Plain Art

In 2005, Fargo, North Dakota painter, Marjorie Schlossman, asked six architects to design and build art chapels that she could paint in. The only requirements were to stay within a $25,000 budget, make them portable and include a spiritual element without the trappings of religion. Filmed over two years, “Plain Art” intimately documents the risks, struggles and successes of this creative process. The film elucidates the unique convergence of art, architecture and spirituality as well as the conflicts that arise when an artist funds her own large, ambitious public art project. In a pragmatic and rural community like Fargo, abstract art is not always welcome and understood and the architects were asked to think more like artists and less like engineers. “Plain Art” shows people revisiting their idealistic notions of creativity and recapturing their own personal faith and spirituality.