The Midwest often gets pegged as being monotonous or dull. DUMPTRUCK rejects this. The region can be a comfortable and beautiful space when it is given the correct lense. There is a beautiful sense of community that is underwritten, this exhibition brings light to those details. Spaghetti Midwestern is a vibrant and soft retelling of an otherwise overlooked landscape through the artists’ perspective.

Throughout the region, there are man-made landmarks that are staples of where the artists grew up. Infinite cornfields and charged billboards become beacons of recognition, and make the landscape feel familiar to its residents. From an outside perspective these landmarks could be seen as jarring, but they should not be shut out or ignored. Rather, these landmarks must be celebrated as important pieces of culture.

DUMPTRUCK champions where they are from. They lift up these beacons by creating soft monuments of Midwestern landmarks. The soft sculptures of people that populate the landscape are of ambiguous species and gender – they are the characters met in the Midwest. They are soft and sweet, just like our homes.

Spaghetti Midwestern is a cityscape installation meant to remind the viewer of the types of skylines and highway memorabilia found in middle America. The work will be a combination of a site-specific installation where the artists will drape fibers on the wall to create city-like structures and rolling hills. The other half of the work will include a tapestry meant to be a lovingly rendered portrait of a city of the artists’ creation.

About the Artist

DUMPTRUCK is a Cincinnati-based fiber arts collective established in 2021 by Ron Biernat and Hailey Fulford. The two artists met while attending The University of Cincinnati and have been displaying their work regionally ever since. Their collective uses found fibers to create immersive installations consisting of soft sculptures and pictorial tapestries. The artists are creating cityscapes from their own perspectives, in order to highlight the joys that come from living in middle America. DUMPTRUCK emerged from the two artists’ love of the Midwest and their desire to relate their own queer experiences to the landscape that raised them.

Curated by

Pedal Miranda, Community and Adult Programs Manager