Dreams come true
From sculpture to poetry, $10,000 grants will help 7 local artists create new works
Rachel Mica Weiss, a willowy woman wearing a black mask and purple gloves, rubs sandpaper across a dramatically curved sculpture that resembles an undulating bed. Her strokes soften the shades of pink, black, orange and terra cotta.
Made of concrete reinforced with Fiberglas, “The Wild Within” was inspired by “The Nightmare,” an 18th-century painting that shows a nude woman sleeping while a male demon hovers above her.
Such Venus figures, Ms. Weiss said, were idealized by Renaissance painters who portrayed them as white while the real women who inspired these scenes were brown or black concubines in Turkish harems.
“The Wild Within” literally weighs a ton and will rest on an 1,100-pound steel base that is being fabricated in Braddock. A round stone placed in the center of the sculpture will weigh 650 pounds.
“She’s a big girl,” Ms. Weiss said while working in a Point Breeze studio. “The Wild Within” is destined for installation at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, Mass.
Ms. Weiss is one of seven
Pittsburgh artists who received $10,000 grants in June from a program called “Investing in Professional Artists.” Since 2011, 142 artists and organizations have received $2.1 million.
Initially funded by The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments, the Opportunity Fund began contributing this year.
Jaime Guerrero, a professional glass artist, plans to push the limits of his medium in fashioning five hand-blown angels that will honor people who have died due to racism. The purpose of this new installation, he said, is to create “a place for people to heal and share their experiences.”
Mr. Guerrero volunteers with Casa San Jose, a community resource center that helps Latinos who have just arrived here. Before moving to Edgewood, the Los Angeles native taught free glass blowing classes to Black and Latino children in Watts. The plight of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border prompted him to make and exhibit five life-sized glass figures of children last year at the Pittsburgh Glass Center.
The elements of glass come from nature but Lindsey Scherloum’s medium is literally home-grown. Using invasive trees and vines harvested this year by Tree Pittsburgh volunteers, Ms. Scherloum will build two new large land sculptures.
Tree Pittsburgh’s home on a narrow strip of land between the Allegheny River and railroad tracks underneath the 62nd Street Bridge is one possible location for the sculptures, but Ms. Scherloum will scout other
potential sites.
“I want them to be large enough so they are visible from a distance and can be seen from a riverboat or while driving by in a car,” Ms. Scherloum said.
She grew up in Silver Spring, Md., where her mother collected baskets from all over the world. Creating each sculpture entails harvesting, processing and building, the same steps in making a basket. The local arts collaborative, Creatives for Climate, will participate in the project, too.
The sculptures, Ms. Scherloum said, are a tool “to try and engage people with ideas of our relationship to the environment, our relationship to one another, our connectivity to one another.”
At The Space Upstairs in Point Breeze, Pearlann Porter’s artistic home since 2006, the choreographer and dancer has connected people to dance. Buoyant and thoughtful, Ms. Porter is conjuring a new, full-length work called “Mirror/360” for nine dancers who will learn to use their voices to drive their movements.
“Dancers always have this internal monologue when they dance,” Ms. Porter said. “What if I condition my dancers to speak freely and improvisationally and in the moment?”
The full-length work will feature solos and duets; dancers will wear neutral tones.
With 14 years of memories in the large room filled with mirrors, oak floors, old sofas and tall windows, Ms. Porter feels at home, like a gardener working in rich soil.
“The space will choreograph the work with me,” she said.
Living in New York City is hard but being homeless there is a hot, endless marathon. Mariah Torres knows because in the summer of 2017, she left her 2-year-old son with his father and moved to New York.
The Clairton woman sublet a Brooklyn apartment but became homeless a week later and, for three months, lived in her ice blue, 2005 Mercury Mariner with Jasmine Ellis, a college classmate. The women named the four-door car Shelley O, after former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Her friend, Ms. Torres said, “introduced me to the brand ambassador life,” which means handing out bottled water one day and fliers the next.
“I didn’t tell anybody, not even my son’s father,” about being homeless, Ms. Torres said.
The two women used their clothes for curtains, lined the windshield with a sheet and did their dishes in the trunk. They slept on upholstery with leather strips that left marks on their skin. They awakened to the sounds of traffic at 7 a.m. and did not sleep until midnight when hot city streets grew quieter.
“We always tried to park near a Planet Fitness. That way we could shower. We would fake working out until we didn’t see a staff member anymore,” Ms. Torres recalled.
“Cup of Noodles and the bodega were our best friends,” she added. “I was homeless for New York Fashion Week and the Tribeca Film Festival and I worked them both.”
Now, she’s producing a video about their experiences called “Rock Bottom” with hopes of selling it to Telemundo.
Creating an animated television series is also the goal of Darnell Chambers, an artist and animator who is drawing comic-book-style illustrations for a local exhibition later this year.
His drawings also will be a storyboard for “Run Back Town,” an animated series inspired by ancient African history and folk tales. He plans to produce it and hopes to sell it to a major company like Netflix.
Mr. Chambers believes that an animated series like “Run Back Town” will teach his 4-year-old daughter, Dodi Ann, about her family history, language and roots.
“I want to provide something she can identify with and learn from,” said Mr. Chambers, who was 2 when his mother, who came from Nigeria, died. His father was from the Congo.
“Identity is a big issue for a lot of African Americans,” Mr. Chambers said. “A lot of the tribes in West Africa stem from one location and language and spiritual beliefs.”
Identity also fascinates Jari Bradley, a black queer writer living in East Liberty. The new collection of poetry will be titled “Unruly.”
The poems will challenge how society defines who and what is desirable.
“Larger, black queer bodies are often considered outside the norm of desirability,” the San Francisco native said.
“Much of my existence has challenged what is normal or natural. There are times where I have been accosted on the street and asked about my thighs or my weight . .... ”
Those encounters are fraught with danger.
“When I am accosted in these ways, I am shown how I am not valuable in the larger society that I exist in. I have to mine that through the poems,” the writer said.
“Unruly. That word, for me, is about how I tend to stand out. That is a form of resistance, to not be easily tamed.”