INTRODUCING PETRICHOR’S FALL ISSUE

Letter from the Editor by Emma Riva

Doing something successful once is hard. Doing it a second time is much harder. Unless we’re talking about The Godfather movies, the second iteration of something rarely gets as much attention as the first. But the second attempt at something is often where it becomes more streamlined and where a creative person can begin to hit a groove. The theme of this issue revealed itself to me throughout the process and helped me get over some of the anxiety that we couldn’t pull off another good publication.

The fall issue is all about longevity and the generational pathways of knowledge. Louise Silk, the subject of our featured studio visit, has been creating textiles for five decades. Our conversation with her focused on the spiritual power she found in quiltmaking and how she weaves memory into her creations. Like Silk, neon artist Clare O’Neill, featured in a delightfully lively profile by Geoffrey Callahan, comes from a generational craft tradition that merges artistic beauty with functionality.

“The Rustpunk Manifesto” by Boen Wang felt like a fitting way to open the magazine—in a moment that worships the sleek and the aloof, how can we reframe what really matters, the rusted and the uncool? Poet and sommelier Anna Binkovitz’s “The Shape of Ease” reckons with a creative block and wonders whether forcing productivity actually means better output.

On the theme of necessary friction, Jacquet Kehm’s “Public Utility Commission,” Kehm urges the people who see his exhibition to recognize their own power to create the reality they want.

Patrick Totally’s collage of buffed stickers visually illustrates how art exists in public space as a sort of companion to Kehm’s thoughts. What stays in the public discourse and what gets erased?

Jeremiah Gregory interrogates how a new installation piece by Free Soul Bàssïbét takes the idea of “reparations” into reality and how it might break cycles of disenfranchisement.

Gregory also began an interview series called “Hands!” emphasizing how many of our city’s service industry professionals have artistic practices. My interview with guitarist Matt Nichols, who performs as L’eveil, also pays homage to how music is a practice and a trade as much as it is an art form.

The feature profile of Carolyn Wujs-Pierotti, whose work is the cover of this magazine, is special to me. I got to speak with a woman artist I see as a mentor about how her practice has changed in a moment of transition in her life.

Then, conversely, a photo spread of the mural residency HCUAP accompanied by University of Pittsburgh interns I mentored as part of the program takes the theme to a meta level—Petrichor is a literal site of knowledge transfer for the interns I work with each year as part of HCUAP. Mingsi Ma also highlighted the Pittsburgh Opera’s rising resident artists to show how a classical art form stays alive in contemporary life, but also how it requires a community to uplift and maintain it.

If this issue is “about” anything, it’s about knowing the rules so that you can break them. If we don’t spend time learning how to do things right, they never get done. Nobody likes a know-it-all (I’ve been called one, believe me), but knowledge is one of the most powerful tools in the world. I hope you learn something new from this issue—come back and tell me about it next time.

You can come celebrate with us at SKYPOMP this Saturday from 6PM-10PM, with music by PVKVSV and wine by Allora Wine Group.