Pittsburgh Weekend Events: 6/12-13/09.

I realize that most prideful 'Burghers are likely to focus on the fortunes of their beloved Pens this weekend, and believe me... as far as vicarious pleasures of the sporting nature, I can think of few better than NHL hockey. Having said that, don't forget that you have many opportunities to engage in much more direct amusements, and on a much more intimate scale. For instance...

Friday

Local arts collective Unicorn Mountain is having the reception for a group show of participating artists, featuring many stellar works including those of rising star Elina Malkin. It all goes down at the Steve Mendelson Gallery (5874 Ellsworth Avenue, Shadyside) between 5:30-8:30. Participants include Jon Carling, Bill Wehmann, Jeff Schreckengost, Masha Vereshchenko, Ian Finch, David Grim, Christopher Kardambikis, Jenifer Cooney, Ben Kehoe, Beano, Christopher Cornwell, Tom Hall, Katherine Young, Amy Conroy, Brian Holderman, Laura Jean McLaughlin,
Paul Roden, and Valerie Lueth.

Continue the swank by making a hop to the North Side for the Urban Garden Party fundraiser at the Mattress Factory. Gourmet food, drinks, entertainment, artwork, and this year's "rock theme" should justify the exorbitant admission price. Besides you'll just feel cooler if you are there, rather than sitting at your local neighborhood bar doing whiskey shooters and talking about how great it feels to piss in a public sink (not that I know anyone who has ever done such a thing).

If you feel some pressing need to head downtown, stop by the SPACE gallery for "Smoke and Mirrors". Check out this roster- Cory Arcangel, Matt Barton, Chris Bearegard, Robin Brasington, Jacob Ciocci, Olivia Ciumo, Thad Kellstadt, Ladyboy, Guthrie Lonergain, Spencer Longo, Eileen Maxson, Jesse Jamaica McLean, Alex Miller, Jae Ruberto, Mike Smith, Scotty Vera, Jeffrey Vulture, John Daniel Walsh and David Wightman. Too bad I'm gonna miss this one. Also see ArtUp's "Homeland Insecurity" (937 Liberty, 8PM, $10).

And in the South Side (for the real masochists), Sam Thorp will be showing her latest work under the title "Adjournment" (7:30-11PM) @ The Rex (1602 East Carson). I've always enjoyed the clean lines and bright pallette of her portraits.

Saturday

If you want a window into the vast diversity of celebratory options in Pittsburgh, consider visiting the Cultural District on Liberty Avenue in glorious downtown for "Pride in the Streets"- a block party featuring DJs, food, and fierce fun. That gets underway at 7Pm, and costs a mere $20. Jennifer Holliday headlines, and while I don't know who that is, I am assured that she is famous, and honey... that's all that matters.

Or for a completely different scene, check out the free opening for Warhol Live at the Andy Warhol Museum (competing at the 7PM slot). This show focuses on the themes of music and dance in the great one's work. Also, you get a chance to see Dean and Britta (of the band Luna) for a very reasonable $10.

Pittsburgh Art Events 8/8-9/08..

As one might expect, the middle of August is a dead period for openings in the Pittsburgh arts scene. But with just a bit of digging, and help from local media sites like Pittsburgh Art and Gallery Info and Thisishappening.com, you can usually find something to do around town. I did find a few things that sound like they'd be worth checking out, so bear with me as I make some personal recommendations for your weekend.

Friday

Downtown at the Three Rivers Art Gallery (937 Liberty Avenue) there is an opening (5-9PM) for "Interior Spaces", featuring work by Aasta Deth. There is also an MFA exhibition for Kati Fishbein, entitled "Miss-Handled". This is one of those spaces that doesn't go out of its way to promote events, and so it's been a bit difficult to find specific information about these shows. (Both of these artists do seem to have connections to Indiana University of PA). It should be noted that often such venues merely offer space for artists and curators to do their own things, and the responsibilities for promotion are passed along. I'm not sure whether or not that's the case here. Ultimately we should be thankful that there are so many organizations willing to work to provide opportunities for public exposure.

On the other side of the art world, the Sunroom Gallery is getting ready to kick off their grand opening. It's located "across from the James Gallery" over on the West End (apparently somewhere on South Main Street). This is Pittsburgh photographer and painter Tom Jefferson's new venue, after making his break from John Ross' Meter Room. The aforementioned Pittsburgh Art and Gallery Info is reporting that the work of Jefferson, Ian Green and Michelle Gregio will be included in the show, and will be accompanied by TJ's band, The Major Toms. Unfortunately specific information about hours is still unavailable.

Also on Friday night comes an appearance by Bob Log III down at the 31st Street Pub (10PM, $12 at the door). I've never seen Log perform, but he is said to play an f'd up and distorted version of the Blues, and he wears a motorcycle helmet on-stage. Needless to say he's come highly recommended.

Saturday

Moxie Dada (1416 Arch Street in the North Side) is rolling out yet another solo by photographer Corey LaChat. He's been known locally for years for showing a series of fuzzed-out and impressionistic macro enlargements of old fashioned toys. This time around he's showing astronaut-themed shots. Perhaps the best reason to attend this reception (which runs from 7-10PM) is for his musical performance on the theremin. It should be an utterly surreal experience.

And speaking of unreality... did you know that it would have been Andy Warhol's 80th birthday yesterday, if not for his mysterious death? Well, the Warhol Museum is certainly aware of that. That's why they are offering admission for 80 cents this Saturday afternoon. They'll be screening some episodes from his 1983 TV show, and (yes) they will be handing out cupcakes. That ought to be the kicker that packs the place. Anyway it's a good chance to see what you missed at the cramped Associated Artists of Pittsburgh annual last weekend.

If plain old drinking is more your speed, you might want to stumble down to the Brew Festival at the Millvale Riverfront Park Pavilion. The borough is still recovering from 2004's Hurricane Ivan, which devastated it with flood waters. They are running two sessions (from 1-4 and 5-8 PM) and you get entertainment, beer and food for the price of $35. Proceeds go to Millvale Borough Development Corporation and Millvale MainStreet- two organizations devoted to the long-term health of the neighborhood. Before you go, you can make the trip "art-related" by stopping in to say "Hi" to Mark over at Panza Frame and Gallery on Sedgwick Street. Sid Kweller's show is coming down this Sunday, and is worth seeing.

June 2008 Unblurred and other miscellany.

Not long after midday on Friday the temperature is going to hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm going to be making an effort to keep Baby E. and I cool. The heat is expected to linger throughout the day, and its projected staying power is daunting. Weather.com says that it's still going to be 84°F by 9PM at night. You might as well just plan on being outside. In fact there's a lot to do this weekend to keep you distracted. Surprisingly it looks like several East End neighborhoods have coordinated their promotional efforts. They are advertising Art Cubed- with art, music, and cultural events through Saturday night. It looks a bit patchwork, but it's a good start. It will be interesting to see if it gets any traction.

June Unblurred is tomorrow. The event is the 'official kick-off' for this ART3 thing, but whoever put together the website didn't think to link directly to the Unblurred site. Anyway... there should be enough there to keep you busy. The Pittsburgh Glass Center (5472 Penn) has an open house, and Attack Theater (4805 Penn) is continuing their Game Night and 7-minute Dance Series. Carolyn Wenning re-opens her space (4823 Penn) to show a series of photo portraits taken by kids (age 5-15) who live and hang out along the Penn Avenue Corridor. Meanwhile there will be music and 'utilitarian' art (including Frank Knezevich's collection of cigar box guitars) down at Jason Sauer's Most Wanted Gallery (5015 Penn).

The Sprout Fund is having an open house (5423 Penn) featuring "snacks, drinks and live entertainment". If you missed the proposal unveiling at Concept Gallery last month, make sure to stop by for a taste of murals-to-be. There should be one or two board members and some staff strolling around, and you can accost and pepper them with questions. I guarantee they'd love to have the opportunity to justify their tastes. And when you are done there, make sure to drop in on the MOXBOX Fine Art Party (5014 Penn). The Boxheart and Moxie Dada Galleries used to be across the street from each other on Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield. They may have separated physically but they still occasionally pal around together.

At the center of Unblurred, the staple galleries are all featuring new work by artists I'm mostly unfamiliar with. Modern Formations (4919 Penn) has "Basements, Attics, and Closets", with Mike Tamburo, Darren Myers and Ange Gagnon. Garfield Artworks (4931 Penn) has Laurie Trock, Laura Phillips and Kristen McLain. The International Children's Gallery (located at 5020 Penn, and most assuredly not recommended for kids) presents work by Jessica Lotman and Laura Koposko. Metamorphose (4922 Penn) is advertising a "Variety Show" chock full of stuff by twenty artists working in all types of mediums. And finally... my friend Joab Naylor is exhibiting his paintings at Imagebox (4933 Penn). He says they are "new works", but I'll believe it when I see it.

Now here's the thing- maybe none of this sounds appealing to you. Perhaps you are more interested in a smoothie and a hand-tooled leather handbag down at the Three Rivers Arts Festival. Yes, it opens tomorrow night as well. But (for god's sake) it'll still be there after this weekend. So avoid the crowds and do something cool instead. Zombo (4900 Hatfield Street in Lawrenceville) is showing the painted designs of Bill Cousins in a double shot- Friday under incandescence and Saturday under black light. The Waco Brothers (including Jon Langford and other folks from the Mekons) is at the Warhol with the Working Poor (it starts at 8PM- $12).

And Pittsburgh Filmmakers (477 Melwood Avenue on North Oakland) has their 3rd annual Media Tonic event. That costs $15, includes performances by Chuck Prophet and Paper Rad, and runs from 8 PM until midnight. But I definitely won't be going. They are having a special "V.I.P Reception" beforehand, and I wasn't invited. Snobs. No way I'm getting stuck with the leftovers.

Warhol Through the Eyes of Babes.

Over the years I have made numerous trips to the Andy Warhol Museum. It's certainly one of the most unique features of Pittsburgh, and makes an interesting destination for repeat visits. I've written fairly recently about the Ron Mueck and Martin Klimas exhibitions that came through earlier this year. On that trip I was joined by my father, his wife, M. and Baby E. In fact I've taken all kinds of folks to see the place. Whenever someone comes in from out-of-town, I make it a point to suggest a visit. I enjoy accompanying them through the galleries, checking out temporary holdings, and sharing my knowledge and opinions of Warhol and his work. It doesn't take a lot of persuasion to get me to return again and again.

So when the prospect of chaperoning a bunch of kids from the exurbs came up, I decided that it would likely be fun. I knew that a trip to the big city for many of these teens would be a special treat, and I wanted to experience their reactions. As we made our way off the highway and into the North Side, everyone got really quiet as they stared wide-eyed through the windows. I heard one girl tentatively ask, "Is this the ghetto?" I found the inquiry naively sweet and a bit pathetic. How is it that people can reach adolescence without knowing the extent of poverty that exists only a short car ride away from their homes? I had fun teasing the kids, telling them to keep their heads low so they wouldn't be shot in a drive-by.

I actually repeated the story as I gave a quick manly hug to my (black) friend who was working the ticket counter in the lobby of the museum. He rolled his eyes and took a quick look at the group I was with, marveling at the incongruity of my presence. Everyone filed into the little theater off to the side, and waited for the introduction from the educational staff. They listened to the very simple rules as if they had never been to any cultural institution in their lives. Then about half of them received new name tags to replace the ones they had either lost or already thrown away, and everyone divided into their respective color-coded subgroups. I was put in charge of fifteen of them, and we headed off with our guide.

It wasn't hard to identify the trouble-makers in my charge. There were only five boys, and one trio immediately drew attention. The docent had to shush them repeatedly within the first five minutes of her lectures. I also noticed that they had some desperate compulsion to touch things that they shouldn't- including valuable works of art. We had a look around the delicate works of L.A.-native Glenn Kaino. His stuff is intricate and very fragile, and I felt a surge of dread as I watched the kids carelessly flit around the gallery. Predictably I caught one of the boys poking at a mechanism animating a particularly complex installation. Later I winced as the guide gave her assent to the group's request to grab some rolled-up posters that were offered free to patrons.

Besides feeling a brief moment of panic as I watched an uncoordinated teen stumble to his feet and almost carom into an Elvis silkscreen, I managed to keep calm. The girls were extraordinarily well behaved, and acted like they were interested. But the boys constantly threatened mayhem. They got a bit crazy in the Silver Cloud/Pillow room, but by that point I expected worse. The most embarrassing thing of all was the oft-stated contention of one particularly unimpressed kid, who kept repeating loudly, "How is this art? I could do that!" The thing is that this is a common response to Warhol, even among adults who are supposed to have an element of sophistication. The only query with more frequency is "Was Andy Warhol gay?"

The Andy Warhol Museum (Ron Mueck and Martin Klimas)

It's probably a coincidence that I visited the Andy Warhol Museum so soon after mentioning the artist in a blog post. I've been going about once a year since it opened in the early 1990's. For a brief period of time in my 20's, I actually worked in the museum gift shop (one of my co-workers was Maddy Warhola, -Andy's niece). It was a relaxing job, but I ran into some trouble with management. It was often very slow during the week, and to fill the time I worked my way through a Warhol biography. I learned a lot about his life and work, and felt that reading that book made me more qualified to sell stuff at the store. Unfortunately my bosses didn't feel the same, and someone tipped me off about their plans to let me go. I resented the decision. Surely they wanted knowledgeable staff behind the counter? In any event, I came to appreciate Warhol in a way I might never have otherwise.

Despite that less-than-thrilling experience with the institution, I have good feelings about the museum itself. When the place first opened I wondered how they were going to be able to keep it interesting. Most people know how much artwork Warhol and his Factory produced, but much of it is very similar in tone and content. Still at any one point in time, the museum can only show a small portion of its collection. So that allows some variability over the years. There is also an entire floor devoted to his "time capsules", where the contents of sealed cardboard boxes are displayed under glass as they are opened. There's something rather exciting about the project. I once had the opportunity to catalog the contents of a capsule. I was probably the third or fourth person to hold those items since Andy put them away. I also got to break down a Basquiat show, and hold his slippers and paints in my hands.

The Warhol Museum's practice of exhibiting other modern artists is another factor that keeps repeated visits lively. Of course there have been many shows with folks who either collaborated directly with Warhol, or otherwise had contact with him in New York City over the years. Besides Basquiat, I have seen work by Keith Haring, Francisco Clemente, Kenny Scharf and Julian Schnabel. And the curators don't limit themselves to his contemporaries. Instead they include a wide range of current creators who have been somehow influenced by Warhol. Included in this category have been Grayson Perry, Bruce Naumann, Henry Darger, Glenn Ligon, and Patti Smith. Somehow the museum retains a freshness that rewards habitués. They even feature social events that include hip bands and films.

So I found myself back again for the closing weekend of a current exhibition. There has been a lot of hype around town regarding the inclusion of several Ron Mueck pieces at the museum. Mueck is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor who uses silicone and other mixed media to create absurdly scaled reproductions of naked and partially covered human beings. Some of the pieces in the Warhol show were monstrously large (including a newborn baby, complete with umbilical cord, and a middle-aged woman reclining in bed), and others were downscaled to about 1/4th of normal size. They are remarkably accessible and don't require any particular knowledge of the art world to appreciate. As a result they are immensely popular. No doubt it was these pieces that attracted the large crowds last Friday evening.

But in another section of the building I discovered a small collection of photographic enlargements by Martin Klimas. This exhibition apparently opened on March 22 (in conjunction with NCECA), and runs until June 1, 2008. Despite the fact that it hasn't been widely publicized as a high-profile attraction, I recommend seeing this while it's still in town. Klimas is a German photographer who works with high-speed film. He drops ceramic figurines in a completely dark studio. The sound of them hitting a hard surface triggers a burst of light for a fraction of a second, and the object's initial fracture is captured in wondrously exquisite detail. The movement implicit in these stills is palpable, yet they somehow retain the characteristics of the classic still life composition. It's impressive work that justifies either a first-time visit or another happy return.