The first time I saw the ARThouse, I thought I was dreaming. Sixteen years old, the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I was on my way to a job interview. Weeks before, I had sent an email that I never expected to receive a reply to, to one of my favorite artists, Vanessa German. I had seen her work in a recent exhibition and I wanted to know more. I sent her an email full of run-on sentences asking if she was possibly looking for an intern, or assistant. Shockingly, she replied and invited me to the house.
In the middle of Homewood, a historically Black neighborhood in Pittsburgh, every other house is boarded-up and dingy. What had once been a thriving middle class neighborhood where my own grandmother grew up has been plagued with white flight and despair, and more recently the looming threat of gentrification. Yet the ARThouse glimmers from a distance. The dusty blue exterior peeking out from under dozens of stars made of sparkling mirrors and shining glass. The sloped floors inside are hills and valleys of teal and glitter wedged in-between floorboards, walls plastered floor-to-ceiling with the work of children who live on the block.
Over the course of the next three years, Vanessa became my boss, my mentor, and my friend. She taught me about how to de-install a show, how to negotiate with art dealers, how to plant corn and beans together, how to shatter glass for mosaics, and how to cling to the truth in the face of terror and exhaustion. She is now my confidant, my compass, my commiserator. And the ARThouse became a place of refuge. When I’m home, I visit whenever I can. I come during the rainy early mornings and we sit down with a pile of colored glass and shears, listening to NPR and piecing together mosaics in silence. Or I come during the ARThouse afternoons, when babies from infancy to 13 years old are running and laughing through the house and the garden, spilling trails of glitter in their wake. For Tuesday Night Monologues, wine nights and writing workshops, full of laughter and truth and grown womxn working and wondering together. The last time I left the ARThouse, it was a hot August day, saying goodbyes before heading back to school. Vanessa and I took a bucket of cement and broken glass and marbles and we turned the staircase on the front porch into a three-dimensional mosaic, of spiraling glass and stone. I walked away with a marble in my pocket and streaks of gray dust on my face, still grinning. I am grateful for this place that still feels like a dream to me, even years later, shimmering.
