Ad Deville and Ali Ha, the co-owners of Factory Fresh Gallery, are considered venerable street artists operating as Skewville and Pufferella, respectively. Yet they didn’t quite realize how to define their work until attending a Wooster Collective art walk along New York’s Lower East Side in 2002. During the event, some attendees inquired whether they were street artists, to which Deville responded, “Well, I put sneakers on wires, and it’s in the street.”
As Skewville and Pufferella, Deville quietly strung sneaker-shaped wooden blocks along the telephone wires of New York and other international cities while Ha delved into her fascination of creating plush fabric images. But the cohesive street-art community that was quickly taking shape along the Lower East Side intrigued them. They introduced their new friends to Orchard Street Gallery, which the couple opened in late 2002. Deville and Ha began collaborating with other contemporary art galleries and featuring shows by Gore B, Meeka, and Jet + Rubble.
By 2007, the Lower East Side was in full gentrification mode, and the couple was soon displaced by its landlord. Despite taking their grievances through the court system, they decided that it was time to move on. “We didn’t even feel like staying in the neighborhood by that point; it was getting very commercial,” Ha says. “Orchard isn’t what it used to be, [but] I’m glad I could be there to see what it was.”
Deville and Ha relocated to Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood and felt that the area’s emerging creative scene would be conducive to their latest creative endeavor, Factory Fresh. In 2008, the pair spent six months transforming a bodega into their current gallery and studio space.
Factory Fresh is very much a continuation of the work that Deville and Ha were carrying out at Orchard Street, specifically by representing a cadre of international artists like British illustrator John Burgerman and German pop artist Jim Avignon. “It was cool because with street art, we got to travel and meet people, so a lot of the people that we show now are people that we met back then,” Ha says. It’s also not uncommon for up-and-comers to be paired with more established artists for various shows.
Though Factory Fresh is often noted for showcasing street art, Deville’s and Ha’s interests and influences are rather expansive, and they have no qualms about exhibiting artists whose work pushes into other areas of contemporary art. “You can do a street project that is meant for the street, and it can work really well, or you can do a gallery show that’s really amazing too,” Ha says. “So I think that it’s really amazing to watch [artists’] careers evolve.”
After creating back-to-back shows during their first year, Deville and Ha have learned to incorporate the much-needed break into their schedules. As a result, Factory Fresh is currently on hiatus through November 20th, allowing Deville to travel to Germany and Ha to focus on her own creative projects.
The pair’s hard work has definitely paid off, which is evident in Factory Fresh’s evolving community of new supporters. “Some of the people that we’d love to see haven’t made it out to us yet because they are total Manhattanites, and that’s fine,” Ha says. “But there are so many people out here that understand what we are doing. There’s definitely new people that we’ve met.”