Well hooray! My piece titled "August Wilson Homage' received "honorable mention" and both pieces sold at the opening of "Small Works" Pittsburgh Society of Artists Exhibit April 10th at Borelli Edwards Gallery. This was all going on simultaneously with the “I made It Market” at Southside Works where I was a vendor the same day- but with totally different work.
Here is info about the Small Works Exhibit at Borelli Edwards gallery:
Borelli Edwards Gallery
3583 Butler Street
Lawrenceville (a Pittsburgh neighborhood), PA 15201
“Small Works” runs through April 24th, 2010
In the August Wilson piece I included the building where he grew up as the primary image, and the Carnegie Library in Oakland as the secondary image. He went to that library to read and read after dropping out of high school when he was wrongly accused of plagiarizing a 20 page paper on Napoleon ( and many other complications and hostile educational settings). Eventually the Carnegie Library in Oakland gave him his high school diploma, and he is the only one to ever have received a HS diploma from the library. The image of Rachel Carson’s homestead in Springdale is mixed with my images of coal burning smoke stacks there- a current environmental battle involving new scrubbers proposed by owners RRI out of Houston TX that would reduce sulfur dioxide emissions but increase lead and mercury emissions. High school students (among others in the region) in Springdale have even gotten into the act and have mobilized to demand a better solution- so that is a current news story that I have to think Rachel Carson would have to be proud of.
Architect John Martine bought them! John is a lead design partner at Strada, an award-winning Pittsburgh architecture firm. Of course I'm thrilled about anyone buying my work but I am especially proud to be in John’s collection! I have enormous respect for his work in architecture, and he himself is a really fantastic artist.
The two artworks are part of this same “art chapter” I am dwelling on –an homage to the (Pittsburgh) childhood homes and other sites of importance to Andy Warhol, August Wilson and Rachel Carson. The media is a departure from my watercolor, oil or charcoal and pastel work- it is all based on my altered digital photography- and things I find of interest about these individuals. As I have developed this work I have gotten some good feedback from both Charlie Humphrey at Filmmakers and Eric Shiner of the Warhol.
One of the my fondest anecdotes came from my husband and my son who could not attend the opening so they went a few hours before just to see the exhibit at the BE Gallery. They said they finally found my two pieces and five people were gathered around them looking closely at them and talking about them. That was a really great bit of feedback!
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/museums/s_677507.html
Arts writer Kurt Shaw write about the exhibit, including my pieces in the Tribune Review.
