I had some time on Saturday to visit the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. From their website:

Founded in 1945, PCA is a non-profit community arts campus that offers arts education programs and contemporary art exhibitions, providing services and resources for individual artists throughout Western Pennsylvania. The Center is where the community can create, see, support, and learn about visual arts.

At any one time, the facility can host as many as eight exhibits in its interconnecting galleries. PCA is also the home of Pittsburgh's numerous guilds. All of the shows that I saw this weekend end on March 18, so if you have a chance, stop by.

In the entrance gallery...
Group Picture
Deanne Dunbar
This exhbit was comprised of a half dozen large oil paintings based on group pictures. The artist statement posted with the exhibit states that the artist's intent was to encourage the power of group action. All of the group pictures were very much posed.

Next door and in the hallway was...
Blanket Statement
Shawn Quinlan

I loved the bed. The quilts were more like fabric collage. Figures were cut out and applied with an over-stitching machine quilt technique. More of an applique effect.

Two of the galleries on the second floor are the domain of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. This group is fast approaching its 100th anniversary. On exhibit is...

Vitreous
Associated Artists of Pittsburgh

Marjorie Shipe -- Phantom City. Absolutely beautiful work.
Nathan Nissim -- Soldier from Orion
William Wade -- Reflections, Clarity and Fog. This is a photograph of the sculpture garden of the Carnegie Museum of Art, taken from the atrium of the Scaife Galleries. Absolutely beautiful shot.

The smaller gallery was a project room. From Associated Artists of Pittsburgh website:

As part of "Vitreous," an exhibit within the exhibit, created by a group of AAP board members, and tied to the Year of Glass, will also be presented February 2nd at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The first in what is hoped to be a series of projects partnering artists with various industries, the pilot project brings a glass-related business together with art. An experimental fiberglass project, this effort combines the advanced glass fiber fabric produced by Butler-based Dielectric Solutions, with how artists might use the materials in their work. The artists visited the Dielectric factory, studied the material and have used it to create pieces for the pilot project.

The artists participating in the "Pilot Program #1" will then take the materials to students throughout the area through the AAP Outreach/Education Program, and work with high school and college students to create the students own art pieces using similar materials, and to illustrate the potential for artists and industry to work in unison. "We are hoping that this cooperative effort is just the first of many similar efforts throughout the region," said Anna Marie Sninsky, AAP outreach advisor.

I found the display of the materials within this gallery a distraction. Every once in a while, there would be this little label that said Raw Materials. It really detracted from some of the beautiful individual works exhibited in the space.

in the three galleries on the second floor...

Funny Business
Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators

Need I say more? pretty cool stuff
Phil Wilson -- Boom Box
Rich Rogowski -- Fake Bird Suits