Grubhub grant proves godsend for multitalented local artist
When COVID-19 restrictions shut down theaters, galleries and other art venues, local artist Joanna Lowe faced a crisis.
“I lost all of my income, but I still had to continue paying my bills,” she said.
Making a living in the arts is never easy, but Ms. Lowe was able to cobble together a living by playing different roles.
She worked at UPMC as a standardized patient actor, a person who portrays patients to help medical students develop empathy and interpersonal skills. For example, she would appear as an abused wife or a woman suffering from chronic headaches, and the students would interact with her.
She found work as a model, posing for artists and illustrators.
And because she is classically trained as an actor with two Bachelor of Arts degrees — one in theater, the other in writing — from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, she could often find roles as an actor in theater or film. She even started her own theater production company in 2004 called Cup-A-Jo Productions that took a nontraditional up-by-the-bootstraps approach to theater.
“With $5 and a couple of two-byfours we could make a production,” she said.
All of that came crashing down when those income sources dried up last year, but there was one business that thrived in the pandemic. With more people working from home and sit-down restaurants closed, the
demand for home-delivered meals skyrocketed.
Ms. Lowe signed up as a Grubhub driver and was able to replace a lot of her lost income.
“Grubhub was a godsend. I was able to work flexible hours, so I could be home for my daughter,” she said.
Making the deal even sweeter, last month she won a Grubhub grant given to drivers who submitted proposals for ways they could make a positive change in their community.
She received one of only 20 $10,000 grants given by the company to drivers across the country. Her award money will go to Cup-A-Jo Productions, the artists collaborative that explores nontraditional venues and mixes theater with film, dance, music and poetry. The name Cup-A-Jo is
a play on words of her name Joanna and the fact she loves coffee.
“I was so happy, I was blubbering thank you after thank you when they told me about the award,” she said.
Now that she has a budget to work with, she plans to use the money to stage more plays in perhaps larger venues, but she will still make sure her productions mix elements of film, dance, music and poetry to benefit as many artists as possible.
Her commitment to staging plays in unusual or interesting venues will remain.
“Four years ago we staged ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ at a private mansion in Point Breeze. All of the action takes place in one living room. We seated the audience in the living room with the actors,” she said.
She was taking a chance with a different approach to the play, but she knew she had made the right call when she heard people leaving the performance say, “I couldn’t see that play [performed] any other way.’”
For now, Ms. Lowe is trying to find a glimmer of something positive in the pandemic.
“It has been a time to rest, pause and think creatively,” she said.
For the time being she is busy delivering meals, driving the streets of Moon, Robinson, Whitehall, White Oak and the city of Pittsburgh, wherever the call comes in for contactless delivery, meaning she places the meal on the porch or the lobby of a business or hotel after alerting the customer.
She puts an average of 100 miles a day on her 2011 VW Jetta that has now logged 135,00 miles.
While Ms. Lowe finds it disconcerting some people won’t tip, she takes consolation from the kind acts of others.
“One lady put out a basket of treats on her porch and told me to help myself when I made a delivery. Another customer sent her son running across the yard to deliver a Merry Christmas note to me,” she said.
And she keeps looking ahead. “People will be hungry for new art when things get back to normal,” she said, promising that Cup-A-Jo Productions and her band of fellow artists will be ready to meet that need.