Art in Our Neighborhoods
By Lynne Margolis
For a small
metro area, Pittsburgh offers a wealth of cultural opportunities
and resources. But is it enough to sustain a strong and
vibrant artistic community?
Tinsy Lipchak, director of Tourism and Cultural Heritage
at the Greater Pittsburgh Convention and Visitors Bureau,
can recite endless testimonials from unsuspecting visitors
astonished by what they find here: a city of shimmering
beauty, with a vibrant and well-established art scene full
of great museums, diverse performing arts organizations,
a strong history of philanthropy,
and appreciative audiences.
Spanish realist painter Felix de la Concha was one of them.
He and his wife, comics scholar Ana Merino, visited from
Columbus, Ohio, while she was working on her master’s
degree. They thought Pittsburgh was such a great city that
they decided to move here. Merino earned her doctorate at
the University of Pittsburgh, and de la Concha exhibited
his work at Carnegie Museum of Art and the Frick Art Museum.
He recalls that both shows were very well attended.
“There’s a lot of energy in Pittsburgh, a lot
of interesting exhibitions,” observes de la Concha.
“It’s a city where people are very interested
in art in general. I visited the museums, and I loved the
architecture. I haven’t seen that in many places.”
With all that going for it, one might think Pittsburgh
is a true arts mecca, a city that nurtures its own and helps
them gain renown far outside its borders. But in terms of
its art scene, Oz has some behind-the-curtain shortcomings.
They are, however, far from fatal.
Hope and Ambition
Carnegie Museum of Art Director Richard Armstrong admits
the Pittsburgh art scene has had its ups and downs over
the years, but he concurs with de la Concha’s assessment.
“If you look at the housing market, if you look at
the Spinning Plates Lofts (low-income residential units
built for artists), and at the grants from the Pittsburgh
Cultural Trust and Heinz Endowments, there’s a great
deal of of support here given the scale of the city,”
he says. “I travel a fair amount and there aren’t
many American cities that offer all this.
“There’s a tremendous range of ambitions here,
and it’s really something quite amazing to see,”
he adds. “Outsiders think it’s heaven.”
In fact, Armstrong says he frequently fields calls from
people in other cities “desperate to try and replicate
our situation.”
The Andy Warhol Museum Director Thomas Sokolowski is a
fan of non-establishment movements to maintain and strengthen
the city’s arts community. He praises the efforts
of the BridgeSpotters Collective and East Liberty’s
Shadow Lounge, where “poetry slams,” DJs, and
performers of all stripes work in a comfortable environment
highlighted by changing displays of local artists’
work. “People bring their own alcohol, the prices
are cheap, and they give a forum to people to perform, and
that’s really important,” he says.
Sokolowski, who regards art as an object for agitation
as well as other forms of enlightenment, adds, “I
think we really need a place that would just allow for wonderful
presentations of art that’s raw, that isn’t
necessarily pleasant.” He says Jill Larson, owner
of Fe Gallery on Butler Street in the burgeoning Lawrenceville
art district, does “refreshing” shows in which
she pairs local and out-of-town artists together. “I
think the hope for young artists in this community can be
found on Butler Street in Lawrenceville and in the area
of Penn Avenue, where a lot of galleries have been built
up.”
Room To Grow
Indeed, Lawrenceville and the adjoining Bloomfield-Garfield
area seems to have overtaken the South Side as Pittsburgh’s
new Bohemia, a title that belonged to Shadyside in the ’60s
and ’70s before gentrification and other factors pushed
its artistic practitioners to East Carson Street and beyond.
Michelle Illuminato, a visiting assistant professor of
art at Carnegie Mellon University, says she remembers when
the South Side was filled with bars populated by shift-ending
steel workers and withered old men. That wasn’t long
before she became a mid-’90s resident of the former
Duquesne Brewery, a.k.a. “the Brewhouse,” whose
inhabitants battled—with eventual success—to
overcome various bureaucratic tie-ups and turn the space
into a legitimate artists’ enclave.
Illuminato subsequently lived in—and loved—the
Spinning Plates Lofts in the Friendship-Bloomfield area.
She left the city for a while but, like so many others,
couldn’t stay away. She now lives in North Point Breeze
and is considering buying property in Lawrenceville. “The
amount of space in Pittsburgh makes a lot of things possible,”
says Illuminato, who has lived in Madison, Wis., and Bowling
Green, Ohio, and notes that neither city has the sort of
leftover industrial space—ideal for artists—that
Pittsburgh boasts.
PHOTO : LISA KYLE
Adam Sipe, a North Side resident who’s in a three-year,
summer-only graduate-school program at Bard College in upstate
New York, says the low cost of living in Pittsburgh is a
big part of what’s keeping him here. The Greensburg
native says he may wind up in New York someday, but right
now, it makes sense for him to be in a more affordable,
slower-paced community. Sipe, who won the Pittsburgh Center
for the Arts’ 2004 Emerging Artist of the Year award,
also works as an art handler at The Warhol. He calls that
job “an invaluable experience” and “a
good glimpse into the art world.”
Though positions like Sipe’s aren’t plentiful
in Pittsburgh, Illuminato says the museums here have enormous
resources that aren’t being tapped because artists
and researchers aren’t even aware they exist. “People
don’t know that they don’t have to be a scholar
from New York to come in and access The Warhol’s archives,”
she says.
The Big Apple
Effect
That lack of awareness, unfortunately, is a subtle indicator
of the city’s artistic downside.
When asked for his assessment of the Pittsburgh art scene,
Armstrong admits, “I’d say it’s battered
at this point. Important venues and galleries have closed
or cut back, and having uncertainty at the Pittsburgh Center
for the Arts has been tremendously dampening.” The
Shadyside center, a city institution that offered classes,
exhibits, and a retail store full of unique, locally focused
art and crafts, nearly collapsed last year before Pittsburgh
Filmmakers Executive Director Charlie Humphrey stepped in
to resuscitate it.
Pittsburgh’s not suffering alone, however. “Regional
art centers have really withered considerably over the last
25 years as the art world has become more centralized around
New York and Los Angeles,” says Armstrong. “San
Francisco and Chicago, both communities I knew well in the
old days, are considerably less vital than they were. And
Pittsburgh is in such a close magnetic pull to New York,
I think it’s becoming very difficult for an artist
to sustain him or herself here.”
Sokolowski observes, “We have a very small sector
of exciting artists working here because most of the good
people leave. They leave for various reasons, one of which
is there’s very little activity in terms of shows,
exhibitions, and sales. But I think it’s largely because
there’s not enough interest on the part of the community
to want to go see—or buy—works of art.”
Studio Z, a former art gallery on the South Side owned
by Kathleen Zimbicki, did so well in the ’80s that
Zimbicki was able to put two kids through college. But in
the ’90s, she says, New York snobbery set in. Pittsburghers
who could afford to buy art went to the Big Apple to
get it because they automatically assumed that city had
better art—even though, as she notes, “A lot
of local people show in New York.”
Zimbicki, who is also exhibition chair for the Associated
Artists of Pittsburgh’s annual exhibit, which returns
in May to The Warhol, says those in charge of curating,
casting, or signing actors, artists, or musicians “think
everything is New York City and L.A., and everything else
is Iowa.”
Madrid’s de la Concha agrees. He says he couldn’t
even get sneezed on by art administrators in Columbus until
curators he knew in Chicago put in a good word for him.
But, he says, the situation is the same here as in most
other cities.
It Takes a Community
Despite the issues facing Pittsburgh artists today, Sipe
says he’s noticing more and more artists are choosing
to stay put. He contends that artists can remain in Pittsburgh
and make a living if they build success outside of the city
with museum exhibits and gallery sales in New York or L.A.
and travel frequently to gain exposure to what’s going
on in the art world. But they likely won’t do it by
relying on local-market sales alone.
Yet perhaps they could if Sokolowki’s vision were
to become reality. His proposal: “Get 200 people—and
I’ll be one of them—to commit $500 to $1,000
dollars to buy 100 tickets in a year to go to shows, to
go to theater, to go to young music, etc. And I won’t
just send my money; I’ll actually go to the shows
and sit in those seats at least half the time.
“I think if you just had that core audience of people
trying to do that,” Sokolowski says, “you would
then begin creating a culture of the visual, musical, and
theatrical arts. People in this town have relied on foundations
and certain individuals for too long. It’s like, ‘Oh
yeah, we have all these museums.’ Well, use them.”
Without Pittsburgh’s museums, theaters, clubs, and
similar attractions, Sokolowski says, visitors would be
left with nothing to do but go to the Olive Garden. Adds
Zimbicki: “People should support local artists by
going to the museums and local galleries and buying local
art.” That’s important, she says, because if
an artist’s career takes off, “you’ll
kick yourself for not buying when you had a chance.”
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2005 CARNEGIE Magazine. All rights reserved.