Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Steel City Artist Collective: Forging Camaraderie

WE DID IT! we threw our first art show as a group at the Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community building in the South Side of Pittsburgh. a lot of friends, family and strangers came to show their support, admire, and a few even purchased art! it was an amazing time and such an encouragement. I was absoutely amazed at the array of talent and diversity of the art submitted; as each artist came to drop of their piece for the show, it continually added to my growing excitement. I'm looking forward to the future, and to the ideas and creativity that with birth out of this thing we've collectively created, and as we grow as a group of artist and friends i anticipate a beautiful network of artistry. we can only experiment and see what happens, and like some art projects, you just got to start working on it and it'll begin to shape and form itself in much more amazing ways then when originally planned out.
      it all started with a few of us friends talking about wanting to do more with our talent, but not just for business or success, but for fun and creativity. some of us are career artist, some of us freelance on the side and still others just create art as a way of expressing themselves. wherever we fall on that spectrum or in the sphere of artistry, we all felt the same longing: to do more with it and to encourage each other as well. one conversation led to another and then we started planning "meetings" at the local coffee shop, so hipster, i know!... love it, and next thing we knew we we're planning an art show and inviting over 35 of our friends who aspire to grow in their artistry to join in. everyone responded well and excitedly to the invitation, and 20 committed to having at least one piece in the show vaguely themed "something from nothing", to be interpreted however the artist felt. we debated whether to have a theme at all, but decided it was good to have something, even something general and simple, to draw some inspiration from. we reserved the space at the HMBFC building and started brainstorming how we were going to actually hang the artwork. after grabbing a bunch of scrap wood and pallets from basements and dumpsters throughout the week, we converged on the space Friday morning and started transforming it into a make-shift gallery space, constructing creative utilitarian ways of displaying the art. what we came up with, we we're really happy with. it was raw, creative, and gave the room some needed dimension. 6 o-clock came and people started showing up, and it got busy! a ton of people chatting, admiring, eating and just plain hanging out; it was amazing! good times, good friends, and good art! here's some photos from the event. cheers!