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Artist Blaine Siegel's "Homogramineae" is on display at 813 Liberty Ave. during the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Click photo for larger image. |
They were planned with an eye toward visitors coming to Pittsburgh for the National Performing Arts Convention, which runs today through Sunday. But they're open to everyone.
From 5:30 to 8 p.m. tomorrow, Penn Avenue between Seventh and 10th streets will be turned into a Street Scene. Among the more than 30 performers and groups scheduled for the outdoor festivities are Attack Theatre (presenting the local favorite "Chicken Dance"), Pittsburgh Dance Connection, Junction Dance Theatre, Dance Alloy, LABCO Dance, Venez au Bal (Cajun/Zydeco dance), Cincinnati's Spidy & Poppy Kid (hip-hop) and Brooklyn artist Bill Shannon.
The 900 block of Penn has extra sparkle added by Storefront Window Installations. Works by a dozen artists may be viewed at any time of the day or night through the festival's end, June 20. (A detailed listing is given below.)
The festival's Annual Exhibition is at 937 Liberty Ave., which also houses Liberty Lab, a performance series featuring contemporary and experimental works by regional artists. The intimate space seats approximately 80 people. Admission is first-come, first-served, and doors will open 30 minutes before each performance.
The Liberty Lab schedule is:
Tomorrow -- 6:30-7:30 p.m., Jorge Variego and the Contemporary Tango Ensemble; 10:30-11:30 p.m., LOSER, "DRYWALL 21: Man from 'NYAYZAR.' "
Thursday -- 12:30-1:30 p.m., Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, "Thirteen Ways" and "Obsessive Nature"; 2:30-3:30 p.m., Pittsburgh Playback Theatre workshop; 6:30-7:30 p.m. New Music Ensemble; 10:30-11:30 p.m., Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre performs cabaret.
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From left: Amira Badran, Evan Hertrick, Dale Hertrick and (hidden) Mary O'Shea. Click photo for larger image. |
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Saturday -- 12:30-1:30 p.m. and 6:30-7:30 p.m., Unseam'd Shakespeare, "Sophie"; 10:30-11:30 p.m., LOSER.
An encore performance of "4Quarters," a site-specific performance work for saxophone quartet by LOSER (Loose Organization of Surreal Ethereal Realists), will be given at 12:30 and 1 p.m. Friday on the corner of Penn Avenue and 6th Street.
The piece debuted last Saturday with performances at the corners of Penn Avenue and 6th and 7th streets and was so well received that Festival executive director Elizabeth Reiss scheduled a repeat (as much as an improvised piece can be repeated).
"It worked on more levels than I had imagined. It really engaged the people on the street. It put a smile on your face," said composer Stephen Pellegrino, who's also the solo performer in the "DRYWALL" series, which has been ongoing since 1980.
Pellegrino especially liked the way the performance was affected by location. For example, he says, the traffic lights have different timing. At 7th Street and Penn Avenue, it was "much more lugubrious and royal and majestic. At 6th and Penn it was a jazz waltz -- it just took off. A taxi driver going by got into it and beeped his horn, and they worked it into the piece."
At the 7th Street corner, the interplay was with the "Cloud Harp," a vestige of the Quebec Festival by Montreal artist Nicolas Reeves. A bonus was meeting Reeves and planning to get together again when he returns to Pittsburgh in August.
Frank Ferraro is the "4Quarters" designer, and the musicians -- whose instruments were shielded against last week's drizzle by family members holding umbrellas -- are Peter Brewton, Dale and Evan Hertrick and Richard Mansfield.
Add to all of the above FLUX 12 -- another installment of the periodic multidisciplinary event that gathers an amalgam of musicians, spoken word and other artists -- which will be held from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. Friday at 526 Penn Ave., and by the weekend there won't be a pigeon left on the streets between the Benedum and the Convention Center.
Storefronts
Here's where to look for Storefront Art, and who's exhibiting, with descriptions provided by the artists and the festival:
813 Liberty Ave.:"Homogramineae" by Blaine Siegel poses questions about the living environment and asks what aspects of our lives have been lost due to industrialization.
The remaining storefronts are on Penn Avenue:
907: "Paper RAD" (Jessica Ciocci, Jacob Ciocci and Ben Jones) present "sooner or later, it all gets real," a regurgitated consumer monster battling against late-night TV meltdowns in infinite fluorescent cartoon universes.
911: "Permutations" occur in Michael Walter's Pittsburgh-inspired Polaroid photographs.
916: David Poll's the "small world: holy dirt" is a devotional incubation/installation derived from organic and manufactured found objects; also Susan Englert's "Portrait/Still Life/Landscape," fragments of everyday life pulled out of context and reassembled into a richly detailed "miss-in-scene"; and an untitled work by CMU graduate Samuel Wheeler, installation artist and window designer at Barneys New York.
922: William Cravis takes a swipe at "Nostalgia" by fragmenting a 1946 image of an idealized American family; and George Ducharme's narrative appreciation "That 'Yes' Made Me Stay."
930: Richard Parsakian's "Peace Through Art & Sport" comprises messages of peace gathered from Pittsburgh artists that explore the longevity of culture through art and sport; with Eric Fleischauer's "untitled (vulnerability)" video that comments on the paranoia infecting Americans because of media-hyped coverage of such things as bottled drinking water, school bus driver and flying safety; and Buzz Miller's video installation "Sisyphus Swimming," inspired by the myth and author John Cheever.
941: "No Brainer" by Jim Drain, a fiber, costume, fashion design, comic and installation artist.
For information, call the festival at 412-281-8723 or visit www.artsfestival.net.
