Activities
I’m excited to be the juror for Houston Center for Photography’s 41st Center Annual.
Silver Eye’s Fellowship 24 features International awardees William Camargo and Anthony Francis, Keystone awardee Vikesh Kapoor, and honorees Rachael Banks, Xavier Scott Marshall, and Anna Rotty. May 2–August 3, 2024
o_Man! by Kelli Connell and Natalie Krick runs February 22–April 13, 2024. Connell and Krick use collage to respond to and comment on the influence of Edward Steichen and The Family of Man.
Radial Survey Vol. 3 is the latest edition of Silver Eye’s flagship biennial featuring artists working within a 300 mile radius of Pittsburgh. The exhibition includes Eduardo L. Rivera, Lisa Toboz, Alanna Fields, Marissa Long, Akea Brionne, Shane Lavalette, and Larry W. Cook. November 2, 2023–February 3, 2024. If you missed the show, catalogs are still available for purchase in the gallery.
Silver Eye is collaborating with Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership to place the work of local emerging artists in unused downtown storefronts. Emerging Visions features the work of Sobia Ahmad, Anqwenique Kinsel, and Evangeline Mensah-Agyekum along Liberty Avenue. From October 24, 2023
In dreams I walk with you, September 7–October 21 2023, features photographs inspired directly by the themes of six recent virtual workshops. All were led by artists nationally known for their original uses of photography as an expressive medium. This exhibition by teaching artists and participants meditates on artistic process and how mutual support can empower personal expression.
Fellowship 23 runs May 11–July 28, 2023 and features International awardee Samantha Box, Keystone awardee Dominick McDuffie, and honorees Karen Lue, Terrell Halsey, André Ramos-Woodard, and Harlan Bozeman.
Fraction Magazine 165 is live and features portfolios by Adam Chin, Guadalupe Plaza Petersen, Jon Tonks & Christopher Lord, and Julia Vandenoever
From March 2, 2023 through April 22, 2023, Silver Eye shows April Friges’ In Absolute Space and NIcole Czapinski’s always arriving. Associated invents include In Conversation with April Friges and Nicole Czapinski on March 30.
I was delighted to have a piece from my Garrison Creek project in JADED’s Year of the Rabbit Lunar New Year show at Radiant Hall McKees Rocks. I don’t really show this work very much but I think about it all of the time.
See Hannah Price’s Still Standingand Zeal Eva’s Gentle Landing at Silver Eye through February 10, 2023. And a complementary show, Hannah Price’s Still Standing at Nafasi on Centre will be on from January 6th 2023–January 20th 2023. Join us for an opening brunch on January 7th at the Hill CDC’s Nafasi, at 2415 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh!
Every two years Silver Eye holds a Benefit Auction to support the organization’s programs and mission. It’s a wonderful event in that artists generously donate their work in support of Silver Eye and by purchasing these pieces, members of our community help us to continue to operate. The 100 pieces in the auction represent a survey of contemporary photography, with a few classic icons mixed in. Visitors can see all 100 pieces between September 2 and October 22, when the live auction event happens. Live auction lots are also available to bid from October 11 - October 22 on Artsy. Additionally there is a Silent Auction from October 11 - October 24 on Artsy. Come to the Preview Party, the Live Auction Event, or some of the other auction-related events this fall and support Silver Eye, and experience some terrific work by these generous artists.
Fraction Magazine 159 is guest-curated by Lee Chang Ming, one of this year’s Photo Green Book Residents. For his residency he compiled resources for photographers in South East Asia, Across the SEA. See his selection of photographers to showcase in Fraction.
I’m honored and thrilled to serve as the Interim Executive Director of the Silver Eye Center for Photography. This organization has meant so much to me over the years and it’s been a great pleasure to serve on its board, furthering its mission of promoting contemporary photography as a fine art, supporting emerging, mid-career, and under-recognized artists through the exhibitions and education program and the lab, and bringing this work that I believe in to our communities and to the public.
Follow @silvereyecenter and come by and see the fantastic Fellowship22 show up through the first week of August!
Fraction 158 features personal work by Photo Green Book’s first cohort of residents Lee Chang Ming, Alanna Styer, Taelor O. Scott, and Daniel Mebarek. Fraction will be featuring looks at their PGB resource projects in the coming months, but here’s a chance to get to know them as artists.
Clara (Xiaodan)’s installation When I Think About You 1 is up in the Atwood Window Gallery
Fraction 156 is guest-curated by Claudia Ruiz Gustafson and feature portfolios by Latin American and Latinx artists Carol Espindola, Flor Ruiz, Vivian Poey, and Diego De La Vega
Lena Chen and I will be leading a walk through Squirrel Hill on May 21st at 11:00 am as part of Pittsburgh’s Office of Public Arts’s JADED programming celebrating AAPI communities in Pittsburgh. I’ll be talking about growing up as a Chinese American teenager interested in photography in Squirrel Hill in the 1980s and we’ll walk from the location of the original Bookworm bookstore at 1829 Murray Ave. to the Chinese Cemetery.
Junko Saragih’s mixed media “Heartbeat” is not up in the Atwood Window Gallery
Fraction 155 features Granville Caroll, Su Kui, Meg Roussos, and Claire Warden
Now teaching: Photographic Problems, revamped for Spring 2022
Current Fraction Magazine features ten portfolio’s from PhotoLucida’s Critical Mass Top 50!
Silver Eye Institute offers a series of workshops led by uniquely suited artists. They are virtual so you can take them from anywhere! New classes with Jacob Haupt and Eric Hagen available for registration now.
Radial Survey Vol. 2 at Silver Eye is up through February 19th. Learn more about the biennial and associated programming here and also check out Fraction’s special Radial Survey issue.
Fraction 146 features work by Njaimeh Njie, Ivette Spradlin and Lenore Thomas, Dafna Talmor, and Millee Tibbs!
Every year I revise Reading Pictures, Writing Photography, next up in Fall 2021.
Silver Eye Institute offers a series of workshops led by uniquely suited artists. They are virtual so you can take them from anywhere!
I edited Fraction 143: Movement which features Amani Willett, Bryan Formhals, Juan Sánchez Sánchez, and Yun Peng.
Silver Eye’s Radial Survey catalog is here! The beautiful catalog includes work by all twelve artists in the show and several essays including the introduction that I wrote for the show at the time and postscript. It looks great and is available in very limited supply.
Peter Ydeen’s Easton Nights is on exhibit at Freedman Gallery at Albright College, Reading, PA, October 29 - November 25, 2020. The catalog includes an essay that I wrote for Peter.
Teaching in Spring 2021: Photographic Problems. New course!
Silver Eye and University at Buffalo Art Galleries will be co-hosting Thinking Through Photographs, a virtual reading group, over the 2020-2021 academic year. Download the resource binder and check out the schedule!
Teaching: Reading Pictures, Writing Photography, hybrid version, Carnegie Mellon University, Fall 2020.
The Silver Eye Center for Photography’s biennial benefit auction is live on Artsy, ending July 9, 2020. There are wonderful lots available including many donated by photographers supported by Silver Eye. Please consider supporting Silver Eye so that the organization can continue its work supporting emerging. mid-career and under-recognized artists. A portion of proceeds from the auction will go to Sibyls Shrine, new artist residency for Black women, womxn, trans women, and femmes who are mothers and identify as artists, creatives, and/or activists in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
As a contributing editor I curated Fraction Magazine Issue 133, featuring the work of Claudia Ruiz Gustafson, Ross Mantle, Priya Kambli, and Tomoya Imamura, each project engaging with the past’s expression in the present.
I’m delighted to have several prints from On Garrison Creek in the Artist’s Rituals show at Off Ludlow Gallery, 3408 Ormond Street, Clifton, in Cincinnati, February 21 - March 28, 2020. The show is organized by Anne Skove, who, years ago, invited artists to write about their creative rituals for the street paper Article 25; the present show displays works by these artists.
See 2birds1pencil’s collaboration with the Oakland Pigeon Collective in the Atwood Window Gallery, 251 Atwood Street (February 2020)
Teaching: Photographing America, Carnegie Mellon University, Spring 2020.
See BUFF’s Special Shapes in the Atwood Window Gallery, 251 Atwood Street (September 2019). BUFF is Ivette Spradlin and Lenore Thomas.
Teaching: Reading Pictures Writing Photography, Carnegie Mellon University, Fall 2019.
See Molly Berntsen’s Marchand Neighbors in the Atwood Window Gallery, 251 Atwood Street (June 2019)
FInd my work at _ _ _ _ _ _, a group show curated by Brett Yasko at Space Gallery, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, May 31–August 4, 2019
Silver Eye’s inaugural Radial Survey showcases outstanding work by photographers living and working within a 300 mile radius of Pittsburgh. April 4- May 25, 2019. I wrote the exhibition essay which can be read here.
Teaching: Photographing America, Carnegie Mellon University, Spring 2019.
Heidi Asmussen’s paintings of musicians are in the Atwood Window Gallery, 251 Atwood Street.
Teaching: Reading Pictures Writing Photography, Carnegie Mellon University, Fall 2018.
"and the trees are still homes" an installation by Vincent Zeng featuring photographs from her residency at Great Smoky Mountain National Park, are on display in the Atwood WIndow Gallery, 251 Atwood Street. Have lunch at Spice Island and check it out! IG @atwoodwindowgallery
Two diptychs from On Garrison Creek appeared in SITE/SIGHT at the Sweetwater Center for the Arts, May 12–June 8, 2018)
Meridians, Crawford St./ Nova Era, Shaw St, 2016–2018 from On Garrison Creek
Work from On Garrison Creek was shown for the first time at flotillafotilla's popup show, "The GROUND" on April 14, 2018. Thank you flotillaflotilla.
The Silver Eye Center for Photography Benefit Auction is on May 19. Preview Party is April 28. Go see the pieces that so many talented photographers have donated to support this great organization that was so important to me as a teenager learning about photography in Pittsburgh, that I continue to cherish today.
Angelo Michael Maggio's paintings are on display in the Atwood WIndow Gallery, 251 Atwood Street. Have lunch at Spice Island and check it out! IG @atwoodwindowgallery
Currently teaching: "Reading Pictures/ Writing Photography" at Carnegie Mellon University
Sophia Sobers' "In Mountains" is in the Atwood Window Gallery, 251 Atwood Street. Go see it! Also check out @atwoodwindowgallery on Instagram.
Amani Davis's installation "The Price of Luxury" is in the Atwood Window Gallery. 251 Atwood Street, PIttsburgh, next to Spice Island Tea House
Read "The Coast", my exhibition essay for Phil Cheung's exhibition The Edge at Circuit Gallery, Toronto, from January 12–February 4, 2017
Darrell Kinsel's mixed media figures "Shells of Our Former Selves" are now on display in the Atwood Window Gallery, 251 Atwood Street, Pittsburgh.
I continue to explore my neighborhood which sits above one of Toronto's lost rivers, the Garrison Creek: instagram.com/mudlarkingonthegarrison
I contributed two audio essays to Getting the Water Right: The Culture and Politics of Water in the Everglades by Adam Nadel with scholarship by Jessica Cattelino at the Southeast Museum of Photography, October 26, 2016–February 4, 2017
"Touch ID" portraits by Andi Irwin are now on display in the window of the Atwood Window Gallery.
Charlee Brodsky's photographs and Jim Daniels' poems are now up in the Atwood Window Gallery. The Oakland Planning and Development Corporation has made a page where you can see all of the artists whose work I have shown in the Atwood Window Gallery over the last couple of years. Thank you to all of the generous artists! And thanks to Wanda Wilson and the OPDC, and especially to Emily Hower for putting this page together. The windows are at 251 Atwood Street, Pittsburgh, next to Spice Island Tea House (fb).
I had a portrait of John Riegert in the summer 2016 exhibition at Space Gallery in Pittsburgh, "John Riegert," organized by Brett Yasko who asked 255 Pittsburgh artists to make portraits of his friend John. John is an artist whose work was in the Atwood Window gallery last year, and he was a docent at the show. http://johnriegert.tumblr.com/
I wrote the exhibition essay, "In the Air, in the Forest, at the Bottom of the Ocean" for Apprehensions, at Circuit Gallery in Toronto. It's a terrific show, and the prints have the kind of presence that rewards seeing them in person. Curated by Claire Sykes and featuring the work of Chris Bennett, Eamon Mac Mahon, and Jon Wyatt. Circuit Gallery, Toronto, November 26–December 19, 2015.
The SPE Mid-Atlantic Region Conference were in Pittsburgh October 23–24, 2015. Keynote speakers: Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe. The theme was "About a Place" and it was a pleasure and honor to be able to hear so many wonderful photographers speak about their work. I organized the panels for the conference and also moderated a panel including Andrew Frost, Jay Muhlin and Joshua Rashaad McFadden. Other photographers participating included Jeff Rich, Christine Holtz and Lauren Zadikow, Deborah Jack, Daniel King, Michael Sherwin, Lori Hepner, Angeles Cossio and Ivan Ng.
Aviary, 2014
I'm honored to be included in Start with Art: Pittsburgh, a project conceived and developed by Matthew Conboy, the recipient of the 2014 Crusade Engagement Grant from Crusade for Art. For the entirety of 2015, every baby born at The Midwife Center for Birth & Women's Health, St. Clair Hospital, and UPMC Mercy will begin life as an art collector; babies born in July 2015 went home with a print of Aviary, below.
Exhibitions
Free to the People in Behind Our Scenes , curated by Jen Saffron, SPACE Gallery, The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. November 8 2013 - January 26 2014
Exhibition curation
A World Imagined: Kelli Connell and Sara Macel, organized by Leo Hsu and David Oresick
April 3–June 13, 2015, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh PA
- Thursday April 2, 2015 6:00 pm: Sara Macel talk at JVH Auditorium, Thayer Hall, Point Park University, 201 Wood Street
- Friday, April 3, 2015, 6:00–9:00 pm: Gallery talk and Opening Reception with Kelli Connell and Sara Macel at Silver Eye Center for Photography
- "Talk-tails: Closing Reception for A World Imagined", June 13, 6:00–8:30
No Job, No Home, No Peace, No Rest: An Installation by Will Steacy, co-curated with Ellen Fleurov, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh. September 14 - December 15 2012
Will Steacy, photo courtesy Silver Eye Center for Photography
Read more about No Job, No Home, No Peace, No Rest
HomeFrontLine: Reflections on Ten Years of War Since 9/11, co-curated with Ellen Fleurov, Featuring work by Peter van Agtmael, Claire Beckett, Nina Berman, Kevin Bubriski, Gabriela Bulisova, Ashley Gilbertson, Baptiste Giroudon, Michael Kamber, Ben Lowy, Alfonso Moral, and Eugene Richards. Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh. September 12–December 10 2011
Visitor responses to HomeFrontLine: Reflections on Ten Years of War Since 9/11
Rethinking Pittsburgh's Industrial Legacy, curated by Leslie Golomb (Assistant to the Curator), Artists Image Resource, Pittsburgh. April 16–May 7 2011
Home for Good, curated by Jon Levy and Foto8, New York Photo Festival. May 14–17 2009
Courses
Photographing America, Carnegie Mellon University
Reading Pictures, Writing Photography, Carnegie Mellon University
Current Directions in Documentary Photography, Carnegie Mellon University
Trajectories in Photography: From Prehistory to 1945, Carnegie Mellon University
Critical Issues in Documentary Photography, Carnegie Mellon University