This year's Tough Artists are:
Nova Jiang
Nova is a Los Angeles based artist who creates interactive public artworks that transform audience members into collaborative performers and build playful visual dialogues which sustain communities of participants. She draws from everyday experiences and the memories of childhood, using the body as a familiar and constant reference point. She is interested in handing an 'unfinished work' to the audience, to be rearranged and reinterpreted. She defines social relationships as her raw material and places people at the center of her work.
Nova has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, Sonar, Glow, TED, Transitio_MX, Japan Media Art Festival, Medialab‐Prado, De
Oosterpoort and the Milan Public Design Festival.
Blaine Siegel
Blaine is a visual artist based in Philadelphia who works with “performative installations” - inflatable sculptures he makes from found, recycled and household plastic bags. The sculptures inflate and deflate based upon motion sensor signals from the movement of people through the space where the sculptures are presented. Blaine has exhibited his work in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Francisco, South Carolina, New York and Arle, France. Highlights include inclusion in the The Day After group exhibition at The Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, 2006, and his 2009 installation, Progenitor (The Last Humans), created for Nexus Foundation For Today's Art in Philadelphia.
Amanda Long
Amanda is an animator, sculptor, lover of the earth and sun and the animals, a dreamer of fairy tale visions. Her video installations investigate light, color, perception and universality. She fantasizes about giving
technology a soul and making peace between humans and nature. Amanda has exhibited locally at the Mattress
Factory Museum, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and with pieces Silly Faces and White Light here at the Children's Museum.
Agnes Bolt and Arthur Jones
Agnes Bolt is an artist and graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University who explores alternate ways of communication and developing playful, telling and thoughtful systems for self-‐expression. Her projects aim to trigger an emotional state- compromising somewhere between humor, mischief, earnestness and uncomfortableness. Many of her projects are video, photography, installation and social-‐relations based. Agnes has exhibited and performed in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Brooklyn, Richmond and Salzburg, Austria.
Arthur is an artist, illustrator, writer and animator who
was born in Texas, raised in Missouri, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. Over the last decade he
has done commercial work for clients like The New York
Times, Found Magazine and This American Life. His
animations have appeared on Nickelodeon’s Yo Gabba
Gabba, MTV2’s Subterranean, at the New York Museum
of Arts & Design and dozens of film festivals. He recently
worked on visuals for This American Life’s live show in New
York that was simulcast to 400 movie theaters and seen by over 40,000 public radio fans across North America. In
2004, Arthur was nominated for Print Magazine's New
Visual Artist Review and awarded a MacDowell Colony residency in 2009. He is currently working on an illustrated book entitled The Post-it Note Diaries for Penguin Books.
Tough Art is supported in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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Pittsburgh Is Art is a collaboration of Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council members and other local arts organizations who have developed a collective voice to share our story of Pittsburgh's transformation from an industrial steel city to one with a thriving economy based on education and technology, a commitment to the green movement and a vibrant cultural community.
Click here to view a comprehensive list of arts and culture events happening throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Art Transforms Pittsburgh
The Children's Museum leads an effort to transform its Northside community through the Charm Bracelet Project, a network of cultural, educational and recreational organizations that work together to foster a vibrant, attractive and accessible Northside unified by visible, lasting connections between organizations and amenities. Recent projects that have come out of this initiative include kayaking on Lake Elizabeth in West Park, Fresh Fridays at the Northside Farmer's Market and the Serve & Project effort described below. The Museum also joined the Warhol, City of Pittsburgh, Northside Leadership Conference and several performing arts groups in refurbishing the nearby New Hazlett Theater.
Art Greens Pittsburgh
The Children's Museum was one of the first green children's museums and is the largest Silver LEED certified museum in the country. We are committed to green principles as an institution by purchasing energy efficient power, having features such as a green roof, solar panels and low-flow toilets, and switching to paperless newsletters and annual reports. The Museum conveys this commitment to our audience through our worm compost bin, planting in the Backyard, recycling in the Cafe and using recycled materials for art and building in the Studio and Garage Workshop.
Art Employs Pittsburgh
The nonprofit arts and cultural industry in Allegheny County generates $341 million in economic activity and
supports over 10,000 full time equivalent jobs. Revenues of nearly $34 million are generated through local and
state tax. The Museum supports 30 full-time staff and approximately 65 part-time staff.
Art Inspires Pittsburgh
The Children's Museum seeks to inspires children and families to their own creative heights in a variety of ways. Artists are continually featured in programs such as the F.I.N.E. Artist Series, Tough Art exhibit and in daily programs. Authors and artists of children's literature are featured in the annual Fall Festival of Children's Literature. At least five hands-on art media are offered in the Studio each day. Art work in the form of painting, prints, puppets, sculpture and interactive art are also featured throughout the building.
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