Arena: Remembering the Igloo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contacts:
Jessica Warchall, Visual Art Publicist, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
847-477-8714/Warchall@TrustArts.org
Shaunda Miles, Director of Public Relations, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
412-471-1578/Miles@TrustArts.org      
Diana Roth, Communications Manager, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
412-471-8717/Roth@TrustArts.org

PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST PRESENTS

THE PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION

ARENA: REMEMBERING THE IGLOO

January 17 – March 2, 2014 | 707 Penn Gallery
Exhibition Opening | January 17 | 5:30 – 8 p.m.

Pittsburgh, PA—The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust announces the opening of Arena: Remembering the Igloo by local photographer David Aschkenas. The exhibition presents a visual record of Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena’s last months in operation and during its yearlong demolition process. The exhibition is on view January 17–March 2, 2014, at 707 Penn Gallery in the Cultural District, and an opening reception takes place January 17, 2014, from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

The Pittsburgh Civic Arena operated in downtown Pittsburgh from 1961 to 2010 as a venue hosting concerts, rallies, sporting contests, and exhibitions, among many other events. Most notably, the Civic Arena, nicknamed the Igloo, was home to the Pittsburgh Penguins professional ice hockey team from 1967 to its close.

The only photographer licensed by the Sports and Exhibition Authority to have total access to the Civic Arena during its demolition, Aschkenas shot more than 10,000 photographs of the project. From wide-angle shots showing the pre-demolition Civic Arena among its surroundings, to close-up images of the seemingly mundane objects within, the photographs on display fully portray the iconic building during it demise.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Aschkenas is releasing a book under the same title: Arena: Remembering the Igloo. The book is available online through Amazon, Apple iTunes, and the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation website. Containing more than 100 photographs, the book also collects people’s memories of and experiences in the Civic Arena.

David Aschkenas has been a photographer for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in publications such as Time, Men's Health, Good Housekeeping, Stern, More, Marie Claire, PC World, Der Spiegel, Pittsburgh Quarterly, among others. Aschkenas’s work is held in numerous collections, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts; University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, AK; The Polaroid Corporation; The Howard Heinz Endowment; and The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Foundation, Pittsburgh, PA.

About 707 Penn Gallery
707 Penn Gallery is a project of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The gallery is located at 707 Penn Avenue in downtown Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. Gallery Hours: Wed. & Thurs. 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun.11 a.m.–5 p.m. The gallery is free and open to the public. For more information about all gallery exhibitions featured in the Cultural District, please visitwww.TrustArts.org.

About The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has overseen one of Pittsburgh’s most historic transformations: turning a seedy red-light district into a magnet destination for arts lovers, residents, visitors, and business owners. Founded in 1984, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a non-profit arts organization whose mission is the cultural and economic revitalization of a 14-block arts and entertainment/residential neighborhood called the Cultural District. The District is one of the country’s largest land masses “curated” by a single nonprofit arts organization. A major catalytic force in the city, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is a unique model of how public-private partnerships can reinvent a city with authenticity, innovation and creativity. Using the arts as an economic catalyst, the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust has holistically created a world-renowned Cultural District that is revitalizing the city, improving the regional economy and enhancing Pittsburgh’s quality of life. Thanks to the support of foundations, corporations, government agencies and thousands of private citizens, the Cultural Trust stands as a national model of urban redevelopment through the arts.
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Images Courtesy of the Artist

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Harish Saluja: Progression Tranforms Simple into Art

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Today's date: September 23, 2011


Harish Saluja: Progression

September 23 - November 13, 2011

707 Penn Gallery



PITTSBURGH, PA: While doodling is generally seen as something anyone can do, local artist Harish Saluja transforms seemingly simple drawings into richly intricate and colorful works of art. Saluja’s latest series Progession can be interpreted as an extension of his passion for Asian-inspired art. The abstract expressionistic drawings found in Progression explore Indian music, Raga paintings and Hindu dieties.

About Progression

The Progression paintings are a representation of the changing style and themes of his work over the years. These include:

Mandalas: Mandala is Sanskrit for circle, polygon, community, and connection. It is a symbol of man or woman in the world, a support for the meditating person. It is often illustrated as a palace with four gates, facing the four corners of the Earth. Before the meditating person arrives at the gates, he/she must pass the four outer circles. Saluja builds on this basic discipline and gives it an abstract flavor.

Raga Series: Based on the Indian classical music, these paintings are abstract representations of the moods and emotions that the various ragas evoke.

Contemporary Miniatures: These tiny (5x3 inches) images are often the basis of larger paintings but are complete pieces in their own right.

To see the painting images are online, visit: www.facebook.com/harish.saluja

About Harish Saluja

Filmmaker, entrepreneur and art doyen Harish Saluja is best known in the Pittsburgh art scene for his leadership of Silk Screen, which celebrates Asian and Asian American culture through film festivals, art, dance and music. Saluja’s film The Journey won several awards and was shown in more than 30 film festivals and distributed by IFC (Independent Film Channel). In addition to his nationally recognized artwork, Saluja is co-host of Music From India on Essential Public Media 90.5FM, which is the longest running radio program of its kind in the U.S. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Saluja is 33-year veteran in the publishing industry. Through his latest endeavor Silk Screen, an Arts and Culture Organization, he is building bridges to/from Asia.

ARTnews’ Harry Schwalb once described Harish’s artwork style when he said, “Saluja sees the music's endless patterns – which evolve simultaneously in repetitively strummed layers of tone and rhythm – as like colored threads, woven by the performer into a musical carpet." This is because Harish’s paintings are based upon Ragas and jazz, both types of music that involve a building upon and meshing of different beats.

But this quotation not only describes Harish’s paintings, but his personal life as well. Growing up in the Indian state Punjab, Harish loved the exposure he received of the arts from his mother, who was a singer and writer. As a boy, he would ride his bike in any weather to go to the theater. During his early adult years, he made the decision to pursue a more secure future and attended the prestigious IIT, Kharagpur as a mining engineer major. Harish was already adding the first few layers of his life’s painting on the canvas.

In 1971, Harish moved to New York City. He tried to fulfill his dream of being an artist, but soon found out that this does not always pay the bills. He then made the decision to move to Pittsburgh, where he was told that he would be able to find a job with his engineering background. Once he arrived, he found a job with Measurements and Data Corp. Through hard work, Harish became a co-owner of the corporation.

With a means of living, Harish was finally able to purse his other dream of, as he once put, “changing the world through art”. He created beautiful paintings, many of which have been shown in galleries across the United States. He also started his own film company New Ray Films in 1995. His film, “The Journey” featured two famous actors, Roshan Seth and Saeed Jaffrey; who were also in “Gandhi”. The film received acclaim reviews, the Audience Award for Best Film at the Florida Film Festival and the Best Independent Film award at the Cleveland Film Festival.

Harish’s love of cinema has not ended with New Ray Films. It was expanded and is now manifested within his non-profit organization, Silk Screen. Silk Screen celebrates Asian and Asian American culture through film festivals, art, dance, music, and other events. It is located in Pittsburgh, which Harish believes, will allow others to feel a bond with the city, just as he had.


GALLERY DETAILS

707 Penn Gallery is located on 707 Penn Ave. / Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District

Hours: Wed. & Thurs. 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; Fri. & Sat. 11 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun.11 a.m.–5 p.m.



707 Penn Gallery is a Project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and is free and open to the public.
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Visual Arts Show "Memory Shredder" at 707 Penn Gallery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Veronica Corpuz

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

corpuz@pgharts.org

412-471-6082

Felipe Garcia-Huidobro: “Memory Shredder”

707 Penn Gallery, 707 Penn Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District

July 15 - September 11, 2011


Pittsburgh, PA: You have to be a little destructive to get really creative. Destruction, and the subsequent transformation of materials, is at the heart of Felipe Garcia-Huidobro’s new show “Memory Shredder” at The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s 707 Penn Gallery located at 707 Penn Avenue in the Cultural District. Tearing apart layers of collective consciousness -- ad posters, film strips, maps -- Felipe Garcia-Huidobro is reconstructing a personal geography through collage, sculpture, and video.

Felipe Garcia-Huidobro was born in Santiago de Chile in 1975. He received his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Universidad Finis Terrae, and his Master of Arts degree from Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya. He lives and works between Santiago, Chile and Pittsburgh, PA.

With interdisciplinary approaches to the creation of works, Felipe has experimented with different traditional techniques, such as drawing, photography, music, collage, painting and carpentry, and is now integrating digital technologies, such as video and audio recording and postproduction.

“Memory Shredder” opens on Friday, July 15, 2011, with an artist reception as part of the Cultural Trust’s Gallery Crawl from 5:30-9 p.m. The show concludes on Sunday, September 11, 2011.



Gallery Details:

707 Penn Gallery is a Visual Arts project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Located at 707 Penn Avenue in the Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District, 707 Penn Gallery is free and open to the public



Gallery Hours:

Wednesday & Thursday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Friday & Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

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Artist Ayanah Moor Work "Good News" Featured

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Contact:

Veronica Corpuz
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
corpuz@pgharts.org
(412) 471-6082



Ayanah Moor: Good News

707 Penn Gallery, 707 Penn Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District

March 4-April 3, 2011

Opening reception: March 4, 6-8pm

Pittsburgh, PA: Since 1945, Ebony has been the heralded, mainstream chronicle of the African American community, covering issues, personalities and interests in a self-affirming manner. A featured Ebony article on dating from the 1980s provides the inspiration for artist Ayanah Moor’s recent project, Good News. Through the use of creative wordplay, Moor offers an alternative commentary on site, desire and eligibility.

About Ayanah Moor

Ayanah Moor’s recent print and video works were exhibited at Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Forja ArteContemporaneo, SPACE, Wexner Center for the Arts, John Hope Franklin Center-Duke University, IceBox Project Space and Columbia College-Chicago, among others. Her work has been published in Critical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press); Black Women, Gender and Families (University of Illinois Press) and Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (Indiana University Press). Moor’s work is cited in What is Contemporary Art? (The University of Chicago Press), Home Girls Make Some Noise: A Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (Parker Publishing); and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip Hop Generation (Cleis Press). She has held artist residencies at Women’s Studio Workshop, Vermont Studio Center, Blue Mountain Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Brandywine Workshop and the Auckland Print Studio. Moor earned a BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University and MFA at Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University

For more information about Ayanah Moor, visit ayanah.com

Gallery Details:

707 Penn Gallery is a Visual Arts project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Located at 707 Penn Avenue in the Downtown Pittsburgh Cultural District, 707 Penn Gallery is free and open to the public

Gallery Hours:

Wednesday & Thursday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Friday & Saturday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.