to be available to meet the public at least 24 hours per week. “I like the public interaction,” declares floral painter Matthew Johnston. “You meet people from all over the world.”
Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 North Union Street, Alexandria, Virginia; 703-838-4565; www.torpedofactory.org. Open daily, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. |