Penn Avenue Art in Motion. Creativity is in the air.

How much creative can creativity be? What can be considered "creative", nowadays?

These are the questions I was asking myself while I was walking along Penn Avenue, between Pacific and Atlantic Street.

A gorgeous and sunny day was the perfect background for this little but dense Festival. Held today from 12 to 6 pm, the Festival was about art and manufactured products. Any support, any color, any material. Useful objects or just treats, but very creative. And here we go back to creativity. 

Creativity comes from the latin "creo", that means "to make". In ancient cultures  creativity wasn't  really "existing", being art supposed to be just a "discover" and, lately in Christian era, divine inspiration. 

In 1926 Graham Wallace, in his Art of Thought, created a model for the creative process. According to him, creativity consists of five steps: preparation, incubation, intimation, illumination and finally verification. Each step is fundamental to reach the final result of creating something that works. Most important: according to him, creativity is part of the evolutionary process of human beings.

My question now is: what is creativity, today? From what I can read and see of the most popular creations of these days, plus considering the evolutionary process and the environmental situation, I do believe that creativity today is no more just "to make" something, but "to change" something. Reciclying  is the new frontier for creativity, with any other way that allows us to save on energy and materials. That would respect Wallace idea of evolutionary process, because it is evident that, right now, our world is shrinking and we are running low in materials and energy sources. Not to consider the problem of waste and garbage.

I love to remember also Bruno Munari definition for creativity: everything that is feasible in a global way, also from a technical point of view. I think that the "global way" he was speaking of is close to the Immanuel Kant dilemma of what is Good. Kant, when in doubt about something, if it was a good or bad thing to do, was asking himself: what if everyone on this Earth is doing this thing; would it be right for the world, or sustainable? Creativity today should keep in mind this, and keep asking the same Kant's question. 

Considering the environmantal challenges we are facing nowadays, I do believe that reuse, recycling and saving energy or materials are today's only possible form of creativity. 

Going back to the Festival, I wanted to show you something really creative, according to the above principles. Maybe these things won't change the world, but the fact that creativity is developing in this way, it's a sign of something changing in our attitudes. Big hope for the future!

• Pittsburgh Canning Exchange

These friends want to teach people how to save on food, by preparing your own canning. A second part of the project is to organize parties and events where people can exchange their cannings. 

Learn more on their website http://canningexchange.org/

 Canning team at their stand

• Stella Divina

By recycling beer labels and working with recyclable materials, S. J. Antonucci is making these nice tiles, to be used as coasters. Her workplace is her kitchen. The tiles come from constructions and demolitions, from all over the world. The cork under the tile is from Portugal, 100% recyclable. The glazing resin is a sustainable one, from an ecofriendly company. Learn more about her project here http://www.stelladivina.com/about.php 

 Cork, cork cork: cork is the word. I said cork, cork, cork...

Honorable mention for the serie of tiles dedicated to Pittsburgh: here, the Civic Arena now demolished.

• Shernise Alexa

Despite the industry is still playing a lot with plastic, I am personally convinced that glass, a very ecofriendly material, has still a lot to say. A proof is here, with Shernise, that creates also plates for Ikebana compositions. Her vases, twice fired, are given simple shapes, letting the serendipity of the process to do the rest.  You can contact Shernise at Art with Heart (412-441-1029). Her studio is at 4809 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh, PA.

Ikebana, Wabisabi style.

• Junquey Gal

Recycling fabrics and tissues of any kind, Kelly Crisanti creates romantic bags and clothes. Recycling can be definitely classy. You can find her in Downtown Pittsburgh, at the Boutique208 (208 Sixth Street, Pittsburgh, PA). 

Email address is junqueygal@gmail.com. 

Phone is 412-480-3839

• Vehement Romantic

No need to spend tons of money on fancy jewels: you can just rely on the beauty of nature and the help of little resin. These jewels are magnificently done, elegant, and are made with very common leaves or small flowers that are growing pretty much freely. The "staff pick" is an amazing dandelion, "caught" in the ripe moment.

More info at VehementRomanticFrantic@gmail.com. 

Ripe dandelion, alone on the right, on black background. 

• Pat Knoerdel Gilman

Alternative ways to grow your plants. Use shoes, for example! 

These are some of the creations by Pat. 

You can learn more at pknoerdel@gmail.com or at 724-312-1950

Finally, a quick note on the food stands there. Congrats to NACL Salt of the Earth that was offering free samplings of great chicken liver patè, on crostini, with pickle mulberry. 

I would encourage to have a dinner there, ASAP! They are at 5523 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA.

CI13 Apartment Event | Chris Beauregard & Brandon Boan

Have you already planned anything for next Fall-Winter-Spring? I know all this could sound a little untimely, but Pittsburgh goes fast.

from the official blog http://web.cmoa.org/ci13/exhibition/:

<< The 56th Carnegie International, scheduled to open at Carnegie Museum of Art in October 2013, will be organized by co-curators Daniel Baumann, Dan Byers, and Tina Kukielski. This is the first time in the International’s history that a curatorial team of three people will lead the exhibition.

Initiated by Andrew Carnegie in 1896 in Pittsburgh, and presented every three to five years at Carnegie Museum of Art, the Carnegie International is among the leading exhibitions of contemporary art worldwide. The International serves to present an American audience, especially that of Western Pennsylvania, with a broad and ambitious survey of the art of our time. With hundreds of works by artists from around the globe—including many commissioned specifically for the show—the 2013 International will be a catalyst for new ways to present, experience, and think about art. >>

The 2013 Carnegie International runs October 5, 2013 to March 16, 2014. 

Whether you are artist, visitor, curator or just passing here by pure chance, just get ready: it's gonna be big. The three curators, Daniel Baumann of Basel, Switzerland; associate curator Dan Byers of Pittsburgh; and associate curator Tina Kukielski of New York, were selected in 2010, two years after the Carnegie International Exhibition of year 2008 (you can read more about them here http://old.post-gazette.com/pg/10267/1089883-437.stm on the Pittsburgh Post Gazette website).

Today, though, I would like to introduce a piece of this CI13: the apartment that the Carnegie Museum of Art rented in Lawrenceville. The address is 113 44th Street, Pittsburgh PA and they currently host lectures and the "Apartment Talks". 

<< In the run-up to the exhibition, the curatorial team has established a satellite space in an apartment in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. This space accommodates visiting artists and curatorial colleagues, as well as an ongoing series of screenings, artist talks, and presentations for audiences of up to about fifty people. >> 

The apartment is a satellite space ready to introduce people to art or to guest travelling artists for short periods. The purpose of that, with the blog http://web.cmoa.org/ci13/, is to bring everybody into the event, little by little, <<hopefully, bringing some (but not too much!) transparency to the planning process>>

I would encourage everybody to check it out, since it's well structured and easy to follow. 

© http://web.cmoa.org/ci13/ 

I was invited to go there by Brandon Boan, a smart Pittsburgh-based artist that works between  object-making and performance. You can follow his activity directly on his blog www.brandonboan.info  

Monday night was dedicated to him and his friend Chris Beauregard http://www.chrisbeauregard.com/ 

 Chris was creating "sculptures" with melted sugar, colored with red and made hard again by throwing it in iced water.
Everything was then displayed on a light table where, with gloves, you could medically analyze the result.

 Brandon, elegantly dressed, was welcoming the guests and taking pictures of their teeth. 

After "Polaroidizing" them, everything was projected on a window on 44th Street,

I'm wondering if there is a connection between the teeth photos and the potential (but that wasn't the purpose of the performance) sugar overdose in the other room...

Among refreshments and people chatting, the event took place in this interesting space, temporary enough to allows people to think about the CI, but without exaggerating. The final result will likely be a surprise, but it will be interesting to follow both the pre- and the post-production.

Stay in the loop, then.

Keep Fast: Gallery crawling in the snow

First Gallery Crawl of the 2013. 

It's really snowy outside and I am ready to leave it to others, braver than me, and with a car to move around. But once in Downtown Pittsburgh, biking in the snow, seeing the lights and people gallery crawling... It's always like this: you promise yourself to visit just two galleries, maybe the 707 and 709 Penn Gallery, close to each other on Liberty Avenue. Then you seriously consider that the Woodstreet Galleries are always worth visiting... and once there, how can't you run around at the Space Gallery, just on the opposite side of the street?! Darn walkable Pittsburgh!

This is what happened, despite the snow, the cold and the bike.

My first stop was suggested by a friend that I met by chance on Liberty Avenue. He was looking for the Pop-Up project, that promised some food booths open air, weather permitting. Weather didn't, so we headed to a quite "new" space, 131 Seventh Street, to visit the Night Market 3. It was an indoor market that displayed desserts vendors, creative artists (Don Jones was there - see previous post) and a band of musicians, elegantly playing classical music. 

Here I loved the setting: a true example of Pittsburgher creative restoration of an empty space, valorized in its simple (but never banal) materials and architecture.  

Then we went to the 707 and 709 Galleries, where we found Craig Freeman (707) with his light and hilarious view of the first Mikey Mouse version (late '30s), and Fabrizio Gerbino, that sincerely didn't impressed me. 

© Craig Freeman

At the Woodstreet Galleries you'll likely find very powerful installations by video artists. This time it was Miguel Chevalier who amazed the visitors with the gigantic projections of his ideas. The all space is filled with darkness and colored lights, at the same time. You find yourself completely absorbed by his psychedelic vision of the world.

The Space Gallery let me a bit unsatisfied. What I saw seemed to be pretty banal and overseen. Actually, mainly being garbage left here and there, it was even more than overseen. But I'll try to tell a story (my personal vision) of it. Some pieces inspired me to think about things. Not a granted service, for contemporary art.

The big windows along Liberty always let you see what's going on inside. And it's always a good sampler of twenty-something's life (see the New Yorker, for more info about the twenty-something generation). The main exhibit there was titled Romper Room and guested various artists. The result was a mix of anger against the world, anxiety about society, hate for Christmas and an ancestral fear/respect of our parents generation, that has to maintain us or at least financially helping. 

 Strange accidents and catastrophic visions of a rotten reality laid everywhere, where not standing in shape of weird person-like objects.

Indeed, there is still a desperate need of domesticity, in our generation of twenty-something (I'm 25). There is only a lot of uncertainty about what's and where is "home". We are still living in Romper Rooms, full of "bastard toys" that give us a sense of security: recognizable shapes but uncanny finishes. 

The children at the presentation were looking (at "us") like Dante Alighieri and Virgilio: 

« Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa;

misericordia e giustizia li sdegna:

non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa. »

(Inferno III, verso 51)

You can always spot a piece more interesting than others:

But then anger comes back, and you'll find things like this: a mistic library containing nasty drawings on books for "man's good". 

My only recommendation for the author is: just respect the books: if you hate them, just don't read them. There is no need to destroy a book. That only reminds me of Hitler "tolerance".

So, in the end, a piece is suggesting that the primitive man is vanishing. I have the impression that even the modern one has gone since a while, and the contemporary one is really in troubles. 

These exhibit seems to move us toward a premature phase of our lives, the infancy. The short circuit is caused by trying to live in a romper room when you are no more a toddler. The result? Apparently: disaster, or...

...or the Human Touch Project, that is much more hopeful. The artist is Phoenix Savage, always at the Space Gallery. She invites everybody to pick a piece of wax in boxes with different colored stickers. She tells you the mood you have picked according to the color. She asks you to work on the wax to shape the emotion/mood you have to select. Here my piece. I picked the yellow: happiness.

And it's with happiness that I want to leave you today, despite we are surrounded by anger and frustration. I think destroying is never a solution, in general. Creating and modifying is always better.

I would really leave all the rotten art in the basements: I can't see anything useful in it, nor a lesson to learn. Just frustration, with no explanation about it.

Keep fast! Improvement is always possible.

The "Don Jones" Robotic Average

There are several ways in which one can mix present and past, history and technology. The practice of combining a variety of "ingredients" from different Eras can be considered even a kind of trend nowadays- I'm thinking of different fields, from art up to cuisine. Moreover, the economical crisis and the "eco-friendly movement" are forcing us to maximize the savings, cut consumptions or extra expenses and rediscover a lot of things from our past (or just from our basements).

What we miss, at this point, is a kind of quality index of these blends and combinations. We are way far from the initial candid interest for whatever has never been seen before. Now it's time to select and reward who works better than others.

In a previous review, I talked about Vanessa German and her moving work, so conceptually powerful and touching. Could we have a quality index, her work would be in a very high position. 

Today, I would like to bring to your attention another artist, Don Jones, presented at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts as Vanessa was.

The thing I most like about his work is not the meaning of each piece, but the huge creativity and quality of every robot he builds. In the the quality index I would invent, he would be likely rated a little less than Vanessa, but just because of my personal appreciation for the meaning of things. 

The blends he creates is magic, though, in terms of shapes and pieces - so perfectly they are put together. I've never seen such expressive spoons, forks, screws or bolts (just to mentions some of the basics of his work). 

To create his robots, he mainly uses contemporary and new metallic pieces, even though you can find old boxes as well. Vanessa's creations are given meaning by the very old pieces she selects and that you couldn't substitute. The composition would lack of its meaning. 

Don's relation with objects from our past seems to be more aesthetical, than philosophical or moral. As a result of this, his pieces are perfectly studied to capture your attention and give you pleasure for being  perfect like Vanessa's one are, even of for different reasons.

I love them because the mix of Yesterday and Today is so balanced and well thought that each piece leaves you with a pleasant sense of domesticity. I warmly suggest you to see Dan's work, and maybe to buy some of his robots. They could be cool Christmas presents and perfect "companions" for the rest of  the year.

Enjoy!

one of the working robots by Don Jones

PCFA Pittsburgh

Don Jones pieces are very interesting and on sale at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. You'll find them at the ground floor, temporarily set as "Holiday Shop" until December 30th, 2012.

TUE-WED 10-5

THUR-SAT 10-7

SUN 12-5

MON 10-5

more info at http://pca.pittsburgharts.org/holiday-shop-1