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Schenley grad's work in Arts Festival lineup[]

Monday, May 12, 2008, By Mary Thomas, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There won't be a "Best of Pittsburgh" or "Annual" exhibition at the Three Rivers Arts Festival that opens June 6, 2008, but the visual arts will maintain a very public presence.

The festival announces the names of artists who will create a commissioned public art work in Market Square and a multi-component project along Forbes Avenue.

Nathan Green, a graduate of Schenley High School who lives in Brooklyn, will create a large-scale interactive sculpture, "Dream Machine," in Market Square.

Green was born in Vermont and moved to Pittsburgh with his family when he was 6. He frequently participated in the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild programs, attended Carnegie Mellon pre-college classes throughout high school and, in 1999, the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts. He earned his bachelor's degree from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, in 2005.

His "Dream Machine" will include a spinning merry-go-round, a modified piano and other kinetic objects that viewers may manipulate.

The multi-part project, "Contained," is the first stage of a three-year collaboration between the festival and Associated Artists of Pittsburgh to celebrate the city's 250th anniversary in 2008, the festival's 50th anniversary in 2009 and the Associated Artists' 100th anniversary in 2010.

Each of its 10 components will be constructed within a discarded shipping container. Artists were selected by a jury consistng of festival and Associated Artists members.

The planned installations are:

• "The POK Cave" by Alberto J. Almarza, a dream-world with the viewer as archaeologist.

• "Make;Shift" by Pati Beachley and Carol Brode, a video and cyanotype interpretation of Market Square.

• "Twist, Tie, Multiply: Hands in Action" by Anna Divinsky, JoAnna Commandaros and Karen Page, an interactive cabinet of curiosities that will evolve and grow over the course of the festival.

• "Empowering the Object" by Adrienne Heinrich and Patricia Sheahan, examining the history and power of ordinary objects.

• "Code Words: Mutations" by Lori Hepner, an interactive print installation that explores binary code and the ways in which language breaks down.

• "Water & Wine" by Jocelyn Horner, Katherine Young and Molly Weaver, a multimedia exploration of the social significance of bars and churches along Western Pennsylvania's rivers of industry.

• "On the Path of Metamorphosis (The Self Discovery of the Beltzmann Child)" by Ryan Keene, a multi-media realization of self.

• "Zen Zones" by Anna E. Mikolay, an interactive multi-media Zen experience.

• "Forbes Ave. from Wood St. to Fort Duquesne Blvd., 6:35 to 9:39 p.m., May 6, 2008" by Robert Raczka, a sequence of photographs shot in the Market Square vicinity.

• "Equipoise" by Joshua Space, an enormous kaleidoscope inspires questions about light and space.

The 49th Three Rivers Arts Festival runs from June 6-22. For more information, call 412-281-8723 or visit www.artsfestival.net. Post-Gazette art critic Mary Thomas may be reached at mthomas@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1925.

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