CDCP is excited to partner with the City of Pittsburgh on their Art in Parks project. The program is well underway with eight artists and collectives creating public art in the city’s five Allegheny Regional Asset District (RAD) parks: Emerald View, Frick, Highland, Riverview, and Schenley.
To complement this program, five Pittsburgh-based storytellers will document the project as it unfolds, building distinct narratives around each park and the creation and impact of public art. The CDCP team is overseeing program management and documentation, including collaborating closely with the artists and storytellers.
We’re thrilled to announce the five local individuals selected to tell the stories of these parks, the public art, and how the communities involved share in the experience.
Sandra Bacchi is a Brazilian multimedia artist, based in Pittsburgh. Bacchi will shoot a short documentary video to tell the story of Emerald View Park.
Sophia Fang is a queer, Chinese-American interdisciplinary artist building vibrancy in both Pittsburgh and Seattle. Fang will paint a series of watercolors illustrating the story of Frick Park.
Mark Kramer is a narrative journalist, essayist, and writing instructor based in Pittsburgh. Kramer will tell the story of Riverview Park through a series of short essays.
Alyssa Velazquez is a cultural historian specializing in gender, performance, and women’s studies. Velazquez will design a downloadable zine to share the story of Highland Park.
Sakena Washington is a creative writer and digital content creator based in Pittsburgh, PA. Washington will write a narrative essay to tell the story of Schenley Park.
Each storyteller will work with the artists and surrounding communities between September 2021 and May 2022 to create a unique digital piece (in the form of text, photo, video, drawing, etc.) that tells their story. Stories will be accessible to the public in the summer of 2022.
For more information about the Art in Parks program, visit https://engage.pittsburghpa.gov/art-parks.
This program is made possible by the RADical ImPAct Grant, which was launched in celebration of the Allegheny Regional Asset District’s 25th anniversary with the intention of funding bold, forward-looking, creative projects that will have a radical impact on the region. The public art projects will be designed and installed on a staggered schedule through the summer of 2022.
Sandra Bacchi is a Brazilian multimedia artist based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her photography, video, and glass weave together fiction and truths to tell more open-ended stories on how human beings find common ground. Earning a degree in photography at Escola Panamericana de Artes in 1997, Sandra worked in the Brazilian film industry. In 2012, she moved to the US with her family. Since then, Bacchi’s work has been in group exhibitions including, The United, Pittsburgh Glass Center, 2020, and Anthropology of Motherhood, McDonough Museum of Art, Youngtown, OH, 2020. In addition, the short film Seeking Nowhere was screened during the Glass, Meet the Future 2021 Film Festival at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. She is a member of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and a Pittsburgh Glass Center board member. In 2022, her photobook Watermelons Are Not Strawberries will be published by Yoffy Press, with an essay by Sarah Kennel.
Sophia Fang is a queer interdisciplinary dabbler who builds vibrancy in Pittsburgh and Seattle. Blending vibrant swatches of color and complex details, her watercolors combine whimsy and community joy to celebrate small businesses, immigrant placemaking, and food diasporas. Sophia is passionate about beautifying public spaces in her hometown and the Rust Belt. She has received public art commissions in 2021 from the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation, BOOM Concepts, West Virginia University, City of Tukwila, and City of Auburn. Her artwork has been featured in Pittsburgh City Paper, The Incline PGH, Marketing Pittsburgh Podcast, and love, Pittsburgh. Sophia is also an Artist-in-Residence at Inscape Arts, an Awesome Pittsburgh grant winner, and a 2021 Finalist for the ATHENA Young Professional Award. Passionate about empowering local entrepreneurs, makers, and creators, Sophia is the Head of Marketing at Honeycomb Credit, a Board Member at Prototype PGH, and a Venture For America alumni fellow.
Mark Kramer’s narrative nonfiction has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Anthony Bourdain’s Explore Parts Unknown, PublicSource, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Truth About the Fact, Prism, geez, and Vox Populi, and with the Religion News Service, among other publications. He’s the author of one book, Dispossessed: Life in Our World’s Urban Slums (Orbis Books), a collection of narratives from informal urban communities around the world. Of late he’s been writing on urban nature, empathy, race, and economic development. In addition to creative nonfiction, Mark teaches courses in service learning and civic engagement as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. Mark studied fiction as an undergrad, journalism while earning a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and creative nonfiction while completing an MFA at the University of Pittsburgh. Among other community engagement and advocacy work, Mark co-founded The Corner, an arts and community center in Pittsburgh’s West Oakland neighborhood.
Alyssa Velazquez is a cultural historian specializing in the material culture of gender, performance identity, and women’s studies. Prior to Pittsburgh, she was the Curatorial Research Associate for Van Gogh and His Inspirations (Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina). She also assisted in the development of the exhibition Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place (Bard Graduate Center Gallery, New York). Velazquez holds a MA in decorative arts, design history, and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center and a BA in history and anthropology from Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. She organized Locally Sourced, highlighting new work by the region's most talented present-day makers of functional goods and furnishings in Pittsburgh. Other projects include, Sharif Bey: Excavations and Extraordinary Ordinary Things, Carnegie Museum of Art's reinstallation of its decorative arts and design collection. She has published articles in AutoStraddle, GRLSQUASH, The Establishment, Women's History Magazine, The Fashion Studies Journal, and Votive Project.
Sakena Washington is a freelance writer based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her writing has appeared in Huffington Post, ReWire News, and the Jellyfish Review. This year, her creative nonfiction was nominated for the 2021 Best of the Net anthology. She received her MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. When she’s not chasing after her toddler or jogging at a beginner’s pace, she writes for non-profits and philanthropic foundations.
