Getting to Know

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

The Getting to Know series helps you become better acquainted with some of Rivers of Steel’s partners throughout the eight-county Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area by featuring one of our community allies. For the third and final part of the Shiftworks series, writer Jason Vrabel examines how Shiftworks Community + Public Arts serves its mission through its impactful client service work.

By Jason Vrabel, on behalf of Shiftworks

Shiftworks’ Client Service work is making an impact

A few blocks away from a two-story, undulating arc of kaleidoscopic light spanning a downtown park is a dynamic light show crossing the Allegheny River. Aurora: Illuminating the Holiday Magic of Mellon Square is an interactive public art project in Pittsburgh’s historic Mellon Square created by local artist Joshua Challen Ice. The Three Sisters, designed by local art collective Rainbow Serpent, brings global meaning to the Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Carson Bridges, commonly known as the city’s Three Sisters.

Both of these projects that helped kick off this year’s Highmark Light Up Night festivities resulted from a partnership between several nonprofits and city and county agencies, a collaboration facilitated by Shiftworks Community + Public Art’s Client Services program.

Aurora, Joshua Challen Ice, 2024. Photo by John Altdorfer courtesy Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

Holiday Ecosystem

Mellon Square is a newcomer to Light Up Night, a longstanding tradition that kicks off downtown Pittsburgh’s holiday season. Not to be confused with Market Square, Mellon Square is a park; designed by famed landscape architecture firm Simonds and Simonds and built on top of a parking garage, it was the first of its kind. Surrounded by towering buildings along Smithfield Street, Oliver Avenue, William Penn Place, and Sixth Street, the park’s trees and bronze basin fountains became an oasis in 1950s Pittsburgh. The park is city owned but primarily maintained by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy (PPC), which oversaw its complete restoration in 2014 and has taken responsibility for landscaping, programming, and security year-round ever since.

Mellon Square is a popular destination spring through fall, but it’s typically closed during winter to protect the park’s signature terrazzo surface from harsh snow and ice removal. James Snow, PPC’s vice president and chief administrative officer, said the pandemic renewed civic interest in public spaces and provided an opportunity to expand Mellon Square’s operating season for downtown workers, residents, and visitors.

“Parks aren’t complete without people. If people don’t feel connected to them year-round, you’re missing half the equation,” Snow said. So instead of going dormant this winter, Mellon Square will remain open and play a role in downtown’s “holiday ecosystem.”

This idea appealed to the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (PDP), an organization that fosters economic development and works to cultivate a vibrant residential population. PDP’s Senior Director of Urban Design Bruce Chan said the PDP sees downtown as more of a neighborhood than a city center.

“As a steward of public places, we look for space between buildings, where people can find some intrigue—fun things you won’t find in other places,” Chan said.

The PDP has been successful with the programming that it initiated throughout the year, such as the farmers market, night market, and musical performances in Market Square, but Chan says open space is limited.

“How do we use that energy and momentum in other public spaces downtown?” he asked. Wanting to build upon annual events like the holiday market, the PDP approached the PPC about incorporating Mellon Square.

Instead of simply adding decorative lighting for the holidays, Snow said the PPC wanted to think bigger and approached Shiftworks about the possibility of creating a temporary art piece. Best known for leading civically engaged art in the public realm, Shiftworks also supports other organizations pursuing public art projects through its Client Services program, a fee-for-service opportunity available to any organization or company.

Derek Reese, Shiftworks’ program manager of artist services, said his organization was involved at every stage of the project, starting with conceptualizing how to bring public art to Mellon Square. Shiftworks then solicited five paid design proposals from its Pittsburgh Creative Corps (an extensive roster of prequalified artists), supported the selected artist throughout the project, and helped to finalize engineering details and obtain permits.

This artist selection process yielded high-quality submissions, but Joshua Challen Ice’s concept stood out, Reese said.

“There were many highly innovative proposals, but Josh’s was the most site specific. His design concept responded to the unique design features of Mellon Square as well as the surrounding architecture.”

Ice, a Murrysville native and Point Park University graduate, is a multimedia artist who has created lighted sculptures before. A wall of his studio showcases art made with neon tubing he repurposed from commercial signs. But it was Ice’s background in theatrical stage lighting and exhibit installation that enabled him to work at this scale.

Across the street from the former Alcoa Corporation building, Aurora’s aluminum truss rails invoke the history of aluminum manufacturing in Pittsburgh. Suspended between the rails are hundreds of polycarbonate panels that, when lit by programmable LED light sources, produce the full light spectrum. Ice’s design also takes inspiration from Mellon Square’s argyle-patterned terrazzo floor. These panels are intended to appear as if “the floor is floating away,” Ice said.

Because Aurora can be disassembled and possibly reassembled somewhere else after the holidays was another reason Ice’s project appealed to the project team, Snow said. But constructing the rails and suspending the panels on axles was an engineering feat that fell to Flyspace Productions, an event management, event production, and art services company whose motto is Yeah, we can do that. Flyspace and Shiftworks have partnered on past projects; the familiarity of working together was especially important on a short timeline—16 weeks from issuing a Request for Proposal to completion.

Support from The Benter Foundation and Eden Hall Foundation made Aurora possible from the outset, and additional funding was provided by the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Aurora, Joshua Challen Ice, 2024. Photo by John Altdorfer courtesy Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy

Making a Spectacle

Broadening our understanding of what public art is and what it can be is part of Shiftworks’ mission. But unlike sculptures or murals, lighting is sometimes seen as something other than art —a “display” or an enhancement of something else, like a building façade. When asked what visitors should take away from experiencing Aurora, Reese said, “It’s important to us that people begin to see this type of installation as public art, created by a living artist specifically for the space.”

Ice answered the same question this way: “The word spectacle always comes back to me.” Most important to Ice is that people experience the “interactive, exploratory nature of it, which changes when you get closer.” The experience varies both with distance and at different times of the evening into night. “There are peak moments but also subtler moments,” Ice said.

Mellon Square will eventually close after the holiday season, and Aurora will be dismantled. Where it turns up next and in what configuration are unknown, but both Ice and Snow (yeah, what are the chances?) hinted at numerous possibilities. For the PDP, Chan said this project has made a case for activating Mellon Square with different kinds of public art year-round—especially at night.

The Three Sisters, Rainbow Serpent, 2024. Photo by Allegheny County.

Global Meaning of The Three Sisters

Most of the land Allegheny County owns is parkland. Because the county doesn’t own many buildings, it doesn’t have many high-visibility locations to commission or display public art. But the county does have an abundance of bridges.

So for the second year in a row, the county’s Three Sisters bridges were transformed on Light Up Night into a public art project. This year’s project—a lighting display designed by the Rainbow Serpent—not only represents a public art contribution by the county but is another example of the impact Shiftworks makes through its Client Services program.

“Allegheny County takes great pride in its infrastructure,” said Darla Cravotta, Allegheny County’s director of community affairs and special projects. Of the 400 miles of road and 508 bridges for which the county is responsible, none are more iconic than the Roberto Clemente, Andy Warhol, and Rachel Carson Bridges—the only trio of identical bridges in the world.

The bridges are lit throughout the year, but Cravotta said the county’s $86-million restoration of all three didn’t originally include the technologically sophisticated lighting infrastructure that is now in place. That idea came about during Pittsburgh’s bicentennial celebration in 2016, which featured Energy Flow, a temporary lighting installation on the Rachel Carson Bridge that captivated audiences and prompted the county to rethink the bridges’ lighting schemes.

Cravotta explained that the original lighting was adequate for motorists and pedestrians but neglected the bridges themselves. “The lighting didn’t accentuate the architecture of the bridges. The timelessness of lighting and the gracefulness of the structures were really important to us,” she said.

The county’s exploration of other cities’ lighting programs led to a new concept that would properly light the bridge structures and allow for future projects similar to Energy Flow. According to Brent Wasko, county public information officer, the enhanced lighting system includes almost a half mile of linear video fixtures on the bridges’ suspenders (cables) and 336 more fixtures along the bridge structures—all told, 601,440 LED lights.

Cravotta says this programmable lighting infrastructure is what makes Rainbow Serpent’s The Three Sisters technologically possible, but it was Shiftworks that made it artistically possible.

“We wanted to contribute more public art to the region, but the county can’t do this on its own. We needed Shiftworks to do this for us,” Cravotta said.

Like with Rob Long’s Observing Light bridge-lighting project in 2023, Shiftworks solicited paid proposals from qualified artists and provided the county (and their project team) with a short list for consideration.

Rainbow Serpent is a Pittsburgh-based art collective with 40 collaborating artists from around the world, dedicated to advancing Black LGBTQ culture through the exploration of emerging technologies, innovative healing protocols, African cosmologies, and multimedia art. Marques Redd and Mikael Owunna, the organization’s co-founders and co-executive directors, wrote in an email, “In some respects, we see this project as the biggest canvas of our careers, but we also see it as an exciting extension of our contributions to Pittsburgh’s vibrant cultural ecosystem,” which includes the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Glass Center, and Pittsburgh International Airport.

The Three Sisters is an apt title for an art installation on this same-name bridge trio, but Rainbow Serpent said the term also has global connotations. From the artists’ project brief, in North and Central America, “Three Sisters refers to their main crops of squash, maize (corn), and beans, which flourish when grown in close proximity.” Elsewhere, from Nigeria to Brazil and Cuba, “the three sisters” are associated with the goddesses Yemaya, Oshun, and Oya.

“While each bridge highlights a different crop and corresponding Yoruba goddess, the themes of growth, protection, and transformation are universal,” Redd and Owunna wrote. “This alignment allows the light shows on each bridge to complement each other and create a narrative arc that can be understood and appreciated whether viewed individually or collectively.”

Cravotta said that the county’s relationship with Shiftworks “has always been very strong.” In addition to the bridge lighting, Shiftworks has collaborated with the Allegheny County Parks Foundation to support programming for the county-owned Carol R. Brown Sculpture Garden in Hartwood Acres Park.

“When you hire someone to do this work, you want them to be the experts. Shiftworks staff are the experts. Derek [Reese] essentially staffed this project for us,” Cravotta said.

Visitors can experience The Three Sisters now through Highmark First Night Pittsburgh (December 31) and Aurora through mid-January 2025.

About Shiftworks

Shiftworks Community + Public Arts envisions a region in which the creative practices of artists are fully engaged to collaboratively shape the public realm and catalyze community-led change. Shiftworks builds capacity for this work through civically engaged public art, artist resources, public programming, and technical assistance.

If you’d like to learn more about Shiftworks, read about their working relationship with communities in creating public art in part two of the Getting to Know: Shiftworks series.

Shiftworks’ Write the Rivers workshop with Sherrie Flick explored new ways of including the public in public art. Photo by Heather Mull.

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

The Getting to Know series helps you become better acquainted with some of Rivers of Steel’s partners throughout the eight-county Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area by featuring one of our community allies. For part two of the Shiftworks series, writer Jason Vrabel examines how Shiftworks Community + Public Arts serves its mission by creating opportunities for the public to engage in creating public art.

By Jason Vrabel, on behalf of Shiftworks

Expanding the Boundaries of Public Art

More than a dozen people fanned out across the Allegheny River shoreline in search of found objects—or in this case, more commonly known as trash. This area north of Pittsburgh is marsh-like near the delta of Plum Creek, but lush and forested farther inland. Aside from two fishermen, everyone there on a Saturday morning in June arrived by kayak, a 15-minute paddle from the 10.7 Marina in Verona.

They were there to create art with Monica Cervone McElwain, one of several artists commissioned by Shiftworks Community + Public Arts to design public art tours. Taking place between summer and fall, this program includes two different kayak journeys and multiple walking tours. Combined, the events share a common goal of educating people about what public art is, what it can be, and engaging them in the process of creating it.

A group of kayakers paddle towards the confluence of Plum Creek at Allegheny River in Oakmont. Photo by Ishara Henry.

Once everyone was on land, McElwain’s instructions to the group were intentionally vague: Go explore, and bring back anything you can reuse creatively

“This is a little bit of a choose your own adventure,” McElwain said. As a multimedia artist and art teacher, McElwain says the purpose of these events, now in their second year, is to create opportunities for art making, but also for adults to play.

As a regular visitor to this area, McElwain knows that her groups will mostly find bona fide trash—a lot of pop bottles and beer cans—but more interesting objects usually turn up, like decorative metal pieces of a stair railing, or a yo-yo. “I once found a beautifully preserved deer head . . . and, of course, I made something out of it,” she said.

The returning participants amassed a pile of human-made objects, like a rubber wheel and some river glass, as well as more natural discoveries like feathers and branches. One participant stayed out on the water and finally returned with two large sheets of crumpled metal, weathered by water and sun. To help with assembly, McElwain brought along fishing line, wire, and other art supplies.

Turtle Cove is only a few miles from the city border but feels much farther. Serene and pastoral, evidence of the built environment is scarce—except, that is, for River’s Edge, a new housing development on the other side of Plum Creek.

Most of the participants gravitated toward a sculpture McElwain had started previously, partially constructed with white PVC pipe. McElwain didn’t know for sure where the pipe came from but said it was “probably something that came from all that building across the creek.”

McElwain says trash is always present, but the inlet isn’t overrun with it. Even though cleaning up Turtle Cove is part of every trip she takes there (she hauls away as much as she can that is not “creatively exciting”), she isn’t heavy-handed about the environmental message. Instead, she wants her groups to pay attention to the natural environment and use it in their creative process.

“Seeing and hearing birds, and being in the sun with the wind hitting you helps pull in that natural environment when you’re creating,” McElwain said.

Monica Cervone McElwain creates an assemblage with found objects. Photo by Ishara Henry.

An Evolving Process

Previously known as the Office for Public Art, Shiftworks can be found where art intersects with civic design in the Pittsburgh region. The organization’s mission to catalyze change through civically engaged, artist-led projects in public spaces took on greater urgency during the pandemic. As social isolation was taking root, Shiftworks partnered with Riverlife (an organization whose mission is to activate Pittsburgh’s riverfronts) to encourage safe social gathering outdoors. The immediate result was a series of commissioned public art projects along the Allegheny River and Allegheny Landing.

This led to the formation of the Pittsburgh Creative Corps, a pool of local artists who can be called upon whenever new public art opportunities arise. More than 100 artists are now part of the Corps, some of whom have been invited by Shiftworks and its partners to propose and create their own projects.

Rachel Klipa, Shiftworks’ program manager for education, says these tours are educational and less intensive than many of the organization’s other programs, which often involve multiyear commitments between artists and the communities in which they work. These summer events are intended to engage artists who can create new opportunities for the public to participate in the making of art without a lot of constraints.

“We want to let people determine their own experience,” Klipa said. “We want to let them see what they want and create what they want.”

A Walk & Write with Sherrie Flick, (far right)/ Photo by Heather Mull Photography.

Walk & Write

Sherrie Flick is another member of the Corps who also curates experiential art events for Shiftworks. Her tours are by foot—mostly through parks and neighborhoods—and focus on the art of writing. Flick sometimes leads the tours herself but often collaborates with other writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

As an instructor at Chatham University and an accomplished author (with a novel and several short-story collections to her name), Flick designed the Walk & Write tours to spark creativity through movement and observation. Whether touring the built environment of downtown Pittsburgh or the natural landscape of Frick Park, participants are provided with writing prompts along the way. Tour guides may relay their own personal histories with the site or read from their own work to inspire writing within the group.

This summer, while exploring the physical space between the Ohio River and the shuttered Western Penitentiary, Flick’s co-host Sarah Shotland led participants along a trail adjacent to the neighborhoods of Manchester and Marshall-Shadeland. Officially known as State Correctional Institution—Pittsburgh, the penitentiary’s future has been a recent topic of debate. Those who see its historic architectural value want to preserve and reuse the structure, but others want to demolish a menacing symbol of incarceration and reuse only the land.

As an author who once taught writing to inmates inside Western Penitentiary, Shotland prompted participants to think about space—inside and outside. By juxtaposing the massive structure with the Ohio River just beyond the prison walls, tour participants moved through the space in between, while being prompted to consider the tension between confinement and freedom.

Many of us know how a short walk can help clear our minds. Beyond the scientific evidence that indicates we think differently when we are moving, Flick says we become better observers of our surroundings when we are passing through them. Flick teaches that good writing comes from keen observation, so to improve our writing, we must first improve our observing.

“Observation connects us to setting, which connects us to objects, which connects us to characters, and so on,” Flick said, noting that good observation skills are important to writers of any genre. Furthermore, “writing from a place of observation helps us write without judgment”—something that experienced and novice writers alike can learn over time.

“The main idea is you’re reacting to the observed world,” Flick said. By guiding people through a familiar place in a creative way, their perception of that place can change.

Walk & Write tours are designed for all kinds of writers at any level of ability, including those who don’t think of themselves as writers at all. Participants who have chosen to share their writing with their groups have written some great things, Flick says, but merely sharing observations about the places they visit can be just as valuable.

What is public art? How is it made, and by whom?

It’s generally understood that art, in a broad sense, includes music, dance, and other forms of creative expression, but people often associate public art with static objects such as sculptures and murals. While traditional forms of public art make valuable contributions to the public realm, broadening our collective understanding of what public art can be is part of Shiftworks’ mission.

“Public art is art that exists in the public realm, however briefly,” Klipa said. “Sometimes it may only be experienced by whoever is present at a particular place and moment in time.”

Shiftworks’ civically engaged art programs have supported artists whose work expands the boundaries of public art, often through ephemeral and experiential elements. Social gatherings, yoga sessions, theatrical performances, sewing, and cooking have all been foundational to Shiftworks-supported projects throughout the years. Because that kind of work requires deep community engagement and extensive training, and provides opportunities to only a limited number of artists, Klipa wanted the summer series to present opportunities for new audiences and artists to work in the public realm on a short-term basis.

“Public art doesn’t have to be an object,” Flick said. “The art ends up being all the written pieces the participants have drafted. I’m the conduit. They’re creating these little pieces that they can carry on and continue with.”

While the works of art made during McElwain’s kayak tours are objects, they’re ephemeral ones. The artists can no longer see their work after they’ve left the island, and because the inlet occasionally floods, the work will be washed away eventually.

In addition to creating more opportunities for the public to make art, Shiftworks has been equally committed to the ongoing development of the artists, by moving away from traditional public art walking tours to commissioning artists to design experiences in the public realm. To promote more artist-designed projects, Klipa says that Pittsburgh Creative Corps artists (even those with little to significant public engagement experience) are candidates for future tour commissions.

McElwain’s project was born from her own family kayak trips to Turtle Cove. (“Turtle Cove” isn’t an official place, but a made-up name given by an acquaintance of McElwain.) She had recently painted a mural at the 10.7 Marina when she got the idea to take the traditional art walking tour concept out into the rivers. Walk & Write’s origin was similar. Flick had been involved with Shiftworks tours of public art and architecture downtown since 2017; they were educational, but the overall experience was limited to discussions about existing art created by someone else.

Since then, Flick has allowed the Walk & Write tours to evolve into the participatory form they take today, and she appreciates the freedom she has to design or modify each one. “They’re different every time and not done by rote,” she said.

Sometimes they’re different in unexpected ways. Last year, a tour in Frick Park that didn’t account for early nightfall nearly had to be rescheduled until Flick proposed going forward in the dark—with headlamps. Klipa said this was a “great solution” and an example of both Shiftworks’ flexibility and the artist’s ability to adapt. Flick said the “night hike” was such a great experience, that this year’s park tour in September will not begin until dark.

Erin Mallea’s Sycamore Island tour. Photo by Ishara Henry.

No Beginning or End

The summer public art series embodies Shiftworks’ goal of helping our region understand the value of public art and the unique contributions of artists who work in the public realm. For McElwain, tours to Turtle Cove don’t really have a beginning or end, and the artwork her groups create will likely change by the time she returns. Because it’s not uncommon for visitors to alter the art, her next group will inherit whatever is there.

Already thinking ahead to next year, McElwain is considering ways to engage with other visitors—possibly through signage, notebooks, or QR codes—but doesn’t want to dictate what others do with whatever they find there.

“You may not understand it, but just be respectful” is the message she wants to convey to those who happen upon the artwork. After all, McElwain remarked with a laugh, she doesn’t interfere with fire pits left behind by “the kids who make their bonfires.” But she does recycle their beer cans.

Beyond whoever commissions or creates it, the most intriguing aspect of public art is who it belongs to.

Getting Involved

This year, Shiftworks’ public art events will continue through October. Artist Erin Mallea will lead two more kayak tours—to Sycamore Island, one of the few currently undeveloped islands in Allegheny County. There will also be three more Walk & Write events. A writing tour led by Nancy Krygowski will take place in Greenfield, and Flick will lead the September “night hike” in Schenley Park. Flick has also collaborated with local archivist and historian Jennie Benford to design a Walk & Write tour of Homewood Cemetery, which will occur later in October. An event schedule and registration information can be found here.

Derek Reese, Shiftworks’ manager of artist services, holds open office hours twice a week. Artists interested in working in the public realm can schedule in-person or virtual appointments through Shiftworks’ events page.

About Shiftworks

Shiftworks Community + Public Arts envisions a region in which the creative practices of artists are fully engaged to collaboratively shape the public realm and catalyze community-led change. Shiftworks builds capacity for this work through civically engaged public art, artist resources, public programming, and technical assistance.

If you’d like to learn more about Shiftworks, read about their working relationship with communities in creating public art in part one of the Getting to Know: Shiftworks series.

The FroGang celebrates their Lot of Love in Beltzhoover.  Photo by Ishara Henry.

Getting to Know: Shiftworks

Getting to Know is a new column that offers an opportunity to become better acquainted with some of Rivers of Steel’s partners throughout the eight-county Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area via a series of articles featuring one of our community allies. In this article, writer Jason Vrabel examines how Shiftworks Community + Public Arts serves its mission through civically engaged public art crafted in collaboration with an array of communities, both geographic- and affinity-based, and how this work elicits stronger connections among those stakeholders.

By Jason Vrabel, on behalf of Shiftworks

Public Art + Community: Building Resilience Through Collaboration—Four Stories from the Pittsburgh Region

Let’s Eat

Dozens of community members sitting under a canopy tent discussed the handmade, colorfully painted ceramic plates on the tables—no two were the same. From a distance, the plates looked like family heirlooms. One plate was an illustrated sweet potato with instructions for how to grow one, and circling the edge of it was an anonymous quotation about the pandemic’s impact on the cost of food.

A team of servers dressed in black and white fanned out to serve the first of a three-course meal. As the guests began eating, the servers commenced the second part of their dual role—as performers.

 Whether they knew it or not, everyone was participating in Let’s Eat: Abundance, Access and Community, a public art project designed to address food insecurity. This project was led by multimedia artist Lindsey Peck Scherloum and her team, which included The Brashear Association, Inc., a nonprofit organization serving South Pittsburgh neighborhoods, as a community partner.

The Let’s Eat event. Photo by Ishara Henry.

Let’s Eat was one of four collaborative projects undertaken as part of the Public Art and Communities program (PAC), a program of Shiftworks Community + Public Arts (formerly known as Office for Public Art), in collaboration with Neighborhood Allies and the Borough of Millvale. Overseeing the program was Divya Rao Heffley, Shiftworks’ associate director, and Tamara Emswiler, senior program manager for social impact design at Neighborhood Allies. Between 2021 and 2024, PAC engaged approximately 1,000 people in creating temporary works of public art that addressed a community-defined need, such as persistent racism or social isolation, that was worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Under the tent, Donathan Arnold, one of the servers-turned-performers, announced, “Here are some of the words people shared when we asked them to tell us about food.”

“I’m proud when food tastes good, when I cook and people compliment me, when I’m cooking with my family. I live in Allentown,” responded another server / performer, embodying a resident who had responded to a request for statements about their relationships with food. Many similar statements followed.

A year prior, during the project’s community engagement phase, the Let’s Eat team had identified food insecurity as their theme—an issue of great importance to The Brashear Association, which operates a food pantry year-round—with the goal of reducing stigma by “celebrating food” in a communal way.

“But what about that is art?” Scherloum asked at the time. “It’s a cool idea and could not be art, but we’re going to make it art.”

And they did. Let’s Eat combined ceramics, performance, and community-inspired dishes to create an event series that was entertaining, educational, and empowering. The Brashear Association’s community engagement, combined with Neighborhood Allies’ project management, enabled the team to find consensus around conflicts that arose. It was a supporting cast, however, that included dramaturge Nick Grosso and his actors, event planner Tara Ferderber, and chef Carlos Thomas of Feed the Hood that made Scherloum’s vision a reality.

Public Art and Communities: A Program of Shiftworks, Neighborhood Allies, and the Borough of Millvale

The PAC projects might have taken different paths toward completion, but they all followed a process designed by PAC’s Program Team and Advisory Group. Through a Call for Artists, each of the four selected community partners—The Brashear Association, Steel Smiling, Etna Community Organization / Sharpsburg Neighborhood Organization, and the FroGang Foundation, Inc.—chose their artists. Primary and secondary project managers (mostly staff from Shiftworks and Neighborhood Allies) with expertise in community-based public art were assigned to support each team.

Everyone convened at Placemaking Academy, a six-week training program led by Shiftworks that introduced the newly formed teams to the work ahead. Community engagement best practices, discussions about the possibilities of what public art could be, and establishing a common urban design language were some of the topics covered. Artists then embarked on an engagement process in the communities where they would work for the next two years.

The Let’s Eat passage above and those that follow are excerpts from a report titled, “Public Art + Community: Building Resilience Through Collaboration.” Through storytelling, the report captures the personalities, struggles, and triumphs of creating public art in the Pittsburgh region.*

The Black Queer Affinity Series. Photo by Ishara Henry.

Black Queer Affinity Series

A walled garden on a former nineteenth-century estate in Pittsburgh’s East End was recently claimed by artist Noa Mims for anyone who was Black and Queer and wanted to participate in an experiential public art project. In collaboration with Steel Smiling, a nonprofit organization committed to Black mental health, Mims created the Black Queer Affinity Series, a three-part project that incorporated group yoga sessions, social gatherings, and ceramics into a creative healing process centered on Black Queer mental health.

All public art needs space. Like murals and sculptures needing walls or plots of land, events need to happen somewhere. Mims had studio space for the ceramics workshops they wanted to incorporate, but where would they find—in Pittsburgh—an indoor space for a group of Black Queer people to come together and engage around shared mental health experiences?

Knowing that Black-run spaces accommodating of large groups were scarce in Pittsburgh, Mims said, “At a certain point in time, I stopped looking at it as a challenge and started looking at it as an initiative to carve out space within the city for us to exist, to gather, to find community. Curating that kind of experience came down to, ‘How can I make everyone comfortable with this thing that normally doesn’t get to happen?’”

Mims’ needing to create space where none existed highlights current cultural realities of the Pittsburgh region that no single project or organization can change outright. But cities are made up of communities, which can change and also effect change. The Black Queer Affinity Series impacted Steel Smiling and a segment of the city’s Black population in ways big and small, but it also raised questions about the nature of Pittsburgh communities—how they’re defined, how they’re created, and how they’re sustained.

“Sometimes community isn’t where we are; it’s who we’re with, what we’re doing, what we’re talking about, and how we show up for each other,” Courtney Abegunde, Steel Smiling’s operations director, said. “Many people don’t feel like a part of the community they live in.”

“Communities have been self-identifying for millennia,” Divya Rao Heffley, a project manager for the Black Queer Affinity Series said. “Communities can be place-based but can also transcend place. The Shiftworks approach is to ask communities, ‘How do you define yourself, and then how can we support that?’”

Along with their project team, Mims organized twenty-one events. Their goal of confronting social isolation through togetherness for Black Queer people was achieved and, in doing so, revealed the persistent struggles unique to Black residents of the Pittsburgh area.

“People were able to come together,” Mims said. “For folks who had been isolated for quite some time, it was really refreshing to say, ‘I’m not alone with these experiences that I’m facing.’ That was a huge success in and of itself: You’re not alone; you’re isolated. And that takes active engagement to counteract. That’s where the success lies—in breaking down that isolation.”

Artist Jason McKoy, right, discusses his We Are Windows installation, 2023. Photo by Ishara Henry.

We Are Windows

The similar mill town histories of Etna and Sharpsburg have led them on similarly innovative post-mill town journeys toward becoming sustainable communities. Sitting side by side along the Allegheny River, these two communities seem too alike to be separate boroughs.

Community leadership has enabled the kind of collaboration needed to further long-term community goals for both boroughs, including investing in public art. As the executive director of Etna Community Organization (ECO) and a member of Etna Borough Council, Megan Tuñón said she originally envisioned pursuing a “traditional” public art project through PAC.

“I came into it thinking we were going to do something like a mural, but it turned out to be so much more than that,” she said.

 Sharpsburg’s mayor, Brittany Reno, who was executive director of the Sharpsburg Neighborhood Organization (SNO) at the time, said that artist Jason McKoy’s “tech-based, out-of-the-box” art was just what these communities needed. Being accepted as co-applicants into the PAC program, ECO and SNO collaborated on a public art project unlike any other in the region. We Are Windows, the project undertaken by McKoy, demonstrated how innovative public art can facilitate, or provoke, civic engagement in unexpected ways.

While all PAC teams needed to respond to the pandemic in some way, McKoy would have the added challenge of working in two municipalities simultaneously. Early on, he found the longstanding rivalry (a “beef,” he called it in jest) between Etna and Sharpsburg amusing, but he respected each community’s autonomy and identity. With personal interaction limited by the pandemic, McKoy used postcards to solicit input about the issues the communities wanted to address. The response showed two boroughs speaking with one voice.

“What was coming directly from the community was isolation, isolation, isolation,” McKoy said. Both places experiencing the same thing became the impetus to create “one work of art that would knit the communities together, instead of pursuing two separate projects.”

McKoy’s concept featured electronic “windows” that “looked” from one borough into the other. Placed in publicly accessible locations, digital screens (think vertical flat-screen TVs) displayed multiple video feeds from cameras placed in the corresponding community—kind of like a group Zoom call, featuring places more than faces.

An online forum held to discuss We Are Windows brought about mixed reactions. Privacy and possible “surveillance” were central to community concerns. As a project manager for We Are Windows, Derek Reese, Shiftworks’ program manager for artist services, said real community engagement allows for these kinds of issues to arise.

“We don’t steer away from controversy. We don’t try to sanitize situations,” he said.

Noting that “compromise is the only way to get things done,” Reno said candid neighborhood discussions led to a scaled-back version that satisfied the communities’ privacy concerns.

Reflecting on the community-based approach to creating art, Tuñón said We Are Windows was valuable to her as a community leader who wants to invest in more public art. “I appreciate how innovative [this project] is, and that it aligns with how we see ourselves as a community … We want to do innovative things moving forward.”

Reno added, “This process challenged us and definitely led to me feeling more cognizant of the fact that the entire process is art, the reaction is part of the art.”

McKoy, who has historically sought an element of disruption in his art, anticipated some resistance to We Are Windows. When asked if his project shifted public awareness about cameras in the public realm, he said, “I want to say yes, even if only an increment.”

About the project’s impact on public perception about art, he said, “In places where art isn’t in the forefront . . . part of my job is to change people’s minds, or at least make them think deeper and more critically about what art can even be. I believe—I hope—I accomplished that.”

The FroGang Mural in the Lot of Love in Beltzhoover. Photo by Ishara Henry.

FroFully Connected

On a grassy parcel in Beltzhoover known as the FroGang Lot of Love, dozens of guests arrived for FroGang’s long-awaited mural dedication ceremony. Several event-day hiccups kept them waiting, but Kelli Shakur, FroGang’s founder and CEO, was unfazed.

“There were a lot of challenges that could have deterred the whole mood and atmosphere,” Shakur said afterward, “but instead, because of the love of FroGang and the love of what’s going on on that lot, people stayed. That’s what the Lot of Love is all about: bringing people together and turning things that should be bad into good.”

FroGang Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit organization with a mission to promote positive self-image for Black girls by celebrating natural Black hair and culture. The Lot of Love is a modest-sized lot of outsized importance that FroGang had been seeking to adopt and enliven as an outdoor center for activities and events. Shakur’s organization had long-envisioned a mural that would commemorate the Lot of Love when it’s in use, and claim the space for FroGang when it’s not. Through PAC, artist Rell Rushin created Frofully Connected, a mural celebrating Black girls and women, painted on large panels designed to be installed on the brick facade of an adjacent building.

Rushin’s artwork, as big-hearted and unafraid as FroGang’s mission, was completed on time, but its installation was held up by onerous city regulations for more than eight months. Frofully Connected is a story of the unwavering determination of an artist who was new to public art and a community organization with a vision.

Rushin began attending FroGang’s recurring Successful Sister Sessions as an observer at first, later as a participant. While conceptualizing what the artwork would be, she was struck by one activity in particular: girls reciting affirmations—positive statements about themselves that they had written in journals—while looking into self-decorated, handheld mirrors. She was moved by seeing them “loving themselves and each other and causing no harm by judging or being cruel.”

The latter is learned behavior, Rushin said, and “seeing them unlearn that was really cool.”

Rushin’s bold color palette and her figurative illustrations of Black girls and women were influenced by the FroGrang girls, whom the artist acknowledged when signing the artwork. The 32’ x 8’ mural accomplished the initial goal of claiming the land for FroGang, but it’s the text accompanying the images that directly speaks the goals of confronting racism and replacing feelings of isolation with belonging:

WE ARE WHO THE WORLD FEARS, BLACK GIRLS LIVE HERE.

Rushin’s smooth journey (her first) through the city’s Public Art and Design Commission  helped her grow as an artist, but even with the help of an architect, engineers, project managers, and a professional sign installer, countless delays throughout the permitting and zoning phases kept her mural grounded.

“If we were struggling—a whole team of people—to get this mural up, what would this process look like if I wasn’t working with Shiftworks? There would’ve been no chance of my artwork getting out there,” Rushin said.

Almost nine months later, the Frofully Connected mural is finally out there.

Artist Noa Mims Steel Smiling series seeks to bridge the gap between Black people and mental health support through education, advocacy and awareness. Photo by Ishara Henry, 2023.

Place Matters

There is a strong sense that public art, over time, belongs to more than whoever commissioned it, created it, or owns the deed for the land upon which the artwork resides. By intention or accident, public art invariably becomes part of the public realm in ways that can’t easily be measured. Created by many hands, public art belongs to many people.

If public art is to be an effective means of addressing inequality, it must confront the complex environments where it is placed. Launched during the greatest health crisis in a century, PAC shifted collective and individual perspectives by directly confronting root causes of persistent racism, stigmatization, and social isolation. PAC’s final artworks will be temporary, but the aesthetic experiences produced by them and the processes that created them will endure.

###

* The excerpts above have minor modifications to reflect the style guidelines and writing conventions of Rivers of Steel. No substantive changes have been made that reflect the content or intent of the original author. 

About Shiftworks

Shiftworks Community + Public Arts envisions a region in which the creative practices of artists are fully engaged to collaboratively shape the public realm and catalyze community-led change. Shiftworks builds capacity for this work through civically engaged public art, artist resources, public programming, and technical assistance.

If you’d like to learn more about Shiftworks, read about their transformation in this article by Sallyann Kluz and Ashley Anderson, Art. Works.