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Spokane Artists Bring Giant Jacob's Ladders to New Exhibit

For many people, a Jacob's Ladder is a familiar children's toy, but for two Spokane artists, it has become the center of a new interactive exhibit. Spokane Public Radio’s Chris Maccini reports.

 

Jacob's ladders are children's toys which consist of wooden blocks held together by interlaced ribbons. Spokane-based artists Ellen Picken and Rajah Bose are reimaging this classic toy on a grand scale.

 

“Anytime you make something super big, it’s great. It’s great art,” Bose jokes. “But what else? That’s not enough. That’s when we started exploring themes. What does a Jacob’s Ladder mean? The changing elements of that. And just the idea ‘things change.’ All the ideas were generated off of that name.”

 

Artists Rajah Bose and Ellen Picken display one of their interactive Jacob's Ladder exhibits.

Things Change, became the title of a new interactive exhibit by Factory Town, the visual art and storytelling company Ellen and Rajah founded. They invited me to their home and studio in West Spokane to give me a sneak preview of their latest project.

 

“You’re looking at a manual garage door opener that is attached to a wooden plank hanging from our ceiling.” Bose says “There’s a chain hanging down from it, and someone can put their hands on it and control the giant Jacob’s Ladder.” 

 

Things Change is one of eight arts projects and initiatives which have been awarded the most recent round of SAGA grants from Spokane Arts.

 

“It’s awesome that Spokane Arts and the city of Spokane have created this grants program.” says Ellen Picken. “We didn’t have this five years ago. And it’s really helped so many artists. So we thought we’d give it a chance.”

 

Things Change will be installed at the Terrain Gallery in the Washington Cracker Building, 304 W Pacific Ave in Spokane. There will be open on Friday, September 6th as part of First Friday Art Walk and Thursday - Saturday, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. through the end of the month. 

 

More information about Factory Town can be found online at factory.town. Details about Spokane Arts and all of this year's SAGA grantees is available at SpokaneArts.org.

 

Chris Maccini previously worked at SPR as Morning Edition host and producing arts and special programming such as The Bookshelf, Poetry Moment, Northwest Arts Review, special features and more.