Black History Month
Black History Month
Please read about the artists and writers we are featuring for Black History Month
Cue Perry - BIO
Pittsburgh native Cue Perry has been quietly pursuing a career in the arts his entire life. His practice is informed by applied technologies, graphic design, computer programming and street art. Perry takes an unconventional view of cultural, social and political concepts deconstructing pop culture through vibrant portraiture and abstract paintings. Recognized as one of Pittsburgh’s 40 under 40 in 2021, Perry has become an accomplished local household name selling nearly 4000 original paintings worldwide.
See his exhibit at the August Wilson Center:
https://aacc-awc.org/visit/galleries-spaces/
Baron Batch - BIO -
Self-styled "The Artist", Batch is a Pittsburgh-based entrepreneur and former American football running back who retired from the NFL in 2013. He is known for his "FREE" art drops, where he posts pictures of giveaway paintings on Instagram and Twitter, leaving clues to their location.
check out his website:
Sherif Bay - BIO -
Sharif Bey (born 1974, Pittsburgh, PA) produces both functional and sculptural pieces of pottery, using a variety of forms and textures. His body of work reflects his interest in the visual heritage of Africa and Oceania, as well as contemporary African American culture.
As a high school student in Pittsburgh, Bey participated in the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild apprenticeship program, a formative experience that inspired his career. He went on to earn a BFA in ceramics from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, an MFA in studio art from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and a PhD in art education from the Pennsylvania State University, during which he received a Fulbright scholarship. His work can be found in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and Hickory Museum of Art in North Carolina, as well as the United States Embassies in the Sudan and Uganda.
Art exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art:
August Wilson - BIO
Born and raised in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, Wilson drew his greatest inspiration from the city and its people. Many of his works in the American Century Cycle, which almost exclusively take place in Pittsburgh and represent each decade of the 1900s, were largely informed by Wilson’s observations of the environment that surrounded him. Two of his plays received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Fences and The Piano Lesson) In 2006 Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, one of the largest cultural organizations in the country focused exclusively on the African American experience and the arts of the African diaspora, is creating August Wilson: The Writer’s Landscape, the first-ever exhibition dedicated to his life and works.
Read more at https://aacc-awc.org/the-writers-landscape/
Amanda Gorman - BIO
Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. In 2017, Amanda Gorman was appointed the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate by Urban Word – a program that supports Youth Poets Laureate in more than 60 cities, regions and states nationally. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora.
Read her inaugural poem!
https://www.mitty.com/assets/files/asb/Amanda%20Gorman%20Inaguration%20Speech.pdf
Langston Hughes - BIO
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, the flowering of black intellectual, literary, and artistic life that took place in the 1920s in a number of American cities, particularly Harlem. A major poet, Hughes also wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He sought to honestly portray the joys and hardships of working-class black lives, avoiding both sentimental idealization and negative stereotypes.
https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes#poet__works