Pittsburgh Fringe Festival & More!

It feels like it’s been forever since I did an update. There has been a lot going on so without delay…

The Haiku Ninja Collective and I have our own art gallery at this year’s Pittsburgh Fringe Festival!! Step into this super cool 3-d gallery to see more than two dozen works of art, many of which include Haiku from either yours truly or the Collective.

The gallery premieres this Friday, May 7th and runs until 11p Sunday May 9th. Most of the work is available for purchase and admission is free. I will send a link out Friday when the gallery opens!

In the meantime, here is one of the pieces (available as a 4.5 x 6” magnet for $10 - all profits going to Fair Fight, Stacey Abram’s voter rights group) and check out the other amazing projects included in this year’s Fringe Festival.

Art Against Racism, a non-profit with a mission to shift the dominant cultural beliefs and norms based in systemic racism, selected the work of The Haiku Ninja Collective to be a part of their Visual Cultural Gallery! An anthology of nine Haiku written from the Collective’s thoughts and feelings around the events of the last year and placed on a painting of mine, we are over the moon at being chosen. You can see it here - our work is the 11th image in the first column! A piece from the collection below.

The Haiku Ninja Collective is publishing our first book!! Absurdity, Buffoonery and Calamity: The ABCs of a Pandemic in Haiku is the best of our 250+ Haiku shared in a journal-style book that allows you to capture your own memories of COVID - Year 1. Look for it in the fall of 2021!

The Best of the Rest

Here are the Cliff’s Notes on the other doings:

In November 2020, I was awarded the Awesome Pittsburgh grant and used the money to design, print and install three bus stop shelters with COVID-related Haiku created by The Collective. These were up for three months in Shadyside, Mt. Lebanon and Lawrenceville.

In February 2021, I raised the funds through Indiegogo to create and install two more - located on the North Side and the North Shore. These were up through April. See them either in the Pittsburgh Fringe Art gallery over the weekend - link will be sent Friday!

I was chosen last November by the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership to design a holiday window! I pushed myself further than I ever have, designing and hand-inking a cape with both Haiku and phrases on the theme of Space and Grace. The window at the Peter Lawrence Boutique won second place!

It was an incredible collaboration and I couldn’t have done it alone - so huge thanks to seamstress Brianna Herr, magical installation manager Taylor Meszaros, my mother, AnneLouise Feeny for all of her support along with numerous friends who generously gave of their time for brainstorming and problem solving!

That’s all for now. I promise to make more of an effort to update in the future!

Be on the lookout for the gallery link!