It was a subtly crisp afternoon with soft light casting long shadows on the curving roads of North Andover as I drove with the windows down to my destination, Piep Haus Projects (PHP), a new experimental pop-up art space hosted at the home of artist Leah Piepgras. I followed a series of hand-painted arrows up the driveway to the far end of a previously shag-carpeted house with the unmistakable vibes of a swingers pad, now transformed into a living space, artist studio, and exhibition room. On my way in, a young person with flowing dark hair snaked past me, weaving in and out of sculptures, down through the yard to the edge of Lake Cochichewick and back through to where I stood.
PHP’s inaugural show features works by Arthur Henderson, a MassArt graduate who now lives and works in “relative isolation” (other than the company of his wife and son) in the woods of Western Connecticut. “Peasant’s Burlesque,” curated by Stace Brandt, brings together seventeen larger works—all completed since the start of the year—including fourteen sculptures, two woodblock prints, and a Portrait of the Artist at Work in ink on paper, with twenty-two small-scale sculptures housed separately in a cabinet.
A six-foot-wide wooden chandelier with snuffed candles drew me into the exhibition room in the far end of the house. Titled Model of the Universe from the outside looking in, it’s suspended from the vaulted ceiling with a charcoal-colored chain. The work’s seven distinct arms invite your eyes to return again and again to trace the irregular edges, which, although cut from plywood, have a hand-drawn quality.
Big Red (2026), a chestnut-colored pie cabinet with doors splayed, holds a curious accumulation of hand-carved items including a pipe, medicine cup, and a stack of Porterhouse steaks. Its plywood back bears chiseled hands spelling P-I-E-S-A-F-E in American Sign Language. Underneath its four legs, an ebony trap door gives a sense of dark mystery. I found myself imagining who or what is beneath it.
A glowing ember box serves as a pedestal for a hand-hewn baguette and beer can. Custom-crafted box crates elevate other lovingly shaped objects, including Milkcrib, a four-walled resting place for an imagined gallon of milk, and Decoy (Skull in Repose), a small sculpture resembling a bruised and tilted three-dimensional heart. Throughout the room things are placed casually—like how you might find a space left if someone weren’t expecting company. On my way out, I passed a staircase guarded by a string of sausage links and a sign marked “Champagne Room,” which made me smile and want to stay and snoop around.
The show exudes a whimsical, masculine energy, with each object serving as a breadcrumb to a larger narrative series the artist calls The Feast of the Butcher King. The objects in “Peasant’s Burlesque” are made from the perspective of the townsfolk who fall victim to the Butcher King in a retake on the folktale “Stone Soup.” The viewer enters a “set” where objects are contrived as offerings in exchange for the magic soup stone.
Brandt thoughtfully responded to the challenge of bringing Henderson’s purposely rough-hewn objects together with the newly renovated white cork-floored, multi-windowed project space. Henderson said, “What could’ve created a tension or competition instead feels very harmonious—a true conversation between the objects and their surroundings.”
Arthur Henderson and Stace Brandt will be present with the work on Sunday, October 25, 2026, from 1:00 to 6:00 p.m. Between now and then, the space is open by appointment. Reach out to leah.piepgras@gmail.com for availability.
