Storyteller's Opening Reception at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts

Inside the Gallery/ On the left: Yvonne Palkowitsh and daughter

We're gathering pics to showcase just what happened on Friday, 21, 2014 at the PCA's Guild Shows and Holiday Shop showcase. Women of Visions, Inc, along with the Fiberarts Guild and Craftsmen Guild of Pittsburgh, held a joint event worthy of high praise from all who attended. There were of course those few hiccups (our favorite being the inability to round up our artists because they were having so much fun), but throughout the hours of the show, the crowd was riveted to the work of our esprit de corps. Winner of the Sam Black Award was Yvonne Palkowitsh; and the Anne Tanksley Award went to Ruth Richardson. Ruth Ward's quilt The Birds Are Back was the first purchase of the guild's exhibit with more--we are sure--to come. Here is just a sampling of some of the people and the moments at Storytellers: Truth Be Told!

The wall sez it all! Gateway to the Exhibition halls

Wendy Kendrick w/ Big Mama's Shadow

Lesley Ansley, Brenda Brown and Christine Bethea w/ Brown's Under Authority

LaVerne Kemp w/  Black Moss/Hainted Trees

Mayota Hill w/ The Messenger: Go Tell It On the Mountain

Thanks for the photos Pepper Johnson, Mary Martin, and Christine Bethea and leslie Ansley. More to Come!

WOV EXHIBITION TIME!

Look out! This blog is about to be filled with dozens of great pics of our Storytellers: Truth Be Told! Art Exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Friday, November 21, 2014 from 5:30 pm to 9 pm. And check back for more info on the accompanying community events in January as well. Our exhibition catalog was designed by Martha Wasik, who also designed books for the other two groups hosting opening receptions in tandem with us and the Pittsburgh Center's Holiday Shop Evening Showcase. This is a very special and festive evening.  Enjoy the bounty of creative talents from three PCA art organizations: Women of Visions, Inc., The Pittsburgh Fiberarts Guild, and the Craftsmen Guild, plus lots of sparkle and shine in the PCA shop with gift ideas from over 200 regional artists! DON'T MISS THIS EVENT.

WOV Women WOW Wilberforce!

Often good news hits our Facebook page before we update our blog! We'd like to congratulate Mayota Hill, Harriette Merriwether, and Tina Williams Brewer for being accepted into the second year of the National Afro-American Museum's Black Heritage Art Show, "Visual Rhythms," in Wilberforce, Ohio. The exhibition runs now through February 28, 2015.

Harriette Merriwether at Ohio exhibition/ Photos by Karen Womack

Mayota Hill at Ohio exhibition

One of our WOV Storyteller's exhibitors, Pepper Johnson, won a second place honor!

Pepper Johnson with award-winning drum

Storytellers Spotlight Series: Benash & Luck

This is the second segment in series about the artists of Women of Visions exhibition Storytellers: Truth Be Told! which will run from November 21, 2014 through February 1, 2015 at the the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Here we highlight Shelita Birchette Benash and Monique Luck. 

Benash is a self-taught multi-media artist from the state of New York, with a professional background of 20 years in theater. Ms. Benash's primary mediums are clay, fiber and mosaic. She collects and salvages broken and discarded components to create trans formative visual metaphors. The act of gathering then bending, cutting, layering, and piecing parts that can then be viewed as a whole, gives her great satisfaction as an artist. She and her sculptor, husband own the "Organic Art Farm," where she is currently working on a mosaic bovine. 

Luck, a California native, left Pittsburgh several years ago to pursue her dreams, but never left her love for art. According to the Agora gallery in New York, one of many galleries in which she has shown her work nationally: "Monique Luck creates soulful and wonderfully lyrical images in mixed media..using fragments of found paper...the effect is exceedingly painterly in appearance." In 2012, Luck was the winner of the Bearden Inspired Collage Contest sponsored by the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Stone and porcelain tile mosaic by Shelita Benash

Mixed Media collage by Monique Luck

Storytellers Spotlight: Series; Ansley & Johnson

Storyteller's: Truth Be Told! Will open at the Pittsuburgh Center for the Arts on Friday, November 21,2014. every week up until the show's end on February 21, we will highlight some of the women in our show on our WOV blog. We kick off with nationally known mural artist, Leslie Ansley and multi-disciplinary artist, Pepper Johnson.

Pepper Johnson is a graduate of Central State University and Ohio State University, as well as postgraduate studies at Monclair State Universtiy, Columbus College of Art and Design and other prestigious institutions. She has exhbitited nationally, and now living in
Columbus, Ohio, her work has been exhbited at The Kings Art Complex, Schumacher Gallery, and Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. 

Leslie Ansley is a Pittsburgh based painter, muralist and arts educator. Her large scale mural work is featured prominently in several Pittsburgh neighborhoods including East Liberty, Squirrel Hill and at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. Her work can also be seen African-Ameircan Museum in Philadelphia, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, featured at the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta and seen in a host of other nationally acclaimed venues throughout the United States. Ms. Ansley has also been an artist subject in two films by noted Pittsburgh videographer, Chris Ivey. 

Clay Sculpture, by Pepper Johnson

Here, a video sampling from a recent class Leslie Ansley taught at Montessori School.