First Friday concert to host pop-up gallery
Students’ artwork featured in exhibit
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mt. Lebanon’s long-standing First Friday summer concert will have a new addition tonight: a pop-up gallery featuring art by three established mentor artists and three Mt. Lebanon High School juniors who are Advanced Placement art students.
The free pop-up gallery will be at the former La Pomponnee Salon at 659 Washington Road. It will be open to the public from 7 to 10 tonight and then it will be open daily except Mondays through June 17.
The gallery was the idea of Kelly Brown, a 1986 Mt. Lebanon High School graduate who returned to the area recently after living for 15 years in in Bordeaux, France.
Trained as a dancer, she is self-taught as a visual artist and began exhibiting her artwork while living in France.
She was impressed by the renovated art department at Mt. Lebanon High School and contacted the new department head to offer to provide students with some practical experience, what Ms. Brown refers to as “the fine-tuning of what an art career really entails.” That included preparing exhibition invitations, compiling a list of invitees and pricing as well as the politics of exhibition permissions and how to speak about one’s artwork.
The other exhibiting artists/mentors are Andy Mays, also a 1986 Mt. Lebanon alumnus who works nationally under the name August Vernon and has a Florida studio, and Deborah Holtschlag, a Mt. Lebanon resident and a member of Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.
Ms. Brown and Ms. Holtschlag visited the high school’s end-of-year show and chose three students to work with — Paulina Braverman, Duncan Chamberlin and Hannah Wu.
Duncan is the only threedimensional artist at the high school and is fascinated with the plastic arts, Ms. Brownsaid. Hannah showed them miniatures the size of a quarter that she had painted with a brush that had a single hair. Paulina’s paintings are concise, with a lot of depth, perspective and mood.
“The level of the art [in the school show] was just stupendous,” Ms. Brown said.
After tonight, the pop-up gallery hours through June 17 will be 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; noon to 3 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 3 p.m. Sunday.