Tom Sarver

A tour of The Pittsburgh Left exhibition at SPACE Gallery as seen through the lens of photographer and exhibition artist Larry Rippel.

Organized by Pittsburgh-based artist Tom Sarver, The Pittsburgh Left opened at SPACE Gallery on August 26, 2022. The gallery is one of several spaces run by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The show features collections of work and installations by eleven artists. The show runs through October 23rd, 2022. More information on hours and programming can be found HERE.

Sarver discussed ideas for a Pittsburgh-themed show with the visual arts curator of The Cultural Trust in 2019. He was creating sketches and drawings of Pittsburgh on-location and wanted to assemble a group of artists for a show at SPACE. After a couple years of studio and gallery visits, a lineup was selected.

Kairotic Painting comes from the ancient Greek word kairos, which roughly translates to mean “the right time”. By referring to the works as “Kairotic Paintings”, I am stating my intention to improvise and embrace the presence of intangible forces as part of my creative process. – Ramon Riley

The details of the heavenly orbs atop the 16th Street
Bridge have always fascinated me. The winged horses,
the zodiac and mythological symbols tells us its creators
valued aesthetic beauty. I am in awe of both the form
and the function of this bridge. Some lives are forever
changed because a bridge was built and a bridge was
crossed. -Ramon Riley

Filmmaker Chris Ivey is presenting We Are Here- Finding Beauty In The Raw, a multichannel video installation of several interviews wrapped in an immersive environment. Ivey’s history of hands-on, investigative work (East of Liberty documentary series, Grenfell Tower/Arconic engagement works) reveals and confronts racism and injustice both in Pittsburgh and internationally.

Conceptual artist David Montano has been collecting Pittsburgh post cards for many years. Montano is interested in the people who hand-wrote messages to their loved ones. He created an installation in the window space alcove of the gallery.

Splitting time between Pittsburgh and Detroit, Dailey often reflects on each place from a distance. He draws inspiration from exploration in each and realizes his visions in a wide variety of artistic media including ceramics, printmaking, drawing and painting.

Kirsten Ervin is a Pittsburgh-based fiber artist and illustrator focused on building community and promoting joy.

In 2019, I began making drawings and sketches of Pittsburgh neighborhoods. I made the works on site, attempting to capture the people and activity of each place. I wanted to show the gritty places, the overgrown lots, the decay, but also a sense of humanity in representing the variety of places where people live and interact.

In developing The Pittsburgh Left, I’m interested in how other artists think about the city and how it has influenced their work. I chose artists at various stages of their careers. Some I’ve reached out to for the first time, and some I have worked with over the years. Within this mix, I hope for unexpected dialogue. I don’t expect a very harmonious arrangement, but a quirky one that challenges the viewer to look closely at each artist’s point of view. – Tom Sarver

All photographs Copyright, Larry Rippel, 2022. Artwork images are Copyright of exhibition artists. Thank you to The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Lately I’ve been busy with the fourth season of Virtual Puppetry Residency, but I’ve also been working on getting my puppets back out into the world. I traveled to Athens, Ohio on April second to perform Puppet Talent Show, a new puppet show and demonstration at the Dairy Barn Art Center. The show is ideal for small children, involves lots of audience interaction and features three types of puppets: rod, marionette and glove puppets. Themes of the act include building self-confidence and encouraging others to celebrate their talents. The puppets include a variety of characters that I made over the past twenty years.

My puppet show at the Dairy Barn is part of a larger project, the group juried exhibition Scribble & Play, Art for Children. The exhibition runs March 19th through April 17th. I have two collections of puppets in the exhibition.

My painting, Puppet Parade, is currently on view in OH+5, Contemporary Art of Our Region at the Dairy Barn Art Center in Athens, Ohio. The show was juried by Quinn Alexandria Hunter, Emily Prentice and Shoji Satake. It includes artists from Ohio and its five bordering states. A wide variety of works representing sculpture, ceramics, fibers, painting, drawing, installation and performance were created by emerging and established artists. It runs through March 13th, 2022. While the show is up, I will have smaller paintings of the characters from Puppet Parade available for purchase in the Dairy Barn Shop.

Here is a Zoom conversation that I participated in with OH+5 artists Lily Erb and Beth Nash, organized by the center’s exhibition director Holly Ittel.

Puppet Parade is part of a series of paintings that I began in July of 2021 as I began to reflect on the Black Sheep Puppet Festival, an international festival of puppetry that I was involved in from 1999 through 2008. The event took place at the Brew House, an artist cooperative on the South Side of Pittsburgh. The venue was formerly part of a massive Duquesne Brewery complex. Artists began moving into the vacant facility to live and work starting in the 1980’s. In 1998, I had recently arrived back to Western Pennsylvania after art school and got a job working at the new Utrecht Art Supply that opened a few blocks from the BH. The neighborhood was buzzing with artists, musicians and lots of creative projects. I was immediately drawn to the work of Industrial Arts Co-Op, artists making large-scale metal and found materials sculptures in a large garage space at the BH. They were also curating wild performance events in their shared studio. I arrived just as they were brainstorming ideas for an edgy, experimental puppetry production.

The first two years of Black Sheep were times of raw creative energy and collaboration from a community of artists determined to go big. The BH gallery exhibited puppets. There were workshops, parades, marathon performance events and rooftop parties. Puppeteers arrived from Chicago, Philadelphia, Australia, New Orleans, New York City and Baltimore. Pittsburgh artists and musicians rounded out the events.

Puppet Parade depicts the moment of spontaneous street spectacle erupting next to the BH after a family puppet making workshop in the gallery space. Children, families, festival performers and people in the neighborhood watched as Knee High Puppeteers (Australia), Environmental Encroachment (Chicago) and others celebrated the art of puppetry.

To celebrate my first six months at Radiant Hall West in McKees Rocks, I have transformed my workshop into a gallery. The space is open by appointment. The show will run from December 18, 2021 through January 2, 2022. Works for sale include Pittsburgh drawings, paintings, fish art, and puppets. These works may be purchased (off the wall) or picked up later. An area of works-in-progress is also available for viewing. For more information, please email tomsarver@gmail.com

I’ll be selling my hand-crafted fish this Saturday, December 11th at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media’s Winter Artists Market. The event will feature work from over 25 artists and craftspeople and include ceramics, jewelry, photography painting and more. Vendors will be set up both inside and outside (be prepared for the weather)! The market will be open 10 AM until 5 PM and is located at 1047 Shady Avenue.

I’ll be selling a variety of wooden decorative fish, all inspired by fish species of Pennsylvania. Some are designed for wall display. Some have pedestals for display on a desk, shelf or mantle. I’ll also have some small holiday ornaments.

Fish Kiosk signage for the Winter Artists Market.

The past few months have been productive in the studio. I have a new workshop up and running at Radiant Hall Studios in McKees Rocks. More space to work has inspired me to bring back some projects that I had set aside.

One of those is Sarver’s Bait & Tackle. I’ve decided to bring back the project in the form of a retail business to sell painted wooden fish and decorative fishing lures. I’ll be trying out artist markets in the coming year and will have an online shop opening soon.

As part of my Pittsburgh Drawing Project, I occasionally meet with fellow artists for outings. Like the Early Modernists long ago, we often meet at coffee shops and bars to talk and sketch the scene. Here are some results from a recent night in Lawrenceville. Nightlife in the usually bustling neighborhood is still a bit slow (as the pandemic wanes), but we found people enjoying a rooftop breeze on a warm evening.

With a break from the pandemic and life starting to return to normal, I’ve returned to my Pittsburgh Drawing Project. Here are two from a day spent Downtown. The weather was hot and humid, so I tried to find some relief in mist from the fountain at Point State Park.

I’m happy to present the culminating event for my second Virtual Puppetry Residency project. Thirty-one participants from thirteen countries will be showing work in three online events on Saturday, December 12, 2020. For more information, please see the VPR Page of this website.

Pittsburgh City Paper article by Hannah Lynn.

The first season of VPR was a big success! Check out the page on this site for documentation. Here is the call for participants for season 2:

 

INTERESTED IN A FREE, AT-HOME PUPPETRY CLASS? The second season of Virtual Puppetry Residency will run October 1^st through November 15^th, 2020. The program is designed for adults to explore the craft of puppetry and share developments with a supportive team of participants over the internet. The project will explore: 1. Creating puppet shows that can be shared in a virtual format. 2. Crafting puppet characters focusing on voice, movement, and form. 3. Exploring a variety of puppetry styles. The project will be run through a combination of scheduled Zoom sessions, YouTube instruction and Email. Participants are asked to commit to a minimum of ten one-hour sessions. Puppets and skits created during the project will be shown in an online exhibition on the project website and might be shown by the project supporters (Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts). If you are interested, please contact me at tomsarver@gmail.com by September 15th.