Getting to Know: Shiftworks

A light installation by Joshua Challen Ice,  Aurora, 2024, lights up Mellon Square. Photo by John Altdorfer courtesy Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.

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.

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.

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.

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.