City of Pittsburgh Selects Artists for Homewood Park Public Art Project
PITTSBURGH - The Department of City Planning’s Public Art and Civic Design Planning division has selected four artists to create permanent art installations in Homewood Park as part of the Homewood Park Improvement Project.
In 2015, various community organizations identified several challenges facing Homewood Park and its existing conditions. This led to an extensive community engagement project led by Homewood Park Community Sports to develop an updated park design that better serves the Homewood community.
These public art installations will uplift the past and present of the Homewood community by telling the story of the neighborhood and its notable people, organizations, and events. Each artist will work closely with Homewood Community Sports and community residents to create a seamless integration of art, landscape, and architecture that’s reflective of the Homewood neighborhood.
The public art portion of this project is funded by the City’s Percent for Art program, which allocates one percent of the project construction budget towards realizing permanent works of art. This is one of seven Percent for Art projects anticipated for 2022.
“We are dedicated to using the Percent for Art program to develop and support a public art program that uplifts community identity, public history, and evolving culture in Pittsburgh,” said Public Art and Civic Design manager Sarah Minnaert. “These artworks will celebrate Homewood’s history and create new memories for generations to come.”
The selected artists for this project are:
Camerin “Camo” Nesbit is a Homewood native and resident who utilizes eye-popping mural work to explore the importance of representation of the black body in public art.
Juliandra Jones is a self-taught mixed media artist, muralist, live painter, entrepreneur and educator from Las Vegas. Her art works to bring people together and elevate marginalized voices through happiness and joy. She specializes in vinyl, acrylic, aerosol paints, as well as natural elements to create various projects such as paintings, woodcuts, sculptures and public art works.
Mikael Owunna is a queer Nigerian American multimedia artist, filmmaker and engineer from Pittsburgh. He explores the intersections of visual media utilizing engineering techniques and optics to explore themes of Blackness and African cosmologies. Through his art, he works to elucidate an emancipatory vision of possibility that pushes people beyond all boundaries, restrictions, and frontiers.
Najja Moon is a Miami-based artist, and cultural practitioner. Her practice is centered on the idea that art is utilitarian in order to explore an amalgamation of practicalities that improve her life. Her works utilize drawing and text to display the intersections of queer identity, the body and movement, black culture, as well as familiar relations, both personal and communal.
Starting this summer, the artists will begin their artistic research by participating in community engagement events at the Homewood Park field to understand the community and identify goals for the artworks.
Visit EngagePGH in order to learn more about the Homewood Park Improvement Project as well as the Homewood Park public art program.
https://engage.pittsburghpa.gov/homewood
https://engage.pittsburghpa.gov/homewood/homewood-park-public-art
An update was made to correct the name of the second artist, her name is Juliandra Jones.
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