Industrial Transcendentalists

Materials of industrial capitalism transformed into objects of devotion or meditation

This project contemplates a selection of American artworks fabricated with (now mostly obsolete) American industrial materials and everyday products manufactured in the United States. Artworks span genres to represent a range of subversive creative practices from self-taught art, California Space and Light movement, Post pop art and Minimalism. Setting the Resource template with the "Manufacturer" element reveals two hundred years of industrial manufacturing and chemical engineering. Frameworks from art history, industrial history and material culture are applied to cataloging to help surface information about:

* the creative spiritual journey of a selection of 20th century American artists 
* subversive or alternative interpretations of industrial capitalism these artworks represent
* the history of American manufacturing at the end of the 20th century and the end of capitalism 
* implications for the value, meaning and conservation of these works in the absence of an American manufacturing base