Exploring Pittsburgh's Art
- Al Preston
- Mar 25
- 7 min read
By Al Preston
Sometimes when I’m driving around the city, I like finding new routes and don’t mind it too much if I make a wrong turn. Pittsburgh’s roads are convoluted and twisting but they are also pretty forgiving when someone makes a mistake. I do love finding new weird roads and paths when I drive.
Shortly after we moved to the city, I was driving my wife to work, and I realized that one of the houses we were stopped next to had a massive concrete stegosaurus in it. I don’t know why they had one. I don’t know where it came from, or how they got it. I loved finding that. It made me really pay attention to the world around me when I drive.
That led to me noticing many of the city’s art installments; murals, statues, and gardens. I have seen so many colorful buildings, fences, and art pieces throughout the city. There’s more art inside some of the city’s buildings as well. Beautiful and sometimes historic art pieces are in the colleges, businesses, and museums across the city.
There’s the most obvious Pittsburgh queer artist, Andy Warhol. Not only does Warhol have his own museum, but he is also depicted in his own mural beside Andrew Carnige.
However, we’ve already covered Warhol in a podcast episode. What other queer artists exist in this city? I know there’s many of them. However, I wanted to start with Pittsburgh’s mountains of murals. Just where I live, there’s more than a handful of murals down the street and we can easily see the mural of Batman on the side of a lawyer’s office on McKnight (a genuinely funny combination).
There’s a lot of work that goes into making murals. There are permits that need to be acquired and there is a constant battle with the weather. When I went to undergraduate, I watched a beautiful mural get painted on a local coffee shop. It only lasted a few days before being partially melted by a light rain. Additionally, unlike in galleries, murals are out in the world where anyone can touch and interact with them. Normally, people are respectful, sometimes they’re not.
Not only does the city have some beautiful murals, but there are many galleries and art museums. One of which, the Andy Warhol Museum, is dedicated entirely to a gay man…although they have only recently spoken about Warhol’s queerness. Regardless, LGBT+ folks have been making art in the city for ages. Some have made murals; others have held shows in the city’s galleries.
Art is an inspiring and beautiful form. I’m not particularly good at art, but my wife is and I truly admire the work that goes into the creation of art pieces. As such, I want to talk about some of the art made by the city’s LGBT+ community, starting with the easier to visit murals that are spread out across the city.
It’s actually rather difficult to find a resource that has every single one of the city’s murals. There are a few maps that have only a few of the murals documented. Some have a lot of overlap, others have a completely different list. I think this has to do with the fact that the artists and stories behind some murals have been lost. Regardless, this was a hard search. Even the known artists and stories behind a mural don’t actually tell you a whole bunch. Unless the artist has their own internet presence, you’re not going to know much about them. Alongside the resources I used to research the murals I talk about in this post are some articles for other murals that I just thought were interesting. I highly recommend checking those links out.
I was, thankfully, able to find out a bit about some of the murals and their queer artists.
Although, we’ll start with a straight artist and a mural that can be seen as related to the struggles of LGBT+ folks. On 3100 Penn Avenue, there’s a huge mural with bright colors and clasped hands from people of a multitude of races. “Solidarity for Change” is a beautiful mural made by Matt Speck. Speck normally makes sports related murals, but this piece was designed to encourage love, compassion, and unity among people.
It’s not the only mural near the Strip District aligned with this theme. At Salem’s Grill, there is another mural with similar vibes by Maureen Diskin. Clasped hands of multiple nationalities but this one features a rainbow heart.
Both of these murals are in collaboration with Kyle Holbrook, a leader in the Moving the Lives of Kids organization. The goal of the murals was to promote and encourage solutions to gun violence and racism. LGBT+ folks of color are so often the victims of violence and while this mural series is about racism and gun violence broadly, you can see the hints of queerness in this conversation as well.
It’s so important that we acknowledge how many LGBT+ people of color are the victims of gun violence. How many transgender people of color who have died trying to make the world a better place. Gun violence against people of color, especially black and brown folks is wide reaching and horrifying. I’m very happy to see all of these murals. The first time I saw Speck’s mural, I felt inspired without knowing much about the initial project, so they’re doing a good job.
There are some queer specific murals in the city. V Jenning on Instagram has made a number of murals in the city, some temporary. She is a queer artist and some of the pieces on her Instagram are very abstract and beautiful. Most feature rainbows. I noticed a common thread with some of the murals having melting rainbows. She also can be hired to paint a store’s windows, which is very cool!
If you’ve ever been to the Central Outreach Wellness Center, you may have seen the beautiful mural in their parking lot.
This mural was made by Shane Pilster, owner of Do What We Love (LINK). He and his company have made a number of murals in the city, including the Uptown mural near Duquesne University and others for the Pittsburgh Penguins. The company’s goal is to bring the visuals and culture of graffiti into the commercial world without losing that history.
Graffiti is a really interesting culture and artistic form, even if it may seem juvenile or strange at times. I’m not within that community so I won’t speak to the culture of graffiti because I don’t know enough about it right now, but Do What We Love bases themselves in that culture.
Pilster created Central Outreach’s mural which is a very beautiful piece of work. There are other works around that area. Briefly, he got in trouble for paining some of these murals. Verizon also got in trouble for constantly trying to paint over the mural near a connection on the building.
I wasn’t able to find a description of the artistic process behind the mural for Central Outreach. I don’t know who is depicted or why those flowers were chosen. Regardless, it’s a beautiful work and I love seeing it when I pull into their parking lot.
Now, let’s come back around to “The Two Andys” mural by Tom Mosser and Sarah Zeffiro.
A lot of people have thought rather hard about this piece. While it’s a very funny image, Andy Warhol and Andrew Carnigie getting make-overs is a very ridiculous idea. You couldn’t find two very different people who both came from this city. However, the way Warhol and Carnegie contradict each other, but also exist together is important.
To a lot of the Pittsburgher’s who see this mural, it represents that spectrum of people that live and make up the culture of Pittsburgh. We’re a weird little city with very reserved but also very strange and outrageous personalities. If anything, this mural represents this city pretty well which is probably why it’s so popular.
Meanwhile, within the galleries of the city, there are plenty of queer artists presenting their work as well. At the time of writing, the Silver Eye Center for Photography has a collection from Ajamu X. These are a series of thirteen portraits as part of FIERCE: Pittsburgh. This collection is all about the city’s black queer culture and is apart of a series of cities Ajamu X has visited and done a similar set of photographs.
I will hopefully be seeing these portraits sometime soon and I’m very excited. They were made using the old darkroom process. Photography is a very powerful medium, especially when you’re capturing human forms.
Something really interesting I’ve noticed about the city is how important art is to not just the city, but the black community. Through art, they are able to express themselves and their struggles in a very emotional medium. The queer black community is also full of artistic expression, and you can find it in many organizations across the city that focus on letting black LGBT+ folks express themselves artistically.
Another artist, Devan Shimoyama who is based in Pittsburgh had a show in the De Buck Gallery in New York showcasing pieces that depict people of color in beautiful colors. They depict images that Shimoyama identifies with including images of their grandmother and Greek stories.
Other queer artists can be seen at Brew House Arts. Our social media manager, Griffin, has had his own shows there. His featured fiber arts (think quilts, clothes, and blankets) featuring queer folks from Appalachia. He has collected oral histories and personal stories about being queer in Appalachia but also about fiber arts, a lesser-known art form.
Brew House Arts also had a show about Pittsburgh’s gay night life. The show was called “When the Lights Come On: Queer Nightlife as Emergent Space.” There were performers and also art pieces in this show. There were paintings, drawings and photography. Harrison Apple, the co-founder of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, also provided a piece of the show that showed old videos from drag shows in the city’s bars.
This show was a collective effort from many queer artists in the city. This show was a big collection of work that display how important nightlife is to the LGBT+ community, even here in the city.
The Brew House has had so many wonderfully queer shows, I highly recommend keeping an eye out on their next shows.
Art is a beautiful way to express oneself. It’s a powerful medium that can inspire everyone who sees it. Pittsburgh’s art is varied and everywhere. There is far more that can be researched about Pittsburgh’s queer art scene. We’ll probably come back around to this topic in far more detail as we get more sources of information.
For now, it’s been fun to start researching Pittsburgh’s arts. Check out our sources for more in-depth information about the city’s murals and the galleries I mentioned!
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