artists upstairs

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Artup
2008
NEWSLETTER
2009
ArtUp wrapped up the fall of 2007 with American Caricature, an international
collection of political cartoons drawing on U.S. domestic and foreign policy as
seen through the drawing pens of cartoonist from 12 different counties ranging
perspectives from Canada to South America, Sweden to the Middle East, and
China to South Africa. The show reflected a unique view of how the world sees
us (U.S.) not necessarily how we see ourselves in the world.
With the grace of the Heinz Foundation, 2008 is opened our Outside In series
beginning with a look at the future artist of America- with our second 30 BELOW
project curated by Kait Wittig (assistant to the director). 30 BELOW opened for
First Night on the second floor of 937 Liberty Ave. The first 30 Below was
installed on the 3rd floor of 937 Liberty. This show exhibits works of artist under
the age of 30 living here in Pittsburgh, giving them an opportunity to network and
see what other artist are doing in different neighborhoods. It also gives them a
foot in the door of exhibition. Often many of these young artists have never had
an opportunity to exhibit formally before.
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Young artists prepare for 30 BELOW opening- First Night 2008
January ends with the Gallery Crawl and Deliciously Disposable Earth. ArtUp
received its first Multicultural Arts Initiative grant to produce a full color, 68 page
catalog documenting the exhibit. Together with the Three Rivers Arts Festival,
Tavia La Follette and Carolina Loyola-Garcia put together international
multimedia art exhibition and screening series that offered a critical view on
contemporary mining practices around the world. Issues of property and wealth,
impact on human and natural environments, new models of colonialism, and
questions around sustainability were examined by an array of international and
local artists. Work ranging from paintings of open pit mines in New Mexico, to a
performance where one was able to enjoy some delicious ice cream made with
glacier ice (take advantage of it before it all MELTS!!), to an exhibition that
explored the mining of human bodies through 'discovered' DNA now being
privatized for corporate profit. In addition to the gallery exhibition, there was also
a screening series in collaboration with Pittsburgh Filmmakers, which showed
documentary work addressing specific mining issues in Latin America and
Appalachia.
This exhibition was curated by media artist Carolina Loyola-Garcia. Deliciously
Disposable Earth also received the support of Robert Morris University, the
Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival, ArtIs, Appalshop, and Pittsburgh
Filmmakers.
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Exhibiting artists included Karin Bergdolt, Larry Bogad, Ernesto Cabellos, YiChuan Chen, Eugénie Michelle Gasson, Itamar Jobani, Clayton Merrell, Tom &
Connie Merriman, Mimi Pickering, Jane Rainwater, Lucy Raven, Shelby
Skumanich, and the cyberfeminist collective subRosa.
The spring Gallery Crawl opened with Dilated Dialogs on the 2nd floor of 937
Liberty.
Dilated Dialogues explored the perspective of being
“the other” or “the foreigner”. What does that “outsider” see and photograph in
this other culture? What seems foreign or worth investigating through a
photographic eye? How are cultures interpreted and perceived through an
outsider? This show examined what Americans photograph/see while aboard
and what foreigners see and photograph while here in the States. The exchange
explored the ideas of globalization, identity, labels, religion and cultural context.
Curated by Tavia La Follette, artists were chosen for their cultural investigations
through the camera. Cultural views included: Photographs from American
Pittsburghers and their travels to Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, Korea, Malaysia and a
Dean of Students and his work while traveling the world through the Semester at
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Sea program. Other photographers presented their study of the States and
Pittsburgh, these included counties/perspectives from Germany, Korea,
Columbia and Chile, as well as a Puerto Rican New York photographer, who is in
the delightfully disturbing “in-between” category.
Artists included: Karin Bergdolt, Don Gogniat, Carolina Loyola-Garcia, Jung
Yoon Lee, Oscar Palacio, Ricardo Muniz, Stephanie Mayer-Stayley, Andres
Tapia-Urzua, Chris Taylor
ArtUp jumped into the Three Rivers Arts Festival by taking over Market Square with the
Magarac Attack! ArtUp prides itself and has a record of producing art work that pushes
the boundaries, political, socially and artistically. As an organization of artist, we seek to
use the arts as a language and platform for change. By going into different Pittsburgh
neighborhoods and reinventing the Joe Magarac character, we brought “pride and
progress” back to the community by re-imagining the controversial character.
The Magarac image is well known all over Pittsburgh but his history is scandalous and
many believe prejudice. “Magarak”: which means Jackass or donkey in Croatian is also
believed to have been invented by the Steel Company as propaganda to persuade the
workers to work long hours and compete against one another. But Joe also became a
mascot, there was Magarac Beer and you can see his image all over Pittsburgh. Joe
Magarac was like the Paul Bunion of Steel. There are many different theories as to
where the image came from.
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Live music was a part of the Magarac Attack and The Spuds were not shy at letting EVERYONE join in
the fun- no matter what age!
The four communities were chosen because of their history as working class
neighborhoods, which each had their “hay day” in history due to successful industry.
The communities tend to be thought of as “rough” but this edginess was attractive to the
artist who live/work their and each one is rich in ethnic culture. The four communities
were: Braddock, The Hill District, Lawrenceville, Homestead
Kait and Tavia bend steel with Josie Magarac (the only woman!) in Market Square. Josie now
rests in the Braddock Library shelves and will be making and appearance at the Black Sheep
Puppet Festival in October at the Brew House!
We welcomed all the students back to Pittsburgh with our Remembering
Hiroshima show. This was another first for ArtUp as we revived the Three
Rivers Community Foundation Grant to produce this show. We worked together
with the Thomas Merton Center, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Children’s
Museum, Pittsburgh Filmmakers and United Electrical Workers (UE).
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Forefront: Art work by local artist and ArtUp intern, Emily Laychak- Survivors
Most people today are unaware of the present dangers and of the catastrophic
effects of nuclear weapons. By presenting the devastating effects of the nuclear
bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the art work of survivors and posters,
the public in the Pittsburgh area became more aware of the human survival and
moral issues involved with nuclear weapons arsenals and became more ready to
join their voices with the appeals of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a world free of
nuclear weapons. Many university classes took advantage of the artful and
educational exhibit that broke records with the Cultural Trust foot traffic of Gallery
shows. Thanks to the Trust, the show was in the 709 Penn Ave Gallery, allowing
easy access and a store front window to draw people in.
October opened with the ambitious and accomplished idea of ArtUp being in 2
places at once! We opened the Fall Gallery Crawl by christening our new space
820 Liberty Ave! Thanks (again) to the Cultural Trust we now have our own
space once again. Gary Huck, board member and political cartoonist opened
820 with American Dread.
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We also opened the 3rd floor of 937 Liberty with The People’s History
Project, thanks to the A.W. Mellon Award and the Pittsburgh Foundation.
With more than thirty years’ experience as a political artist, cartoonist,
illustrator, animator and teacher Mike Konopacki came to Pittsburgh to
install his latest works via ArtUp on the 3rd floor of 937 Liberty. Just in time
for the presidential election- the show examines the empirical history of
the United States through the eyes of a cartoonist.
Mike Konopacki signs books
Mike prints Mark Twain’s flag
Also: The People's History Project consists of Amy Trompetter and the Wobbly
Bucket Brigade. Amy has exhibited her world renowned puppets and
performed her traveling show based on the work of Howard Zinn. A series of
guerrilla performances by the Apathetic Anarchists (a Chatham University street
theatre class taught by Tavia La Follette) also hit the streets of the Gallery
Crawl. Both performance groups can be caught at the Black Sheep Puppet
Festival at the end of October.
Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki in 820 Liberty
Liberty Ave
Amy Trompetter and the Wobbly Bucket
Brigade!
Amy Trompetter builds, directs and performs puppet operas, outdoor pageants,
indoor spectacles, and hand-puppet shows. She is interested in how a painter
and a sculptor make theater. The stories she finds worth telling ask how people
can live together in today’s world. For eighteen years she worked with the Bread
and Puppet Theater. She has led communities in making large outdoor pageants
and small indoor shows in Italy, France, Nicaragua, Mexico, Japan, Botswana,
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Bangladesh, India and China. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Barnard/Columbia
Theatre Department, and teaches in Eastern and Woodbourne Correctional
Facilities for the Bard Prison Initiative.
Live music during the Crawl
820 Liberty during the Crawl
ArtUp is very excited to take over 820 Liberty with our upcoming season of I.D.
America! This series consists of 3 major exhibits (one of which incorporates an
artist workshop) and one public workshop that cross the Allegheny River, the
country and the cultural boundaries of the United States. The goal if this project
is to explore, deconstruct and re-construct aspects of American Culture through
the language of each artist. The artistic mission is for each project to confront
identity and labels, to question cultural judgments, societal systems and to speak
to all of this in the emblematic language of Art. At times we will use multi-day
workshop formats with artists in residence to ensure we are deeply connecting to
the local artists, thus influencing and affecting our own community.
Artists and projects the I.D. America series includes:
Project ID, an exhibition and workshop with performance artist and writer
Guillermo Gómez-Peña who for twenty years has been exploring intercultural
issues through the use of mixed genres and experimental languages. ArtUp is
collaborating the with Mattress Factory to host Gómez-Peña as an Artist-inResidence, who will teach a three day performance workshop in March 2009 run
out of 820 Liberty.
Small Talk, an exhibition and multiple performance series that examines the
masks and costumes one wears to a cocktail party, how people communicate,
and what they what they are really thinking and/or doing by their interactions with
one another. Small Talk is a playful yet poignant anthropological look into
today’s cocktail culture, exposing the raw truth of how people label themselves
and each other through costuming and speech, compelling the audience to
reflect on their own practice of assessing people around them: Co-created by
Atticus Adam and Tavia La Follette.
The Emancipation Proclamation Project is a public workshop that will share
the pedagogy of artist Pati Hernandez with local artists and members of the
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public. Hernandez has a long history using the arts to promote social activism.
Her main focus has been a performance art project entitled Telling My Story
which in which Hernandez works with populations in crisis, which has included
inmates, people on parole, and victims of domestic violence. By bringing her to
Pittsburgh, ArtUp hopes to begin a similar program here. Dr. Ivy Schweitzer who
runs the Women and Gender Studies program at Dartmouth (where she and Pati
both teach) is going to help make the transformation of their model to Pittsburgh.
Dr. Schweitzer’s research lies in the gender and the politics of cultural
representation, poetry and culture, women and race issues, gender and society.
X Country- Observations of a Humorist, an exhibition that is a photographic
journey across the States by artist and writer Donick Cary, whose wry look at
American culture through its signs and food, considers our nation and all it is
wrapped up to be. Donick Cary is an American television writer. Emmy-winning
writer and producer Cary got his start writing for “Late Night with David
Letterman.” Cary is currently executive producing his show “Lil’ Bush” for
Comedy Central, the first mobi/series ever to move from cell phones to
television. Comedy Central ordered six episodes of the series in 2007 and
ordered 10 episodes for 2008. He also provides the voice of Lil' Cheney in the
show.
Keep in the loop by going to www.artup.org