2015 Down the River: Muhammad Ali Threw His Olympic Gold Medal into the Ohio flows from the upper to lower galleries using the staircase to represent the path of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Imagery illustrates abuse of this waterway—environmentally through toxic dumping and historically as a vehicle for human trafficking. Down the River geographically connects the senseless deaths of young black men with the United States’ former slave trade, examining the political and social divisions that have been created by the waterway’s physical divide.
¬ Commissioned by the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery
2013 In All Eyes on Art, the Pittsburgh Percent 4 Art Team, an artist-led, volunteer group of students, artists, and activists are calling on city lawmakers to enforce Pittsburgh’s Percent for Art Law.
¬ Funded in part by MoveOn.org’s Opportunity Fund
¬ Published by “Animating Democracy,” a program of the American Federation for the Arts
2011 Requiem for the Netmakers presented viewers with the centuries-old duel of Man v. Nature played out by Big Oil Gangsters, the Ocean and generations of people whose livelihoods depend on the sea.
¬ Commissioned by the American Jewish Museum
2009-11 Too Shallow for Diving: the 21st Century is Treading Water engaged viewers in aesthetics, science, politics, and the environment as they considered the future of water.
¬ Funded by Buhl Foundation, Jewish Healthcare Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Sprout Fund, and Pennslvania Council on the Humanities
¬ Exhibition, web site, and community engagement organized for the American Jewish Museum
2002-3 Sight of Stillness: What Do You See When You Meditate? Over 750 people engaged in meditation through the creation of a film; a symposium at the Carnegie Science Center; weekly workshops; web site and documentary of the artist-activist process.
¬ Funded by Heinz Endowments’ Creative Heights Initiative
¬ Artist in residence at Pittsburgh Filmmakers
2002 Earth Breathing through its Elements is a duet between human breath and the elements. In a dual screen video the elements are personified by an African drummer as Earth, a Kundalini yogi as Fire, an aria singer as Air and a competitive swimmer as Water. The soundtrack is composed from sampled sounds of human breath, the body moving, and the environment.
¬ Co-authored with composer Eric Moe.
¬ Commissioned by First Night Pittsburgh
¬ Additional funding given by PA Partners in the Arts and University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Research
2001 Urban Aquarium paired the movement of a martial artist with its counterpart in nature on multiple video screens. With this imagery and a Theremin soundtrack, the video aquarium gave viewers a meditative space in a city traffic tunnel.
¬ Collaborators: Ben Opie, composer; Cary Simons, chiropractor; and Karen Hyleman at Oom Yung Doe
¬ Commissioned by First Night Pittsburgh.
1999 Community Forums Online was the first interactive web site for The Andy Warhol Museum. These online forums held discussions on Disney’s architecture ranging from Pop Culture to Urban Renewal, and in the process, shifting the museum’s approach to using the internet.
¬ Commissioned by The Andy Warhol Museum
¬ In-kind support from the Carnegie Library’s Electronic Information Network
1996-7 End of the Line: Building Bridges with Pittsburgh’s Busways connected diverse groups through issues shared by Pittsburgh’s communities. In city libraries, common themes arose from workshop participants’ oral histories, photographs and photomontages. Digitally collaged artwork was created from these themes, printed on vinyl and displayed on a fleet of buses throughout Allegheny County. One of the first online archives for public art was created for this project by the artists.
¬ Co-authored with artist/photographer Lisa Link
¬ Funded by the NEA New Forms program
¬ Co-sponsored by the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon, the Carnegie Libraries, and Internet Services Corporation.
1996 Invisible Clock This public art project explored the nature of passing time with vinyl photomontages and text from Einstein’s Dreams installed on park benches.
¬ Collaborators: 89 native Helen Sinsabaugh and MIT scientist/author Alan Lightman
¬ Commissioned by the City of Manhattan Beach, California
1994 My Bread Tastes Sweeter to keep the streets clean like a table . . . is a billboard honoring the life of Mario Ezzo, a Depression era immigrant who swept the streets while on public assistance. Mario was a folk hero in his time and again as an emblem of contemporary efforts to revitalize an old steel town like Aliquippa.
¬ Co-authored with artist/photographer Lisa Link
¬ Commissioned by Aliquippa Alliance for Unity and Development
1992-3 Literacy Windows is a mural expressing the hopes and dreams of people grappling with the challenges of literacy. It is the first mural in Pittsburgh to be designed and printed digitally.
¬ Co-authored with artist/photographer Lisa Link
¬ Commissioned by The Times Project
¬ Funded by the Heinz Endowments
Carolyn Speranza 