Teaching Associate Professor Melissa Catanese, Visiting Assistant Professor Sean P. Morrissey, Director of Fabrication Loring Taoka, and Teaching Professor Barbara Weissberger from the Department of Studio Arts in the Dietrich School are featured in the group exhibition, Adaptation - Local Notes, at the Tomayko Foundation. There will be an opening reception on Thursday, October 10 from 6 pm to 8 pm. The exhibition runs through November 22, 2024.
From the exhibition:
“Adaptedness is a heritable trait that helps an organism complete a life cycle in a given environment. Adaptation – Local Notes gathers the works of 13 artists based in and around the Allegheny County region to examine our communal ability to influence, intersect, and adapt to natural and human-made ecosystems. With these artworks, artists demonstrate how the organic or synthetic materials available in such sites often affect our relationships with each other and the places we inhabit.
These artists explore our interdependence with the environment through heterogeneous approaches and encourage viewers to consider the interstitial spaces and lines of communication within. For instance, the works of Melissa Catanese, Finn Dugan, and Adrienne Borkowski are captivated by the hidden stories of plant life, the underwater world, the architecture of bird nests, and the biorhythm of invasive species. Investigations into the landscape—utilizing tree branches, soil, clay, and charcoal—are in the sculptures by Tammy Skiver Maxson, Manami Ishimura, and Elizabeth Scutt and Karen Antonelli's photography. More speculative narratives are told through manufactured and daily objects, as in the works by Barbara Weissberger, Jonathan Lohr, Sean P. Morrissey, and April Friges. Unexpected interpretations are in Loring Taoka's painting and the video essay by Anisha Baid.
Adaptation – Local Notes tells interlaced stories about times and geographies—from socioeconomic concerns to biological processes and post-deindustrialized communities in the aftermath of urban renewal, the diversity of plants, and the bodies of water coexisting with technological intervention—with a focus on some of the cultural issues shaping Pittsburgh and Allegheny County.
This exhibition is juried by Michaela Blanc and organized by Nina Friedman, Director, Tomayko Foundation.
The Adaptation Screening Program presents the cinematic compositions of seven artists working in myriad time-based processes – from animation to documentary, visual poetry, and sound. Participating artists include Andrew W. Allison, Anisha Baid, Catherine Drabkin, Chantal DeSouza-Feitosa, Inbar Hagai, Lorenzo Baker, and Ségolène Pihut. This one-night film screening will be held at Silver Eye Center for Photography on October 16 from 6:30 - 8:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public with advanced registration required.”
