CALL FOR ART: Keystone Progress x Casey Droege Cultural Productions

Keystone Progress Education Fund and Casey Droege Cultural Productions are thrilled to present a call for art for a series of exhibitions.

Submit your work for a series of exhibitions in collaboration with Keystone Progress Education Fund. Taking place this Fall, the three exhibitions will create a dialogue around democracy and explore key voter issues such as reproductive rights and gun violence in our communities, particularly within our region as it prepares for the upcoming elections.

To learn more about this opportunity, click the button below.

Take our survey for a chance at a $20 Visa Gift Card

Pittsburgh-area artists, we want to hear from you!

We’re collecting information from Pittsburgh-area artists about skills and services they’re interested in learning to advance their careers. We hope to address some of these at CDCP and share them with peer organizations in the area. Please fill it out to the best of your ability by June 21st. Two participants will be chosen at random to receive a $20 Visa Gift Card.

Click the button below to take the survey. Visa Gift Card winners will be notified in early July.

(really into surveys and also photography? Try Silver Eye's survey too)

Alecia Dawn Young Selected to Create Public Artwork for Larimer Education and Squash Center

The Art Supply Co. (TASC) and Steel City Squash (SCS)  are thrilled to announce that Alecia Dawn Young will be designing and creating a public artwork titled Rooted Momentum on the Steel City Squash Larimer Education and Squash Center.

This mural considers how community centers are fertile spaces for collaboration, creativity, and liberatory endeavors through a bright ceramic tile and acrylic paint composition that expands across 1,600 square feet of the exterior and interior walls of the future community center and youth development hub.

TASC led a local open call for artwork in the fall, bringing in submissions from artists around the area. A selection committee including stakeholders from TASC, SCS, GBBN (the architecture firm on the project) and the Larimer Consensus Group (the neighborhood group) narrowed down the pool to three artists, who were invited to go through a paid design process. These three artists, PBJ Customs, Industrial Arts Workshop, and Alecia Dawn Young, went on to speak directly with members of both the SCS and neighborhood communities during a workshop held on January 11, 2024.  Over the following weeks, the artists created design proposals for public artworks in a variety of materials working with feedback from the selection committee and members of the public. 

SCS’s new facility, named the Larimer Education and Squash Center, will display the artwork on the exterior of the building. The artwork will combine ceramic tiles and paint in a design to honor the spirit of the Larimer neighborhood and the programmatic mission of SCS. Steel City Squash envisioned its new home to be designed and built as a local and national destination facility that will create multiple revenue streams to support its program, facilitate multicultural engagement, and contribute to long-term sustainability.

Alecia Dawn Young is an artist, scholar, and founder of the creative wellness studio YOGAMOTIF. She believes that generating art and life are connected and invests her time in people, projects, and communities that explore these practices. Her work is grounded in the collective healing of Black m/others and embodied making that supports mental health. Alecia’s career spans a commitment to community arts education and wellness, rooted in making, teaching, and researching in the visual arts. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University where she focused on 3-dimensional studies in wood, metal, and ceramic arts. After teaching in non-profit and public education for five years, Alecia obtained a Master of Arts Management from the H. John Heinz III College at Carnegie Mellon University. She is currently a practicing ceramic artist and Ph.D. student in the Applied Developmental Psychology program at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education.

In 2014, Steel City Squash introduced urban squash to Pittsburgh. The organization was founded by Talbott Simonds and Tim Wyant, who partnered to establish Steel City Squash with help from the Hillman Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, and the University of Pittsburgh. This program joined the Squash and Education Alliance (SEA) as its 19th member in 2015 and continues to support the community through education, mentoring, community service, travel and the sport of squash. Since its inception, Steel City Squash continues to inspire and motivate students from 4th through 11th grade to excel academically and envision their future by providing consistent and long term support to students and their families to achieve their postsecondary goals, all while exposing them to the culture of the sport of squash.

Art in the Heart launches with mural by Sophia Marie Pappas

The Art Supply Co. is thrilled about the launch of the Art in the Heart program, a large-scale mural project in downtown Pittsburgh, featuring Sophia Marie Pappas as the inaugural artist.

After a local open call for artists this past fall, three artists were chosen to go through a paid design process: Alexis Gideon, Loring Taoka, and Sophia Marie Pappas. Pappas was recently selected as the final artist. 

Sophia Marie Pappas is an illustrator and letterpress printer living and working in Pittsburgh. She operates her own studio and tiny storefront, Studio PDP, in Millvale where she offers freelance illustration services and custom letterpress printing. Studio PDP also houses her mini shop where she sells original work and her own line of letterpress stationery.

“At its core, my work is narrative,” says Pappas. “I want to tell [you] a story, and I love a good story.” Taking inspiration from old country ballads, Biblical epics, eavesdropped conversations, as well as her own life, Pappas' work creates a visual language from the stories she’s witnessed and experienced.

Her new work for Art in the Heart will be installed this spring on the second and third floor windows of the Skinny Building, a commercial building located on the corner of Forbes Avenue and Wood Street. The aim of the project is to both preserve and celebrate these historic buildings in Downtown Pittsburgh. pappas' artwork will be illuminated from inside the building to create a lightbox effect, with her design showcased across more than 700 square feet. The goal of Art in the Heart is to provide a positive interaction with art for downtown Pittsburgh passerby, offering a moment of joy and lightness in the hustle and bustle of the city. 

To acknowledge the full process of this project, small prints of both Loring Taoka and Alexis Gideon’s designs will be displayed inside the neighboring Roberts building along with historical photos of the downtown strip.

Standing at a width of 5 feet and 2 inches, the Skinny Building is one of the narrowest commercial buildings in the world. The Skinny Building's lot was created in 1903 by a street widening project, and the building itself was constructed in 1926 by Louis Hendel (c. 1874–1945), who was a local fruit vendor. Continuing a cheeky legacy of “spite buildings,” Hendel had the building constructed partially in response to neighboring business owners who complained about him obstructing the sidewalk with his fruit-selling business.

Thank you for coming to with ourselves, with each other!

Thank you to everyone who came and saw with ourselves, with each other at Inter-. We hope you had a great time witnessing and participating in Maree’s performance. It was a deep pleasure to work with Hatch Arts Collective for this special event, and we’re excited to see what’s in store for them this year.

with ourselves, with each other explores how grief can be a collective experience. Using a karaoke mic and movement as her primary performance vehicle, choreographer and performer Maree ReMalia explores how a solo can be more than a solo and become a gathering, a chorus, and a communal remembrance.

While living through the wake of her father’s death and the pandemic, ReMalia ties our individual lives to the ever burgeoning global and political strife.  This performance aims to be a balm for the heart and a container for grief. It is an opening for joy, all while welcoming desire, acknowledging rage, and insisting on love.

As we hold our persistence and tenacity along with our weariness and imperfections, ReMalia asks: what stories do we want to voice? What words feel meaningful? Where do we feel grief in our bodies and how does it want to move?

To learn more about this performance and to see images from the evening, click the button below.

Thank you for coming to CDCP X WCDC Present: Jasmine Green

Thank you to everyone who came and saw CDCP x WCDC Present: Jasmine Green at the Lohr Gallery. To close out this successful show, Jasmine hosted an earring painting workshop where registrants took home a hand-painted pair of earrings that Jasmine fabricated.