Kick it with a
TASTY GROOVE
Djs are every Wed, Fri, & Sat. 10pm - 1am. Bands start between 8 - 9 pm on Thursday nights.
May 17th
Casual Hobos Blue Grass
May 24th Told Ya So
May 31st
Acoustic Open Mic with Jay Constable
June 14th
Eden Sparks Trio
June 21st
CP PHOTO BY SARAH HUNY YOUNG
Juan & Co.
Pittsburgh artist Lauren Valley
.ART.
June 28th Told Ya So
DJs & A LIVE MUSIC Outdoor seating now open
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412-697-0909
5500 Walnut Street, Shadyside
DIGITAL SPACE
BY REBECCA ADDISON // RADDISON@PGHCITYPAPER.COM CCORDING TO a 2017 study con-
ducted by The City University of New York Guttman College, a place known for its cultural abundance, women of color make up fewer than six percent of artists represented by top galleries in New York City. Pittsburgh artist Lauren Valley doesn’t need a report or statistics to tell her women of color are largely underrepresented in the art community. As a minority she’s experienced it first-hand. Valley’s new project, Electric Women, highlights the work of women of color in the digital arts space through a collection of profiles. An online digital art gallery will feature work from artists working in the realm of art, science, technology and social practice. Think of it as a social-media site for female
artists of color. “A lot of my work deals with social media and online personas,” says Valley. “I began to wonder what other women of color, who are also doing technology and social-media-based work, were doing. I was looking for a community that didn’t quite exist. I began to talk to other women like me and they noted the lack of a common online space. This project began out of a want for this online resource that I definitely needed.” Valley is a Fifth Year Scholar, spending an extra year of study at Carnegie Mellon University. She completed a residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in 2016, and at ACRE, July 2017. As a student at CMU, Valley began incorporating technology into her art
ELECTRIC WOMEN For more information about the site and to learn about the artists profiled, visit Electric-Women.com.
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during her sophomore year and now considers herself a new media artist. For example, in her video pieces, she incorporates mechanical robotic parts. Her YouTube channel, where she goes by the name Junie Genius, includes a series called Mad Science Wednesdays where she features different robotic pieces she has made. “I have been doing art my entire life. Using technology has been a relatively recent development in my artistic practice,” Valley says. “As I began to dive deeper into the online new media world and started seeing how other women of color use technology, I began to realize there wasn’t much of an online community for women of color working across art and technology.” Valley says she wishes there was a space like this when she was in middle school and high school and looking for artists like her. And from talks with other artists she asked to participate in the Electric Women project, she