LAB Collective keeps art, fashion, and music front and center.
Morgantown can look forward to an explosion of arts-related happenings over the coming season. One of the new entrants to the arts scene is LAB Collective and, if you like a young, fresh perspective, you might want to catch one of their events.
LAB—Learning and Building—is the brainchild of Benjamin Acklin, a senior fashion design major at WVU, and fashion merchandizing alum Will Whittaker, who’s now a first-year graduate student in the art education program.
Acklin and Whittaker started LAB in August 2021 after putting on a big pop-up show at Morgantown Brewing Co. “We had this realization that it would be much easier to do it with a group,” Acklin says. “That’s where LAB originated—this idea that, by lending a helping hand to another creator, it helps you all.”
Morgantown is chock full of WVU students in the visual and performing arts—plus arts alums and other creative residents. But opportunities to perform can be rare, and the chance to display and sell art can come with a hefty up-front table fee or a steep commission. LAB, which is seeking nonprofit status, organizes frequent events and keeps its commissions low to minimize its members’ need to wait tables and maximize their time beautifying our world.
LAB events are creative mash-ups put together by its 30-plus members. “It’s awesome at an event to see the widespread, large scale of everything we have,” Acklin says—small-batch T-shirts, stickers and buttons and frameable prints, clay jewelry and pottery, huge canvases. Music is always a big part of a LAB event, too.
While LAB casts a wide net, it’s also selective. “We’re curating a really good team of passionate, hard-working, and creative individuals who are willing to put in the time and effort to move the collective forward,” Acklin says. “We want to be ‘for the people,’ and we are—that’s why some of our events are open submissions where we take submissions from others who aren’t members—but, at the end of the day, we do want to curate a top-notch gallery at each of our events.”
At least part of what gets an artist in is a personal innovation of Acklin’s.
“I have this thing that I created a few years ago called the Gasp Factor, where I don’t buy any clothes unless I gasp out loud,” he explains—remember, he’s a fashion design major. “The Gasp Factor has saved me so much time and money! So if I see an artist on Instagram or meet them in person and I have that reaction to their work, I’m not walking out of the room without giving them my contact information for LAB.”
Curious? Check out the LABFest beer and arts festival April 23 at Morgantown Brewing Company. The brewery will release its CO-LAB sour ale—see what they did there?—concocted by MBC for the event. LAB Collective members will display and sell their works, and there will be live entertainment.
Or head to a LAB Thursday gallery and music evening every last Thursday of the month at 123 Pleasant Street.
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