Surprises at the Warhol

Karissa and I weren't about to miss the Piet Mondrien exhibit at the Andy Warhol Museum downtown. The gallery had paintings that spanned the entire length of his career, starting with his naturalistic landscape scenes, which slowly evolved into the straight lines and primary colors that he's known for. Having studied Piet in art history, we knew what to expect. What we weren't expecting to see was the artwork of three Setonians!

The Artist Alliance of Pittsburgh was having their annual exhibit on the floor directly below Mondrien. I was looking forward to checking out the work of local artists, but when I picked up the gallery book I found they were even more local than I had imagined. Featured in the show was Seton Hill instructors Carol Brode and Richard Stoner as well as my fellow-art major Lauren Etling! I was thrilled to see their work in the show, and proud to say that Carol and Richard had a great influence on my artistic endeavors.

Moving down a floor from the awesome AAP exhibit, we found another, smaller exhibit that's worth mentioning. The exhibit is called We Are Survival Machines, and combines two things Pittsburgh is known for: zombies and robots! The main portion of the exhibit was a gigantic double projection slide show featuring tons of photos of people dressed like zombies. The majority of the photos were taken inside the CMU Robotics Lab, with the undead clawing and tooling away on giant machines. Next to the projection room was a table covered in zombie literature, including Max Brooks' World War Z and The Waking Dead graphic novels. Then, on the far wall was a series of photographs involving make-up master Tom Savini turning Andy Warhol into a zombie. It's an exhibit I would only expect to find in the 'Burgh.

I have been to the Warhol a few times in the past, but I think this latest visit was the best. Aside from the surprising exhibits, the price of admission made it all the sweeter--since August 6th was Andy's 80th birthday, admission to the museum was only 80 cents! The Mondrien postcard we got in the gift shoppe cost more than admission.