The East End Arts Team and the Legacy Arts Project are hosting a free public event to celebrate the completion of the public art project, Homewood Dream Big!
Photo by: Renee Rosensteel
This public art project is a partnership between the East End Arts team and local neighborhood artists that engages community members to create projects celebrating the Homewood neighborhood. The evening will include a celebratory reception with the artists, community participants, and remarks from the Office of Public Art and Neighborhood Allies. There will be hands-on activities with the artists as well. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. Registration is encouraged via Facebook.
As part of this project, glass mosaic artworks created in collaboration with community members is being showcased and can be experienced in multiple locations across Homewood right now including: Legacy Arts Project, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Homewood, The Shop, N’side Out Spaces, University of Pittsburgh Community Engagement Center, and Homewood Sankofa Village. Additional locations will be hosting art throughout summer 2019: Jones Printing, Strong’s Cleaners, Hair Today Hair Tomorrow, and Dorsey’s Record Shop.
“We began by coming into the community and listening to what the children were telling us. We asked, “How does Homewood feel? How does it sound?”, says artist Daviea Davis. “As we hosted public mosaic and flag making workshops, we learned that if we come from a place of open-hearted LOVE, that the response, was open-hearted LOVE. We used Adinkra Symbols as inspiration on the flags that hundreds of community members sat with us to create for their very own. Each of the mosaics placed around Homewood express, through color and light, the Adinkra Symbols of LOVE, HOPE, ENDURANCE, CREATIVITY, and STRENGTH. Our intention of moving through this creative process, together, from our hearts, is shown and felt in the colorful, joyous art we created together.”
The concept for Homewood Dream Big began with conversations between the East End Art Team and the community. The East End Art Team organized ten free workshops, and provided materials for individuals to create glass mosaics and flags with Adinkra symbols. During these workshops, the East End Art Team talked with residents as they created artwork. The conversations revealed feelings of sadness and traumatic experiences among younger participants; however, older residents articulated a sense of resilience. From these conversations, the East End Art Team was inspired to use the African word Sankofa which emphasizes that knowledge from the past should not be forgotten in order to move forward. Sankofa was a way in which to connect the sentiments of both younger and older Homewood residents. The resulting project was two-fold: hundreds of individual flags with Adinkra symbols were created throughout the community, and eight mosaics will be installed in different Homewood locations. For more information, visit tinyurl.com/OPA-DreamBig.