Industrial Harvest

Michael Piazza was a co-founder – along with Bertha Husband, Mary Jo Marchnight, James Koehnline, Rebecca Wolfram, and Laura Piazza – of Axe St. Arena, a gathering space / gallery / event center in Logan Square in the mid-80s.  Here is their “manifesto” (it is not actually labeled a manifesto, but more neutral descriptions such as “mission statement” seem insufficient to describe it):

“We reject a world in which education and information are touted as the answers to all our problems, while in reality they are seen as other mechanisms to intimidate and control.  We also reject an art which panders either to the investment-minded art collector and careerist art-maker, or the narrowly propagandist left.  Instead, we desire to indulge ourselves in such forbidden activities as dreaming and conversation, principled action and determined inaction.  From these things, real art, that strange fruit of mysterious intuitions and indefinable connections may, we hope, be encouraged to participate in our futures.”