Domestic Brew: 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall is a craft/sculpture/installation/billboard project that seeks to provide audiences with an opportunity to reconsider the social function of beer, approach beer as an art medium, and reference, re-work, and contrast home hobby crafts of the ‘70s (domestic, debased, amateur, feminine) with minimalist sculpture (public, vaunted, professional, masculine).

While beer, as a social lubricant, can lead to volatile situations, what isn’t commonly known is that beer can actually be chemically unstable. For Domestic Brew Shake-n-Make has home-brewed some of their beer to heighten volatility as a way to explore themes of stability and instability and the hidden danger in the ubiquitous and seemingly benign. The wall of beer in plexiglass boxes appears monolithic, stable, and under control. In actuality, any of the bottles could erupt without notice, and the beer wall changes over the course of the exhibition. Part kinetic/ephemeral sculpture, part science experiment, and part home hobby craft, the installation component of Domestic Brew challenges viewers to reconcile the precious and comforting (plexiglass display cases featuring bottles adorned with crocheted cozies) with the potentially violent (post-explosion shards of glass and beer-soaked yarn) and imposing (a large wall formed by the stacked plexi-glass boxes).

The summer heat in the courtyard at Hamilton Artists’ Inc. was chosen to maximize the potential for exploding beer while simultaneously referencing a beer garden, a place that suggests a particular engagement with beer.