Party! on

Summer’s ending, but it’s not too late to join the party.

The immersive art installation Party! remains open through Sept. 29 at Factory Obscura, 25 NW Ninth St. Tickets are $12 for adults, $8 for kids 4 to 17 and free for kids 3 or under.

For older visitors, the word “party” might connote cocktails and hors d’oeuvres or keg stands and noise complaints, but this installation takes its inspiration from an early time in life.

“It’s the nostalgia of slumber parties and building blanket forts with your friends and the cozy joy that comes along with that,” said Kelsey Karper, Factory Obscura’s co-founder and director of logistical creativity.

In addition to the large-scale blanket forts, potential childhood flashback inducers include a lighting-enhanced the floor is lava game, an abnormally squishy hopscotch grid and actual childhood photos of many of the artists who contributed to the installation.

“Grown-ups playing the floor is lava together has been really fun to watch, because they really commit,” Karper said.

Fiber artists Emily Madden and Krista Jo Mustain responded to Factory’s open call for artist collaboration with the proposal for Party! While the installation is all about softness and comfort, the inspiration came from experiencing the opposite feelings.

“Krista and I had both been going through really tough times,” Madden said. “Mostly all of it coming down to grief — loss of people, loss of situations or opportunities, just a lot of loss. We were dealing with a lot of hard stuff, so when we saw the opportunity come through, we were like, ‘We should apply, and we should make something that would make us happy.’”

Factory Obscura’s first open call for artist proposals received dozens of responses, some of which Karper said the collaborative art space hopes to revisit in the future.

“We were looking for things that are in line with the values and the ideas that Factory Obscura is always trying to express in our work, which is evoking a sense of wonder and joy in the participants who come through the space,” Karper said, “something that is community oriented in some way, but then also just logistically, ideas that were feasible. Given the amount of time and the budget that we had available, is it possible to complete this? This project really just hit all of those marks.”

To find an idea that would make them happy, Madden and Mustain explored what “the core of joy” meant to them, and they found the answers in childhood memories.

“Simpler times, no bills,” Madden said. “Summer parties, you get to be with your friends. What do we all wanna do all day? I don’t wanna work. I wanna go hang out with my friends. So we thought, ‘Let’s create a space where people can travel back in time and have a nostalgic moment.”

However, the emotions tied to memories can be as complex as memories themselves.

“There’s joy in nostalgia, but there’s also grief in it, too,” Madden said. “We wanted to offer people a space that was safe to feel any emotion, just like we did as children. We expressed more emotions when we were younger than we do now.”

Karper said nostalgia is a recurring theme at Factory Obscura because part of its intended purpose is to give people the chance to explore their emotions.

“There’s not a lot of spaces where adults feel safe to do that,” Karper said. “We get feedback from people that intentionally come to these spaces to process grief, to propose to their partner, to get married, to go on their first date, to introduce their parents to each other. This is a space where people have defining life moments. I think having that sort of nostalgic quality is part of what makes people feel safe. While it is a very weird space that you’re in, there’s also something kind of familiar about it, and that’s what makes you feel comfortable and kind of opens you up to whatever else might be waiting for you there.”

The installation includes a mailbox for visitors to leave messages. Karper estimates visitors have left thousands of postcards in the box since Party! opened in May.

“They have expressed the full range of emotions,” Karper said. There are some really silly, hilarious ones. There are some really heartfelt ones that have made us all cry when we read them, people expressing things in those notes that obviously they haven’t yet found a way to say out loud. This has given them a space to at least write it down and kind of send it out to the universe.”

Making a small self-contained space in the universe is part of the appeal of blanket forts, the largest features in the installation.

“Blanket forts were probably the first immersive experience that we create for ourselves as children,” Karper said. “It feels so magical when you’re in there.”

Constructing large-scale blanket forts for the installation, including a colorfully lit tent suspended from the ceiling and a clubhouse with a wooden frame, presented challenges that don’t typically emerge at slumber parties.

“My biggest anxiety was upholstering the roof,” Madden said. “When you walk inside of the house, you’ll look up and there are blankets on the roof. How did we do that? We had a lot of friends help us.”

Karper said that Factory Obscura brought its experience building large-scale installations to the collaboration.

“We’re known for the handcrafted, tactile nature of our work. You can really tell that it was made by hand rather than feeling sort of manufactured or mass produced,” Karper said. “We do that in a way that still feels kind of ethereal and nostalgic, but is also structurally safe and durable enough to last for a few months of people interacting with it.”

Most of the materials for the installation were donated.

“People can come and be like, ‘Oh my gosh! That was what my grandma made,’ or, ‘That came from my house,’ so it’s like we all collectively built it,” Karper said. “We got some really special pieces contributed that came with their own stories.”

Visit factoryobscura.com. 

This article appears in Fall Guide 2025.