HCUAP is an interdisciplinary and cross sector collaboration led by Associate Professor Caitlin Bruce and collaborators Max Gonzales, Shane Pilster, and Emma Riva. It has sustained 8 years of funding including over 20 murals, 40 workshops, 50 public talks, and 3 gallery shows. This year's activities received write ups in Petrichor Magazine and the Trib Live, among other venues.
This May HCUAP partnered with Pittsburgh Sound + Image to offer the first 35 mm screening of Style Wars at the Carnegie Museum of Art followed by a discussion with producer Henry Chalfant, and local creatives and visionaries from Pittsburgh. The event was preceded by an oral history interview of Chalfant with Dr. Bruce and an undergraduate research assistant, and followed by a live painting session in Garfield.
This summer HCUAP hosted three visiting artists in residence from Chile, Mexico, and Hawai'i. This is an annual cross-cultural exchange designed to foster collaboration across borders. They visited key Pittsburgh sites like the Ruins Project, Warhol Museum, Fort Pitt, and Cathedral of Learning. They painted two original murals, one in Garfield on Penn avenue and another in Homewood on the Pickleball Warehouse. They presented artists talks at Irma Freeman Center for the Imagination, collaborated with Shane Pilster and Max Gonzales on public workshops at Assemble in Garfield and Artist Image Resource/Warhol Museum for youth. HCUAP collaborator Max Gonzales also curated a gallery show with visiting and local artists at Mixtape that ran from June 6 to July 8, a fully immersive graffiti/hip hop installation show that was an homage to Pittsburgh's iconic Shadow Lounge.
Pilster and Gonzales and HCUAP also partnered with Pitt's Center for Creativity to offer a five-course series on graffiti and mural history, design, and entrepreneurship, attended by a mix of Pitt students and community members. This partnership was made possible by the Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media visiting artists residency program.
Finally, both Bruce and Gonzales were awarded Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice Community and Scholar Fellow grants, respectively, to launch their research project, the Graffiti Narrative Change Project, which seeks to assess, educate, and change punitive public narratives around graffiti practice. Stay tuned for an event this November.