Michael Velliquette
Lovey Town in the Central Library Bubbler Room
October 2017
Founded in 2013 by the artist Michael Velliquette, Lovey Town is a miniature, mobile project space dedicated to the exhibition of small original artworks. Artists participate in the exhibition with their works and in the form of paper cutouts made from their photographs. In its original iteration, Lovey Town existed in multiple formats—through online photographic documentation, in print publications, as a physical exhibition space, and as a social practice where artists and audiences participate in the creation of a sculptural community.
“I had a small-scale, foam-core model of a gallery I made for an upcoming show sitting around the studio. Staring at my tiny exhibition, I started fantasizing about the ease of just making small-scale art full-time. And then there was a light bulb moment where I realized that this could so easily be the project space I had been thinking about opening,” Velliquette said of Lovey Town’s early days.
During Lovey Town’s residency, library patrons and the public were invited to collaborate on a communal exhibition by creating small-scale works of art to fill a custom made miniature gallery space inside the Bubbler Room. Participants were also invited to have their pictures taken and be made into small photographic paper figures to populate the gallery space as the viewing audience.
“I built a miniature foam core gallery that measured about twenty feet long and over the course of the month I hosted a series of drop-in events where participants were invited to make a small work of art from craft materials I provided. They also got photographed, and I made their paper dolls on site. We then hung their work salon-style in the gallery, and they got to stand their doll next to their pieces. The idea was to invite viewers to collaborate on a massive group show while at the same time experiencing what it is like to make and show work in the context of a contemporary white-box art space,” Velliquette remarked about his Bubbler residency in a Maake Magazine interview.
Following his Bubbler residency, Velliquette continued to pursue a studio practice and to show his work nationally, and he now also works at UW-Madison as an Assistant Professor of Foundations in the Art Department. The Bubbler eventually adopted Lovey Town as part of its ongoing program, and you can learn more about that along with our other projects.
Return to the residency archive.
