In partnership with Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery, community organization Café con Leche is presenting a Latino Artist Residency as part of a larger effort to showcase and highlight Latinos in the Pittsburgh region.
The residency is offered with support from The Heinz Endowments’ Small Arts Initiative, to foster the creation of art based on the artists’ experiences in Pittsburgh, a region with a smaller than average Latino population, says Café con Leche founder Tara Sherry-Torres.
The program will run from March through August, and a new artist will be introduced at Most Wanted Fine Art on the first Friday of each month, during the Unblurred event on Penn Avenue.
Sherry-Torres, who was herself a resident artist at Most Wanted, founded Café con Leche in January 2014 with a goal of creating spaces for Latinos to connect in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods.
The Resaca Tango Duo of Alejandro Pinzon and Tom Roberts, which plays live Argentine music for tango dancers, will be the March resident artists, in partnership with the Center for
Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
April’s artists will be painter and digital artist Greg Garay, and surrealist writer and artist Nicole Oliveri.
Gary will continue his residency through May, and will be joined by Jason Mendez, an educator, author and interdisciplinary theater artist.
Also in May, the residency will host multidisciplinary artist Hoesy Corona, founding codirector of Labbodies, a performance art laboratory in Baltimore.
Colombian immigrant and actress Diana Burbano and mural artist Elizabeth Barreto Ortiz will be June’s residents.
Southwestern Pennsylvania native and illustrator Maggie Negrete is one of July’s resident artists, along with second-generation Pittsburgher and visual arts educator Alison Zapata, owner of Zapata Studios.
And in August, the final month of the residency will feature multidisciplinary Cuban artist Boris Balsindes.
For more information on the Latino Artist Residency, and the full series of events in the program, visit Cafe con Leche’s website.
