"In a prepared statement, College of Fine Arts Dean Dan Martin said the Miller Gallery will transform from a conventional gallery environment to a combined gallery. Plans include using the gallery for teaching and research space, with room for “installations, seminars, hands-on art-creating workshops, artist lectures and applied research in curatorial/exhibition practices.”
Programming, traditionally handled by the curator, will be determined by a faculty leadership committee representing all five CFA schools: art, architecture, design, music and drama. Associate dean for Interdisciplinary Initiatives Franco Sciannameo will chair the committee."Sad, that Astria couldn't stick around town as a roving curator, putting together occasional shows @ The Warhol, Mattress Factory, The Miller Gallery and other venues. Pittsburgh lacks that kind of cross pollination.
Saturday, October 6th
Readings, art, a pop-up bookstore, and wood-fired pizza
7pm - 10pm
Readings start at 8:30pm
$7 admission
Curated by Sherrie Flick
The 4th annual Wood-Fired Words will feature readings by: Sean Thomas Dougherty, Braddock’s 2013 Into the Furnace Writer-in-Residence; Sarah Leavens, Braddock’s current Out of the Forge Writer-in-Residence; and Salvatore Pane, author of the forthcoming novel Last Call in the City of Bridges, published by Braddock Avenue Books.
The event will also include The East End Book Exchange pop-up used bookstore, paintings by local artist Anna E. Mikolay, and wood-fired pizza baked in Braddock’s community pizza oven (with special chef appearance by Kevin Sousa). Drinks are BYOB, and an ongoing potluck will occur inside the gallery.
Into the Furnace is a writer-in-residence program in Braddock, PA. The selected writer is housed in a two-room suite in the former St. Michael’s parochial school convent, which is located beside UnSmoke Systems Artspace, across the street from the Edgar Thompson Works, and beside the community pizza oven. Into the Furnace offers an adventuresome creative person, whose work and work ethic can benefit from the energy Braddock has to offer, up to 9 months of creative work time at our urban residency.
Out of the Forge is a new writing residency for post-MFA graduates held in conjunction with the Into the Furnace residency. It allows time and space for an emerging writer to focus on his/her craft as well as engage with the Braddock community. Housed in the convent building next to UnSmoke for 6 to 9 months, the writer-in-residence becomes part of the heart of Braddock’s burgeoning literary community.
Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author of thirteen books across genres including the forthcoming All I Ask for Is Longing: Poems 1994- 2014 and Scything Grace. He is the recipient of two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry and a Fulbright Lectureship to the Balkans. Known for his electrifying performances, Dougherty has performed at hundreds of venues, universities and festivals across North America and Europe. He has worked as a lecturer, in factories, warehouses, as a security guard, in a bakery, a sawmill, and as a teacher of at-risk youth. He currently works at a pool hall and teaches creative writing part-time at Cleveland State University.
Sarah Leavens received her MFA in Poetry and Nonfiction from Chatham University, where she served as the Margaret Whitford Fellow. While at Chatham, she organized the monthly reading series Word Circus in collaboration with Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery and earned certificates in the Pedagogy of Creative Writing and Travel Writing. Originally from the middle of four cornfields in Indiana, she has lived at length in Ohio, where she coordinated an arts outreach program for at-risk youth and families in Springfield, and served as Vice President for the Yellow Springs Arts Council. Her recent work has appeared in Fourth River and Weave; she teaches writing and visual art in Pittsburgh.
Salvatore Pane was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His novel, Last Call in the City of Bridges, will be published by Braddock Avenue Books this fall. His chapbook, #KanyeWestSavedFromDrowning, is forthcoming from NAP. He is an Assistant Professor of English Creative Writing at the University of Indianapolis. His fiction has been nominated or shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web, and Wigleaf’s Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions. He won the 2010 Turow-Kinder Award in Fiction judged by Stewart O’ Nan with an excerpt from his novel. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in American Short Fiction, Hobart, PANK, Annalemma, BOMB, The Rumpus, HTMLGIANT, The American Book Review, and many other venues.
Braddock Avenue Books is an independent literary press dedicated to publishing both new and established writers and graphic artists whose work engages honestly and meaningfully with contemporary circumstances. Braddock Avenue Books especially supports writers using literary fiction, the long-form essay, or graphic fiction and nonfiction for serious explorations of what it means to be alive today. Founded by local writers Jeffery Condran and Robert Peluso in 2011, Braddock Avenue Books is located in Braddock, PA.
Sherrie Flick is author of a novel, Reconsidering Happiness (Bison Books), and the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting (Flume). Select anthologies include Flash Fiction Forward (Norton), New Sudden Fiction (Norton), and The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. She has received fellowships from Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Ucross Foundation, and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A recipient of a 2011 Work of Art Award for Artistic Vibrancy from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, she teaches at Chatham University and (for 10 years) served as Artistic Director for the Gist Street Reading Series. Sherrie was instrumental in the creation of the Into the Furnace writing residency program.
The East End Book Exchange was founded in the summer of 2011 on two simple ideas: love of books and love of Pittsburgh. It is a pop-up used bookstore dedicated to connecting booklovers and books in the heart of Pittsburgh’s East End. Each weekend, The East End Book Exchange appears in a community space or local business in a different neighborhood.
Anna E. Mikolay is a painter and installation artist who lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA. She received a BFA from Edinboro University and maintains a studio space at Unsmoke Systems Artspace, in Braddock, PA. Upcoming Pittsburgh exhibitions include New Paintings at Concept Art Gallery, a site-specific installation at Future Tenant Gallery, and a solo exhibition at Unsmoke Systems Artspace. Recently, she was an artist in residence at the New York Student Art League's Vytlacil Campus, Sparkill, NY and a fellow with the 2011 Flight School Fellowship, Pittsburgh Filmmakers in Partnership with Creative Capital. Recent projects include, The Space Between, a solo exhibition at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, an installation for the 8 Hour Project, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA and paintings in the show, Minimalism in The 21st Century at the Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Illinois.
"The exhibition offers a unique opportunity to examine Beardenʼs print making process as he worked and re-worked a particular image, theme or technique, to consider how his thinking and approaches were shaped through collaborations with master printmakers and to understand how key themes and motifs like trains, family life, rituals, urban scenes, jazz and mythology extended his artistic imagination from collage into other media.
The works in the exhibition show Beardenʼs extraordinary facility for weaving into every art form a rich tapestry of literary, biblical, mythological, popular culture and western and non-western themes that were informed by his African American cultural experiences. Included are prints based on collages like the Odysseus Series and Piano Lesson that he reworked in several media through changes in technique, scale and color and through the use of photographic processes. Also included are two important photoengraving series, The Train and The Family and the extraordinary limited edition 12 Trains. John Loring writing in Arts Magazine in 1973 proclaimed The Train “one of the 10 most important prints of our time.”
"Fe Arts Gallery is delighted to feature local and national artists who challenge notions of value. A Grey market enables person-to-person exchanges, like Craigslist and eBay, where individuals can negotiate value. With the proliferation of artist run spaces, the gallery has expanded to include alternate modes of distribution and exchange. Each artist in this exhibition speaks to various facets of this phenomenon.
Jim Kidd is the artist in residence in Transformazium’s screen printing shop. Transformazium is a collective emphasizing the neighborhood as a center for production of innovative ideas, collective action and public health. Kidd’s work challenges the archive by presenting a collection of objects and images that reassign historical value. Evoking nostalgia, Brianna Rigg reassigns cultural value through artistic composites of familiar objects. Chad Gordon’s work conceptually and figuratively juxtaposes the aesthetic of ubiquitous glossy magazines with his own reinterpretation that engages the global market economy. Questioning the concept of value altogether, Edgar Um Bucholtz presents an installation, using video of a burning car from a "Eurosleaze" cult film in dialogue with wall text."
"It would take time for artists to assimilate and interpret his forms. So it began: any use of boxes referred back to Judd. I doubt that the four artists in Donald Judd Remix based their work directly on Judd, but there is the acknowledgment of a minimalist structure. All point to aspects of the originals: serialization, display, materials, etc. But they include the personal in a variety of ways, leaving the sterile behind. They add what Judd left out, creating a new kind of minimalism, or at least expanding the original definition by emphasizing meaning and the personal and the hand of the artist."
"I am writing on the threshold of the MFA thesis exhibition, where each year the graduate students extend themselves to produce something extraordinary. This stretching of imagination and ambition creates an adrenaline-fueled run-in for all concerned. Jesha will push the envelope; Sean will produce yet another magical bricolage; Dan will combine the poetic and the profound; Rob will puzzle us with some photographic conundrums; and Courtney will present us with a wry intellectual challenge. This year’s exhibit promises to be bold, ingenious, thought-provoking, and tinged with humor. I have seen them develop their work and grow in confidence over the last three years, through a mutually supportive camaraderie, which has seen them through their Carnegie Mellon journey. All have had to reappraise the notions they arrived with, and have undergone a rigorous period of critical evaluation, in order to recognize their fundamental motivations and to refine their mode of practice. Not only does this exhibit showcase their talent and considerable achievements, but it also represents the philosophy of the MFA program, which is to produce self-defined artists of exceptional ability and initiative, able to create opportunities for themselves and connect meaningfully with the communities and cultures around them."
"Notions of speed in contemporary culture are often tied to technology and its impact on everyday life. Information dissemination and interactions are accelerating, and with it hopes and fears of the future change with every new invention or discovery. Our culture of speed harnesses energies beyond our comprehension, while calling into question the nature of our everyday reality.
Speed is not merely acceleration, but a magnitude of velocity, fast or slow. It becomes a measure of time and space, of dislocation and change, of transformation and evolution. The extremes of fast and slow heighten our awareness of our surroundings, creating a seamless interface between the visceral and the subliminal. Speed creates a blur between what is real and what is imagined.
wats:ON 2011 will examine speed in relation to the production and presentation of creative work encompassing a range of interdisciplinary events."
tree-dedication memorial :: sunday, may 23, 2010 – 12p.m.Allegheny Commons
Park, West Park, North Side, PittsburghCorner of Brighton Road & West North
Avenue (near the lake)pot-luck luncheon following :: at the new hazlett
theaterAllegheny Square East, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15212412.320.4610 –
www.newhazletttheater.org guests are encouraged to bring a dish to share,
beverages will be provided.
There are also some great pictures of John and of his work on the Pittsburgh Arts Blog:
http://pittsburghgalleries.blogspot.com/2010/05/in-memory-of-pittsburgh-artist-john.html
I saw this exhibit in May, 2007 in Washington D.C. The work is quite beautiful, original and moving. Interestingly, some of the work is on pre WWII Japanese paper that the artist happened upon in a store in NYC. After obtaining the paper Ruth Levine started getting copies of old Japanese newspapers, and looking into Japanese history of the time. Below is the press release. And below that...is a portion of an interview I did with Ruth Levine in which she discusses this work on the Urban bytes blog.
You may have already seen a great deal of art this weekend. After all there was the Gallery Crawl downtown on Friday, and Art All Night Sat-Sun at 2p.m.
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