Where Are the Mattresses?

College can be very stressful for every student, from classes to clubs to work, and so forth, but it is so very important to take care of yourself and do things you enjoy, like exploring and visiting art museums, a great stress reliever.

When I heard my friend Kass tell me that she has been dying to go to The Mattress Factory for a long time, I gave one of the strongest puzzled looks ever.

“Why on earth would you want to go there?” I questioned. “Are their mattresses really that comfortable?”

My group of friends just threw their heads back and laughed, as if I just made a joke, and continued on our way to this infamous place.

Not a Mattress Store

As we approached the main building, I realized that this was not a place that sold mattresses, as the logo on the building said “Art you can get into.” Of course, this was a contemporary art museum. Visit their website here https://mattress.org/.

The Mattress Factory consists of three buildings, each with multiple floors. We started at the first building, which was indeed our favorite. We worked our way from the top of the building, where we were given a case of severe vertigo, to the bottom, where we laughed at the funny cards and artwork in the gift shop.

View of Downtown Pittsburgh from one of the balconies at The Mattress Factory (taken by me)

Mirrored room exhibit where shoe coverings were required (taken by me)

Perspective of ceiling in mirrored room exhibit (taken by Kassady Burke)

Art You Can Get Into

At the top floor, we were greeted by a fellow Point Park student worker and directed to a small room that looked like it could be a bedroom, but it had an opening in the floor shaped like a slide that we could see down to the outside. The cool breeze gave me a little shiver. Take a look for yourself here https://mattress.org/works/610-3356/. Then the other side of the floor was filled with fast spinning curtains, a spinning horse that was upside down and covered with mirrors, and a video of people dancing around in a circle, all while having a black and white spiraled floor, giving us all some, but good nausea.

Our favorite part was the second floor, which was made intentionally dark. When we saw this on the program, we just thought it would be slightly dark, having enough light to get around easily, but we were completely wrong. When I say this floor was pitch black, it was pitch black. Check out the exhibit here https://mattress.org/works/danae/ and here https://mattress.org/works/catso-red/. The layout of this floor was similar to the others, which gave us some help winding around the bends and finding corners, but there was one specific area that was so dark, only having a small red light at the top right corner, that I ran into someone else, thinking it was my friend. My friends and I started bursting out laughing, as I said, “You’re not Kairi!”

Let’s just say I am glad this place was not a mattress store, and it relaxed me at a very stressful time in my life.